But that was also more than 5 years ago. A market filled with ill-quality product made consumers push back against the crap. It became fashionable again to print high-quality work.
Most importantly, aspiring authors who cared so much about their work, demanded from the self-publishing industry the offering of better tools and more options to pay for printing better quality books. To stay viable, some self-publishing companies complied, and further offered “comprehensive” services to edit, design and market a book.
This has been an incredible time in the industry, with factors like e-books, Amazon, and the dwindling marketing/advertising budgets offered by traditional publishing houses, radically changing the face of the industry as a whole.
For me, the most influential factor weighing in on MY decision of what to do next, was that I was stuck. And not moving on.