Avoiding waste.
I had to do a lot of thinking once I had written Mayfly. Do I send it off to a publisher, agent or otherwise and go off down the well trodden path of rejection after rejection. To be honest, I'm not the most patient person in the world, and I never took kindly to tutors at art school making suggestions about my work, which they clearly did not understand. I have no reason not to think that I could have encountered this kind of irritation by going the traditional route. To me, all of that waiting seemed a complete waste of my time. The result would (or could) have been truckloads of my book going out to bookshops across the world, and truckloads more being wasted.
The traditional print process requires books to be produced in bulk, which is expensive. This is why publishers have (by necessity) to make sure that the products they sell are as saleable as they can be. Plots may need to be unnecessarily changed to "sex them up," make them more violent, dramatic or simply different to the author's vision so that they may appeal to a really broad reader base. What about books that are niche in nature? Like books about canals and adventures thereon?
My decision therefore was to self publish, doing pretty much all the work in house (Janice's and my little semi). Text, editing, covers and the whole shebang come from us so you get what was intended, not what has been tarted up and chrome plated to make it sell.
I earlier mentioned waste of my time. The more I investigated, the more I liked the idea of self publishing for being less wasteful and ultimately better for the environment. Where traditional publishing involves long print runs, self publishing does not. The process of print on demand, using new technology means there are no warehouses full of hard copy waiting to be pulped, composted or whatever. When somebody orders a paperback, that paperback (which exists as a computer file) is printed and dispatched as a one off. That, to me, is a hell of a lot less wasteful than pulling a book off a pile in a warehouse that has to be heated and kept at acceptable humidity. The process of print on demand produces a better finish than most mass market books with a downside that the book is a bit more expensive to purchase. That's life I guess.
So. I self publish for a myriad of reasons and have found the best and (in my opinion) greenest of companies is lulu.com. They have done a great job, and I would recommend any aspiring writer to have a look at what they offer. (Their services are free)