This is a similar problem to that in the music industry. An artist or musician doesnt have the resources or capital to publish their own work, so they must rely on a publishing company that has already made the capital investment and has the infrastructure in place to do so. All too often this leads to profitable contracts for the publisher (because they essentially have a monopoly over the artist) and a raw deal for the artist themselves, if they can find a publisher at all.
Here's a piece of useless trivia for you. Back in 1973, a young unknown musician (quite talented) was working in a music recording studio doing some of his own work. His name was Mike Oldfield. The owner of the studio, liking his work, allowed him to use the studio in free time to put together a recording over 12 months. It was, at the time, a concept album, quite different to anything done before. Mike Oldfield recorded the entire album on his own, playing every musical instrument himself, and the music score was completely original. He then took his album to every music publishing company and was knocked back at every door. The owner of the recording studio became so annoyed at this, that he decided to put up the capital to create his own publishing company, just so that Mike Oldfield could get his album out.
That album was called Tubular Bells and went on to become one of the greatest classics of the 70s and is still making money today. The owner of the studio was a young Richard Bramford (speling??) and the label to which he created was called Virgin Records.
The rest is history.....
(For those of you not familiar with Virgin Records, it is now one of the largest multi-national recording companies in the industry and has now expanded to into other areas, including an airline company, Virgin Blue.)
Self-publishing is definately the way to go, IMHO.