My belief is that a good book coming through PODs can be a launching pad for unknown authors with little or no fund to mass-market their first works. Most reputed Publishers go for known publishers. This makes sense. Publishers recoup funds faster than it would have been to nurture debut authors. What makes a book do well is the mass appeal coming from Marketing Strategies by the Publisher. This is the thinking behind my sourcing for reputed PODs.
Yup, most vanity publishing authors claim something equally pretentious.
I’d recommend you take the rose coloured glasses off, put your effort into making your book better, and try to get it published traditionally. The average self-published book sells forty copies, none of them to anyone who the author does not know personally. Unless you have friends in the publishing industry a la Christopher Paolini, there _is_ no "launching pad" - in fact having vanity published tends to put traditional publishers off writers.
Dear Joseph, no writer ever gives a publisher money, which is what you have to do if you self publish.
If your work is good, then find an agent.
I have seen excerpts from self-published books, they were pathetic.