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There is a reason why self-publishing has a stigma attached to it. First, anyone willing to take the thirty minutes on Lulu can have a self-pubbed book. What this also means is that for every 'one' good book, there are hundreds of thousands of books that shouldn't have been published in the first place. Success stories exist, but they are far and few between and no matter how you look at it you'd be better off picking a real publisher, unless you intend to publish something like a memoir or a family photo album. If you must self-pub, use it as a last resort, and only if you truly, honestly think that your work deserves to be in print-you should get a second and third opinion on this from someone that isn't a friend or related to you.

Why a book publisher? Because by going this route you ensure that your book is going to be considered a legit source of literature. While your first novel will likely be relatively ignored by the publisher-meaning little in the way of promotion-you still have an advance-at least for big houses-that you can use for yourself or anything. What this means is that the promoting you'd have to do for self-pubbing you can still do for a real publisher, except with the latter you've been paid real money upfront. Sure, you can get royalties from Lulu and similar sites, but the problem is that you have absolutely no backing from Lulu as far as setting up interviews, sending out review copies, etc. While you may do some of this on your own for your first book, you still have more support from a real publisher. Exposure under a real publisher is infinitely higher than under a self-pub place.
Remember also, a real publisher has money invested in you and they actually care, albeit for selfish reasons, if you sell a lot of books because not only does it mean good things for your career-exposure, fans, etc.-it also means more money for the publisher. Self-pub places could care less if your book sells. In fact, they don't give a rat's behind about your book. Not one bit. Why? Look at Lulu. Since they don't publish bulk quantities like other self-pub places and they use a POD service, they can take in just about every single book that someone wants to publish and not have to think twice about it. If they have 50,000,000 books in their catalogue, and they sell one book from each, then they're looking at millions upon millions of dollars. They only need you to sell one book, which shouldn't be too hard if you get a buddy to buy it. Beyond that, they really don't care.
To put this in a different way. If you're thinking of self-pubbing first, and your work is fiction or genre or something that isn't a family book or something of that nature, maybe you should re-evaluate whether you really want to be published at all. If you can't handle the hard life of trying to get published, and ultimately the hard life of being a first time published author, then why are you even writing at all? Writing is one of the hardest jobs for a reason and if you're not up for the challenge, stop. If, after trying just about every legit publisher out there, you can't get published, and your work is really of quality, then self-pub. Otherwise, don't think about it.

Learn more about this author, Shaun Duke.
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