If you're writing a book, the world of publishing has changed. Less than a year ago, I thought that anyone writing a novel needed to go the traditional publishing route. Write the book, get an agent, pray the agent manages to flog it to a publisher...
That's changed. These days, if you study the numbers, it may make much more sense to publish your novel yourself.
Here's a must-read, "Ebooks and Self-Publishing - A Dialog Between Authors Barry Eisler and Joe Konrath". It will give you lots to think about:
But I realized from that one innocent comment from my daughter that the new generation was looking at self-publishing differently. And that the question--“Should I self-publish?”--was going to be asked by more and more authors going forward. And that, over time, more and more of them were going to be answering the question, “Yes.”