Kent Anderson at The Scholarly Kitchen describes his decision to self-publish his first novel:

But what ultimately diverted me from the traditional path was hypocrisy. One evening, I sat back and considered the hypocrisy behind pursuing traditional publishing status for myself while in my professional life I’ve been focusing on the changes that are underway - user-generated content, the disintermediation of authority, the network effect, the emergence of efficient technological alternatives - and I thought, heck, I should self-publish, if only for the karma and the experience.

Rather than sitting around researching agents, sending query letters and waiting around for form letter rejections to arrive (or not arrive), Kent is on the third-draft of his next novel.

(Note:  WordPress, of all organizations, should add the word “disintermediation” to their spell check dictionary so that it doesn’t show up underlined in red in my Write Post page.)