Why You Should Self-Publish & Why Maybe You Shouldn't

On a thread elsewhere discussing the whys and wherefores of Self-Publishing
(typically for iPad and Kindle and other digital readers)

a lady posted:


"There is a big difference in choosing to self publish because you want to
  versus have to in order to see your work in print."




For now, this is what I THINK she meant. (The sentence above could be seen as ambiguous)


There is a big difference in choosing to self publish because you want to

versus

deciding to self-publish for the sole reason of seeing your work in print.



And I would expand that to say:

There is a big difference in

(after first having learned to write to a very good standard, and having produced what you genuinely believe to be at the minimum, a "solid" honest. polished piece of work)

...  and after carefully weighing up the differences between

(1) Mainstream Publishing via the Large Houses ie "Tradiitional"

(2) Mainstream Publishing via Smaller Houses but still Traditional

(3) Publishing via very Small but still traditional "Indies"

(4) and having considered Paper, Digital or Both


THEN choosing to self publish because you want to . But "want to" here means because you believe you have a genuine quality product and, after all that research and careful consideration, would prefer for commercial, aesthetic or practical reasons to go the chosen route.



THAT is versus

deciding to self-publish for the sole reason of seeing your work in print.

And by this line we mean,

publishing for reasons of vanity,

publishing because you just want to say, "I'm an author

publishing because you are tempted and think "any dummy can make money on the internet"

publishing because you think it'll help you get laid,

publishing because in your heart and soul you KNOW your work is inferior.

It's not "overlooked".
It's not "held back by a conspiracy".
It's not "slightly outside the box"

It's just sadly, somewhere between "sub-standard" all the way down to being a pile of shit.