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Self-publishing your book is an investment and you should treat it as such. This means before you sit down to write, you need to decide on what path will you take once the novel is complete. So many new authors get overwhelmed by the process because they went in without some sort of plan. They didn't take a class or attend any kind of writing conference so they were screwed from the word go. Now what I am about to tell you is just my EXPERIENCE... so take from what you will and please don'twaste your breath telling me I should be done. Everybody's path is not the same even when everyone is walking the same road. Here are a few things I paid for. And please note that I have made 11k off of this book before I entered it into Kindle Unlimited. 1. The first thing you should get, while you writing is beta readers. Between 4 to 8 of them. People you can trust and most importantly people that read your genre. This should coat you nothing. 2. After the novel is finished it's time for step two. You love the book; you'e beta readers love the book. Now it's time to hire editing. The price here is based off of the the length of your manuscript and on how much work you feel needs done to your story to make it as perfect as possible. For example: I didn't know how to read until I was 10-years old so I suck at grammar. Really, really, suck at it. So I attacked the problem with 2 rounds of professional editing and 3 rounds of aggessive proof reading. Cost: $3,335 S/N: being my first rodeo I hired Createspace to help me put a lot miscellaneous stuff together. a. Book Cover $734 ($375 of this my screw up) b. Interior design $324 c. LCCN (Library of Congress Control Number) $25 3. The one thing I wish I had more money to spend on was marketing. In my opinion, for my company to have made a major dent like the big boy, I would've had to spend about 10k on marketing. Hopefully this helps a little

Two weeks. There are a few different worlds. There are the cleaners and nannies. The Chinese and the White People. It has am interesting feel.

@Pioneer1 there is no harm in going to see a film. I do it from time to time myself. The problem is went we begin to elevate this fiction into something we worship. Don't you see this is the exact same strategy that put 45 into office. Some slick marketers created the fiction of 45 being a savvy businessman for the purpose of bolstering his profile for the Apprentice "reality" TV program. The nation brought into the fiction and we made him POTUS. The facts of his business failures did not matter, what mattered was compelling fiction that was created. White folks are needy too. They needed someone who spoke to their pain and promised to make things better and on paper 45 is doing just that. 45 will serve out his term and do not be surprised if he wins a second term -- unless Oprah runs and she'll win in a landslide.

@Pioneer1 I never meant to completely discount anecdotes. They can be interesting and, when backed by actual data, quite powerful. However, absence such data, I would just not use my personal anecdote as proof of anything dealing with all Black people or a more general audience. This is something you quite often, with reckless abandon. Do you see the difference? So while I may tend to agree with you on the issue of the disappearing straight-Afro-America male in general I just don't have any proof -- other than my own anecdotes -- even as it relates to our representation in literature. Even if you and I combined all of our anecdotes, on the subject, this would not be proof, no matter how good it made us feel or how right we feel we are.