When I mentioned the benefits of self publishing to Stan a couple of years ago, he said he wanted a quality book, a professional product that would be around forever, a book that would be listed in the Library of Congress, etc... He belittled self publishing, despite the fact that quality and "professional" books are self-published every day, made available all around the world, as well as entered into the Library of Congress.
Of course, their are differences between traditional publishing and self publishing. The main difference is there is no middle man, no $$$$ spent to pay a publisher to actually publish your book. With self-publishing there is no garage or room full of books that you had to "purchase" from your puplisher only to have to then sell them yourself.
With that said, I respect Stan's passion and pursuit with wanting to leave a legacy. He did mention Mark Wilson's book, Play Great Pool, as an example. And that's a very nice book. But it's also something that is very possible (for those who can do it) to self-publish a nice collectable book of such quality. It's easier, unbelievably expensive, to simply pay a traditional publisher to do it for. I mean, it takes a lot of time to write to text and provide illustrations. That's the hardest work, and Stan and his family have already done that. So if he has the money and chooses to pay someone else to assemble and format the work and then print a few hundred or a couple of thousand copies, that's his choice. It's time consuming work, so I understand the benefit of passing that onto someone more equipped to do it.
