Before publishing my first work I interviewed a number of established published authors from the top three publishing houses. A couple folks were what I'd call house-hold names (fairly well known folks).

The results of my inquiries about being an agented-published author firmly lead me down the self-publishing path.

Why?

I decided I'd rather enjoy 80% of the sale versus (in amazon's case) 5% of the sale. Granted - there's the overhead that must be paid by publishing houses. Got that. Granted, agents gotta eat too. Got that.

Lulu.Com has consistently met or exceeded my expectations since 2006.

Amazon.com's in-house on-demand printing has failed expectations more often than not. (Students who purchased books from amazon complain of the poor printing 75% of the time.)