Book Surge Non-Publishing

Okay, this is getting ridiculous. I set up this blog on self-publishing on December 1st of 2005, confident that I would soon be up and running with a book to sell. I had intended the blog to be a running commentary on the process, in the hope that other self-publishers would find it helpful. It is now April 11th and I still have no books to sell, no idea of when they might be printed and a large collection of emails from various representatives at Book Surge promising to look into the delay, to get back to me immediately with a printing date, yadadadada. These people took $2,500 from me in November and have produced nothing but apologies. My first book, published by a real publisher, Andrews/McMeal, took exactly six months to get through design, illustration and distribution. Okay, I only made $20,000 from that effort (watch out in your contract for royalty reductions on sales to Amazon) but at least it was something. Book Surge seems to be running in the other direction: you give them money, get back nothing. So far, I am not impressed.