Stop me if you've heard this one...

Looking at the end results for some people, I feel like I should be trying to get one thing to hardcover just to see if I can pull off something remotely professional. I honestly just want to throw everything at someone and have them come up with something that looks decent. Because, really, what was I honestly bitching about in the end but appearances. For some stupid reason people think the children's book is professional looking enough to sell in a book store when I know it's not. And that's what it came down to for my ego: conning people into thinking I had a better publisher than I did. It's knowing I have to pay through the GD nose for this, and still upload it all myself. I'm looking at the KDP hardcover deals, which means ultimately I have to nuke what I've done and build up from the bottom. Soon as you want interiors done, that's when you're paying through the nose, and that's what's got me hesitating. The fact people all want their fantasy covers to look practically identical, my attempt to be different never made me stand out. The headaches from reformatting myself are what had me looking into package deals but nobody's going to work for nothing on a whole reformat, even if I have them what I've done as a starting off point and just asked them to do it, I could put in fancy typeface if I really put my mind to it. It's not difficult, just tedious. I had one program that did do something fancy but in order for you to get it out there you had to pay hundreds once uploaded. Entertaining any of this is actually making me anxious and headachey, like it just proves it doesn't matter how I do this, from whatever angle and for whatever reason, it pains me too much, people must've known I was more stressed than I let on. It's a fucking nightmare and I can't justify it. And knowing there were "professionally printed" books in existence that actually, in the end, weren't (particularly in terms of editing), I just feel I've conned myself into believing every reputable company is willing and able to release something perfect.