I am loath to criticize the work of other cartographers, but you map has touched upon a few of my major pet peeves when viewing maps for fiction. If your world has major roads connecting the cities, why are they not depicted? Rivers are a common means of travel or barriers to travel, or boundary markers, at least major rivers should be shown on a map of this type. Your scale bar assumes the people of this new world use the same forms of measurement for distance that we do, shows a strong lack of imagination on the author's part (or maybe you haven't read what he/she has written). Same goes to your depiction of a compass; it assumes they use north the same way we do.

You might want to try some of the mapping software that's out there, it should not take so long to create a simple map, unless the author of the book has no organizational or communicational skills, in which case the book probably won't be worth the reading.