The Writers' Lounge

I'd definitely agree with that, although I would say - from personal experience - a) self-publishing can be a real PITA. With Amazon's 70% over 30% deal, you need to read the fine print clearly, because it's not for everyone (they may include your book on loan projects, for example). Also, their back-end system is terrible from a technical point of view, so it's lovely to be able to have a publisher with an experienced tech/format team to stand between you and the screw-ups. b) If you intend to be anywhere other than *just* Amazon, you need to know or learn XHTML to correctly format and prepare your work for .epub format, plus doing all the conversion, distribution etc. yourself, which can be a real headache. (Alternatively: I just suck at it. *grin*)

In my view, small presses that epublish give you the best of both worlds: you can focus on actually writing, and leave the technical stuff to other people, and you still get an average of 30-40% royalties on cover price. Some also pay advances for longer work, usually around the $1000 mark (although yes, that does require recoupment, but it's handy). True, you don't shift the kind of numbers you do with a larger company, but they are also much more open to new talent, new ideas - and less run by accountants!

The only issue I've found is that there are fewer epublishers dealing with non-romance genres. Ones do pop up that deal with mainstream fiction, sci-fi, fantasy, horror, etc., but they don't do half as well as romance/erotica houses. I'm trying to cling to the hope that this will yet change. (If I'm wrong and someone knows of a really successful digital publisher who doesn't predominantly do romance: for the love of all that's holy, please share!)

Oh, and in addition to those excellent recs of fannyfae's: check out the Chicago Manual of Style. It's worth investing in a copy, as that's many publishers' standard text.