One point to note: the difference between self-publishing and something like, say... poetry.com
While self-publishing, done right (like maggie: I'm very impressed with your knowledge and the obvious amount of thought and planning that's gone into the matter, by the way) can get your work out as much as you want, or even lead to big publishing houses picking up on you, poetry.com and the like are a different breed.
I'm just saying, it, really, because I've seen people who've gotten sucked in to believing they were 'published' because they had poems in poetry.com, or forwardpress, or poetryamerica, or something like that. They accept absolutely anything you give them to publish; write a bunch of junk, and it'll still get published. They ask for $50 to print, and only sell to those whose poems are in their books. It's a scam, but nothing's done, sadly.
Anyway - there is a big difference between self-publishing and scams like these, but I've had people get seriously confused between the two before. Personally, I'd try for publishing through an established, non-selfpublishing company first, but that's just my preference. People have made very valid points about minority audiences, small countries, and so on - choose your print type based on your situation
no one size fits all.
