Good to hear you are not giving up, but then, maybe you are giving up on self publishing a bit too quickly. You have over 7500 followers here. I'm sure if you were to self publishing one of those anthologies (not just Amazon, go cross channel and add a POD outlet that isn't Createspace as well), you have the marketing channel right here. I know I would buy two anthologies from your list here, and I'm confident quite a few of those 7500 followers would likely do the same. Loving my Kobo reader, I'dd never buy any book that is published just on Amazon. I bought a few books on Amazon in the past, but never managed to find a way to get the bloody books on my e-reader. Sommige now these books are just sitting on my phone, unlikely to ever get read.
I'm just saying, don't blame self publishing as a whole for failing on your Amazon exclusive self publishing strategy, and if you decide to give self publishing a second chance, go all the way plus use this platform to do your own marketing to your 7500 followers and beyond.
Why not pick your "least likely to get through tradpup" anthology and give it a try. I could contact my cover art artist and front you the cover art (if needed), given he has a timeslot for you, and you might have your first anthology up in weeks. And if things don't work out, you could just pay me back in upvotes over time.
Whatever road(s) you choose, I really hope you don't have to dig into your hard earned dolphin status. SBD might not go up again if pegging does what it is supposed to do, STEEM market cap should be representative for the value of the platform and its content. As such, I'm confident STEEM market cap should go up again to round and about the one billion mark before the year is over. So power down by all means, but try not to sell yourself short by selling significant amounts of STEEM at current price levels. I understand, if you must you must, but if you can avoid selling at current price levels you should probably try. Maybe you could expand on what I suggested for cover art and see if you can sell some of us the promise of future upvotes so you could get your hands on some quick funds.
I have tried this before many times, it did not result in more than a couple of sales.
That's a generous offer. If my efforts at getting traditionally published fall through, I will be sure to remember this and hit you up. Thank you.