Here’s a rather remarkable blog post by Nathan Bransford, who’s had experience as a publishing industry insider:

Self-Publishing vs. Traditional Publishing: Which Way Will You Make More Money?

Bransford crunches some numbers and comes to the conclusion that unless you’re, say, Sue Grafton and you’re making a big splash in the print market, you’ll actually earn more money by self-publishing.  Whoa.  That means no querying to agents, no waiting for a publisher to pick up your work, no waiting two years to finally hit store shelves.  Instead, he says, put your best work up there on Amazon and then market the heck out of it.

Self-publishing used to be the last resort of people who wrote cruddy books.  But the whole industry is going through a sea change with the advent of e-readers and I don’t know where we’ll all wind up.  And I don’t know what I’d like to do with my next novel once I’m finished with it.  I write because I love to write, and I want to reach as many people as possible.  Money would be nice.  🙂

Cannon Fodder won’t be ready for at least another year and a half, anyway, so I think I’ll wait and see what the industry is like then.