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What I've come to learn with self-publishing is that if you want to provide readers with something of equal quality, it requires the same amount of time and expense.

Maybe self-publishing is going to be an extra step added to publishing. Maybe what's going to happen is you self-publish a book, someone notices it - an agent? - and it goes from there into the traditional sphere.

Self-publishing is great, but I don't want to be an icon for it, or anything else.

The goal is to become the central hub of publishing, where we have all the written material - user-generated and professional. We want to be the place where people can publish instantly to their audiences... and to get there, it's just about doing things step by step.

Publishing is a business, and I completely understand it. But when you don't have to depend on writing for your identity or your income, you can do whatever you want.

Of course, to publish something, you have to write it, polish it, then hire out the line editing, copy editing and cover design. After which, you pick your way through the minefield of conforming to the differing requirements of Amazon, Barnes & Noble and Smashwords, or hire someone to do it for you.

Overall, one of the things that excites me most about self-publishing is that the highest-value use of my time in promoting the books will be found in writing more of them.

Print-on-demand and electronic self-publishing options have made it easy for anyone to set up a business as a publisher whether they know what they're doing or not.

The attitude of, 'I will never self-publish,' coming from any author, indicates that they have never been in a position where it is their only option.

Send it to someone who can publish it. And if they won't publish it, send it to someone else who can publish it! And keep sending it! Of course, if no one will publish it, at that point you might want to think about doing something other than writing.