Here's a couple of things you might want to look into as you make your decision:

this fellow is blatant, but has the background to be legitimate in his reasons...explore his site a bit to see why he thinks self-publishing is best: No Media Kings;

probably more to your liking and mine, 81 year old Marion Vuilleumier, who started the Cape Cod Writer's Conference, has this to say about self-publihsing:

She writes on her home computer, regularly communicates by email, writes her book reviews on the Internet, and is lately promoting Print on Demand, a new publishing technique which allows books to be produced and printed in small quantities quickly by a digitalized process.

For authors struggling to find publishers and agents, and publishers faced with enormous quantities of unsold books (30 to 40 percent of traditionally published books are returned to the publisher), the technique is raising a lot of eyebrows.
"It's the future of publishing," Vuilleumier says convincingly. "Who's going to need bookstores, agents, or warehouses?" she says. "At last, the writer will be on top. It's a whole new world."

in this article.

:-> kat