Are self published books inferior?

I have not, but admire those who have. I have read both wonderful and terrible self-published books (same as with traditionally published books). The people I know who have published their own have done so for different reasons. It works well for those who are able to market their own. For example, I have a couple of friends who are celebrities in other fields, and were able to promote and sell their books to and through those fans. For those without a fan base, marketing is a problem. Personally, I admire people who ignore tradition and make things happen in their own way and time.

It simply takes a lot more work...you might have a look at these urls..

lulu.com

iuniverse.com

authorhouse.com

ys the key is being able to market,

iuniverse and authorhouse, charge a lot of money and still you more or less have to market for yourself.

You also have to be careful of the reputation of who you go with or you can be blacklisted from the big houses, publishamerica is blacklisted with them.

I'm deep into my foolish plan of self-publishing and self-producing a collection of my writings.

Using Adobe PageMaker I've laid out a twenty page booklet of writings and artwork with the intent of starting a monthly collection. I hope to market it to coffee shops, bookstores, record stores, etc, and have a purchasing mechanism for it (PayPal) on my web site for both print and electronic versions.

I'm doing what I hope are my final corrections to the layout of the first issue, then will run my printer through it's paces to see how many copies I can get from each ink cartridge.

I doubt I could charge more than five dollars for a copy and am wondering if I should try and sell some add space.

It's a very hard call to make. Many of the familiar sites -- and even some royalty-paying but small and new publishers -- make you pay for things such as ISBN numbers and copyright registration. Given that, why NOT do the whole thing yourself? That gives you full control over the quality of the printing, the binding, the cover art -- even the grammatical errors that always somehow sneak in past even the most diligent eye.

Now, that's just the argument for vanity press versus one of the established non-royalty-paying publishers.

If you want to discuss royalty-payers versus pay-to-publish, that's another loaded argument, about which both sides are passionate. Personally, I have come across very few books that haven't been published by a royalty-paying publisher that have been of high quality, in terms of the writing. Many, if not most, could have used a stronger editing process and more crafting of the story. Of course, I could say that about some books that are or were on the New York Times Best-seller list, too.

That said, though, there are always the exceptions. India Edghill published her first book, Queenmaker, via a POD company (I don't recall which one; it was also in the day when there was no money required up front by the author) and managed to make enough sales and connections that she got notice by the royalty-paying presses. For her, it paid off in the form of a six-figure advance for a three-book contract.

Self-publishing has done well for many successful authors and moviemakers.
Quite often, thos that self publish are doing so because the publishers think they know what people are looking for, using a narrow minded approach based on bottom-line statistics.

Self-publishers get unique material out there for people who don't fall for the 'popular' viewpoints, and often find there is a starving audience out there who were JUST WAITING for something 'like this'

I'm all for the self publisher, but I am also very discriminatory on what gets out there...'Snoop Dog' is an example of LOUSY new ideas.