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Mark Coker, thanks for the invitation. I've taken you up on it and have uploaded Risen to Smashwords. I read and followed the style guide and the conversion worked first time out.
I checked it out on my Kobo and the teeny-non-sizeable type problem afflicts it, but I'm confident that Kobo's firmware upgrade will take care of that. If not, I'll want to take advantage of the future opportunity to upload an epub file directly, which I might do anyway to give readers a clickable table of contents.
About editing:
Absolutely agree about the need for copyediting, and I deeply value the contribution of a good editor. (Bad editors exist, too, and they can ruin an otherwise good story.) Unfortunately, even at the professional houses, editing ain't what it used to be. Your book has to be virtually ready to go or they aren't interested.
I well understand the reluctance people have to sample self-published work, having self-published Risen initially. Eventually, Time-Warner picked it up for their short-lived ebook venture, iPublish, which was not a self-publishing house (the "i" stood for "internet") but you can see from the name how astute their business plan was. Later I obtained an agent and he sold Risen to Kensington Publishing in NY, who issued it under their Pinnacle Books imprint.
Risen has been optioned for films five times without a film ever being made. The last producer to option it was Ralph Singleton, who has made three Stephen King movies. I've now made more on film options than I made from book publication (which, all together, still total less than $10,000). Considering all the time I've put into Risen, I'd have made more money per hour flipping burgers...but that's okay. I'd rather write than flip.
What just killed me was that my book wasn't available at any price for about six years. Now, it's out there and I'm grateful to everyone who is making that possible.
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