Dean Wesley Smith's Advice to Writers: Self-Publish

Dean Wesley Smith:
- On agents: You don't need one. He writes:

Don’t have one. Period. You don’t need one in indie publishing and if you do have one, just drop back and ask them to do nothing. See how your agent gets through these coming years. In other words, leave them alone.

- On traditional book publishers:

Put on hold unless approached. Or unless you already have a contract.

Stop mailing to them, stop giving your agent anything to sell. Just hold. Don’t pull books or do anything stupid like that. Just hold and finish your contracts.

- On self-publishing/independent publishing:

Go here and go here as quickly as you can.

To sum up:

Avoid agents, hold on traditional publishing until things settle, and move to indie publishing.

Here's the link to DWS's article: The New World of Publishing: Traditional or Indie? What To Do Now? It's well worth the read.

Self-Publishing Will NOT Hurt Your Chances Of Being Traditionally Published

So says agent Rachelle Gardner. She writes:

Self-publishing probably will not hurt your chances of traditional publishing.
....
[T]he lightning-fast turnaround of the “perception” of self-publishing is nothing short of astonishing. Most of us in “traditonal” publishing no longer think of it as a negative thing ...

You can read the whole article here.

Thanks to Passive Guy for the link.