If you cannot do a professional job, then you may either not want to self-publish, or you may not want to publish a book at all. The saying is right: everyone judges a book by its cover. But not just the cover. The title, the book description, the author photo, the blurbs, even the author bio, all tell a story about how credible and authoritative that book and author are. A professional book makes you look professional. It used to be that traditional publishers were the only ones who had the expertise and access to the talented people necessary to make books that looked professional. That was true 30 years ago, but not anymore. In fact, almost all of the best talent out there is freelance and can be hired for reasonable rates. Just in my company alone, we use writers, editors, proofreaders, copywriters, and book cover design- ers who all either used to work for traditional publishers and left to freelance, or we use the same freelancers that the traditional publishers use. Some people think there is still a stigma to self-publishing. The data appears to say otherwise. Hugh Howey (self-published his novel Wool, which has sold millions of copies and is being made into a movie directed by Ridley Scott) did a study on 200,000 titles and showed that the self-published books on Amazon had, on average, a higher star ranking than traditionally published books. This all boils down to the fact that if you’re willing to put in the work to make sure your self-published book is super professional, then you’re going to be well off. SELF-PUBLISHING PROBLEM #2: WHAT IS THE MAJOR TRADE-OFF OF SELF-PUBLISHING? There is really one major trade-off with self-publishing: 326 · ThE SCriBE METhOD