Eventually my books will be sold there as well as by other venues. But I am not willing to beg ang plead and be put on the 2005 schedule for publishing, all for 8%. My subjects are too timely to risk being overtaken by events while waiting in line on the dinosaurs no-hurry publishing schedule.
I agree with you that self-publishing is a dead end if you don't have a careful plan, most critically including a product tailored to an unserved and subject-hungry niche target audience. Sometimes, the NYC houses miss these markets, for a variety of reasons, ideology among them. If a novel is tailored to meet the desires of that unserved audience, great success can, and has, followed. In the internet era, it is very possible for the author and the audience to find one another without merely hoping that a reader stumbles across his unrecognized name on the back bottom shelf at the local book store.
I hope that you do beat the baby sea turtle odds, and you are that one in twenty first time author who sells book number one off the shelves in your 90 day shot at success or failure. I simply don't want to wait until 2005 to find out if I am one of the 19 unpromoted book store flops, or the one who is successful. I don't want baby sea turtle odds, I want to control my destiny.
I hope you get lucky on 5th Avenue, but I prefer to make my luck. When I talk to 5th Avenue, it will be with an established track record, on my terms, including promotion gurantees in the contract etc.
We'll just have to see which publishing paradigm does better for each of us. I wish us both success.