At BEA's uPublishU mini-conference this year, Guy Kawasaki gave the keynote presentation. He has just brought out APE, which is a guide to self-publishing; APE stands for Author, Publisher, Entrepreneur.
He gave some really great, practical advice - such as making sure the reason you're publishing is to enrich the lives of other people. He emphasized that artisanal publishing is about control - control of the content, the process of publishing, and the results. Writing, on the other hand, is more akin to (in his words) "vomiting" until there's nothing left. (YMMV.)
Kawasaki also stressed that the respect we give to artisans - cheese-makers, wine-makers, craft beer brewers - is something that self-publishers deserve as well. He compared the efforts of the artisanal baker to the production of Twinkies - why don't we give the same respect to artists who labor over words, and who carefully wield their expertise to get those words out to people who want them?
Kawasaki is most gifted when it comes to discussing how to spread the word about your book. He compared the marketing that self-published authors must do to an NPR pledge drive. Most of the time, NPR is providing all kinds of useful, interesting, compelling information. And then there's a window of time in which they solicit funding. If authors did the same thing - tweet and blog and otherwise provide useful, interesting, compelling information - and (only as the publication date approaches) every so often ask readers to buy their books, they would find that their audience really cares to make the purchase.
All excellent points. The website for APE also contains some great tools, such as a royalty calculator.
ETA: Publishers Weekly has an excellent summary of the event here.
