self-publishing

You know that novel I was gonna publish? ** Well, it ain't supposed to cost me nothin'. I just got e-mail from the "publisher" asking for $18 to send me the manuscript for proof-reading ... then some other shipping & handling charge. Then it's gonna cost $22.17 if anybody wants to buy it. Then nobody in their right mind would actually pay that. Then I decided to forget this self-publishing gig. Since the "publisher" requires that I submit the novel in pdf format, I had bought a nifty piece of software that converts MS Word docs to pdf. ($45). There's free software, but this was so slick. (It also converts images and Excel files to pdf - whatever that means.) Once upon a time I wrote a calculus text and paid a few bucks to have it converted to pdf so's I could make it available on gummy-stuff. Years ago, somebuddy on a discussion forum mentioned that s/he was partially blind and couldn't get info on stocks. I wrote a spreadsheet (described here) that downloaded info on a stock and pasted a text message which could be read with text-to-speech software. Though I tested it with a "free" version of the software, I figured users would have the sexier version ... so I bought it. Click! Click! Heidi complains that I'm spending too much money. I reckon it's a good thing that she controls the finances in our family else we'd be broke. ** I was looking for any online reference to my novel and happened across this. There, I read this: Huh? (Well, at least I'm in good company, eh?) P.S.