The title of this post is tongue-in-cheek, but it highlights an important issue. A lot of authors have been burned by predatory publishing companies, marketing firms or services promising the world and delivering little. Usually, authors spend way too much on their first book and see no results, then spend two years figuring out what went wrong, before finally learning how to self-publish well for much. You can spend years learning how to self-publish and still screw everything up by trying to DIY a shoddy book cover. Or do you want to be writing books? No, the big successes really are doing great self-publishing their books.