I've been thinking about self-publishing today - instead of editing my WIP or doing last year's taxes.
I've only recently decided I was a writer. Before I entered NaNoWriMo in November of 2010 I had written only occasionally - maybe an article in a local newsletter, or letter to the editor. I enjoyed writing in high school, and also used to read a lot in my younger days - mostly sci-fi and fantasy, with a few classics. Just hadn't been able to find the time lately for writing or reading. However, for some reason I decided in October to enter NaNoWriMo. I had barely enough time for some quick research on outlining and structure, then essentially leapt right in. Thirty days later I had my 50,000 plus words, as a very rough draft.
My point is that in my relative ignorance I could have then have self-published right away, maybe with a bit of spell checking and filling in some of the details, but I could have fired it off to say Amazon and published there as an e-book. It would have joined the other thousands (tens of thousands?) of e-books in there, and likely been only downloaded by friends and family. After I promised to reimburse them of course. I likely would have blamed the lack of susccess on the sheer numbers of e-books out there, or on my failure to market it properly. Not on the fact that it was a pretty shitty novel.