I read a great blog entry by Chuck Wendig yesterday about self-publishing, which you can also read right here. It gave a great side to the whole self-publishing venture and touches on points I've tried to blog about in the past. He's done a much better job and made a very good point: they aren't serving readers. The biggest problem I find with a lot of these sites and services designed to "help promote your book" that self-pubbed authors join and even create miss one thing - readers. The only people on those sites are other writers. But there are other ways, as mentioned in the article. I don't want to sum it up too much because you really should check it out, but from a reader point of view I can say a lot of its points really do apply:

Bad cover art: You don't have to be a graphic artist to spot a hasty photoshopped cover when you see it. Like it or not, a fair amount of readers do judge by cover. Admittedly, I'm one of them. If the cover art is obviously a cheap job, I'm done. I can overlook an okay cover, but bad cheap covers are a deal breaker. Yes some readers may look past cover art; many won't. But if you want to attract as many readers as possible you have to appeal to them in as many ways as possible.

Poor/no editing: yes, you do need it. I need it. J.K. Rowling needs it. All your favourite published authors need it. Anne Rice needs it. We all need it! Needing editing is not an implication of whether you suck or not, or whether your book sucks or not. Needing editing is needing that unbiased critical set of eyes going through your story and picking out errors and inconsistances you may miss because you're just too close to the story. And if you're going to be a writer, you have to buck up to someone saying "this doesn't work". No one's perfect. Editing is a valuable tool that ever writer should have. Utilize beta readers (and not family or friends, unless they're the type who will be 100% honest), get a good editor. Sometimes you can find a freelancer who's either just starting their own practice or a student just graduated who'll either charge a discount rate or do it for free in exchange for references. But please don't think that because pro books have errors on occassion it means you don't have to worry about editing, or think that the story will shine through the errors, or that your words are so perfect that you don't need editing.

*The argument that published books have errors is completely redundant. Just because they might doesn't give you a pass to make the same mistakes.*

A couple other things that turn me off as a writer: Overpromotion. If you're taking every opportunity to talk about your book, you're going to kill my interest. Don't be a pushy salesperson and constantly mention it every time, or always try to drive the conversation back to your book. I understand that you've got to promote your book, but there is such a thing as promoting too much. If people are interested, they'll ask more about your book. If they're not, take the hint. Push too much and you'll just push readers away. Another thing are fluffy reviews. You know the type, praise for a book that the reviewer clearly hasn't read. Don't get your friends, family or other writers to post reviews of your book as a favour. I personally don't put much stock in reviews because tastes are subjective. But if I do read a review, I want to know why the reviewer thought it was a good book. I don't want to read mindless praise.

Bottom line, to quote Chuck: give us the whole ass.