I worked in publishing for several years (though this was back in my college years, so I'm a little out of date lol). Now I write children's books, but I have a lot of social anxiety so I have never considered the self-publishing route. I couldn't possibly try to convince people to buy my books! I can barely talking to people! Haha that's just me, though. Self-publishing works for a lot of people. Congrats on your success ClosetAvalanche! I think that's amazing.
It's so funny, I remember back in my publishing house days, it was SO anathema to talk about self-publishing! It was considered the lowest of the low, and it was always said that if you were trying to get a publishing house to consider your work, you would never tell them you self-publish! But that was years ago and now it's much more accepted, especially since Amazon.com and other sites are set up to help people self-publish in the 'right' way.
The 'hybrid author' (who sometimes goes with a publishing house and sometimes self-publishes) is becoming more and more common to see. In fact I attend a panel about hybrid publishing at the last lit convention I attended, so people are definitely talking about it. It's not the 'black mark' that it used to be!
In answer to your initial question, GazeboMouse, I'm going to say that on average, it's three months you should wait before you pick up your manuscript to read with 'fresh eyes' as they say. But like everyone here, I agree that it's up to you. Everyone writes differently. But out of all the advice I've picked up from professional authors through either their blogs, their facebook pages, or book that they've published about their writing process, three months is the one I see stated most often. It seems to be the most widely agreed time frame that seems to work for the largest majority of writers. Three months allows the intense focus you feel while writing the first draft to fade a little. I mean, you won't forget everything in three months, no, but it won't be so close to the forefront of your mind so that you might be able to give the story a little breathing space and be able to consider some different approaches.
I would say the next best step after you've waited and let the story breathe a little and then done some self-editing is to find a writing group where you feel safe sharing the story with others, and getting their feedback. Usually sharing with family members isn't as helpful because they're just going to say "Oh it's great!" Same thing with close friends. But a writing group will give you advice on parts of your story that you didn't consider. Only after you've done the self-editing process many times, and had someone other than a family member give you some more feedback, only then should you consider the manuscript ready to send to a publisher. They will have in-house editors to help you edit the story further, but you're not going to get in front of the eyes of a publishing house editor unless your manuscript is as good as it can possibly get on your own.
(Another funny story: at our publishing house we would always brace ourselves for December and February because those were the two months we would get a deluge of really not-so-great manuscripts. December would be the month people finished a manuscript in November during NaNoWriMo and immediately sent it in to a bunch of publishers without even reviewing it, and those were horrible. Only slightly less horrible would be the February deluge where, presumably, the writers would finish their novel in Nov and then wait exactly three months and review it once and then send it off. ;P )
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