There's a discussion thread on Goodreads about the self-publishing stigma. I responded:

When the painter Matisse showed his first non-representational figures, the French audience tried to scratch them. He started a movement. Carl Dryer, director, made his extreme close-up film, "Joan of Arc", and the backers hated it. Now, every movie and television show employs this technique. Will your self-published tome make literary history in the face of today's self-publishing stigma?

The courage to create and put that work out into the world is enormous. And, then, to market it requires a brain stretch into things like code($#&), widgets(!) and a campaign that rivals any presidential election.

Who wouldn't love for Doubleday or Random House to call you up and say, "Hey. We'll publish your book!"

If that day happens to me, I'm going to know what I'm talking about. It won't be innocent-little-me with big-daddy publisher. I'll know to have a lawyer and a fabulous agent who looks at the distribution plan and negotiates the royalties for world-wide this and digital that.

Here's what's great about self-publishing. My book isn't sitting in a drawer next to the pile of rejection letters. It's swimming around in an ocean of other self-published works, but so what? The book is real.

When people say to me (with that pursed lip thing):
"Oh, you published it yourself?" or "Oh, it's not in hard copy?" I say, "Where's your book, bitch?"