Which would you rather be, indie published, or traditionally published?

I'm not sure it's really that much of a debate any more, except for diehards who insist that self-publishing is only for people whose writing is so bad that they could never get a publishing contract. Like you said, there are tradeoffs either way. I think the trend as far as advantages go is toward indie publishing. I'm very close to finishing the final draft of a novel, and I'm not even interested in looking for an agent or a publisher. For one thing, I'm writing in a niche that probably is never going to be a big seller, so why spend years looking? I like the idea of having complete control of my writing, of owning my copyright, of having the freedom to change the price, edit the content, add content, etc. I'm going to be publishing my novels as ebooks, with the possibility of making some of them available in print also, through CreateSpace. I've been building my platform for almost a year, making two of my novels available on my blog. One is an early version of the book I hope to publish next month. The other is the first draft of my 2010 NaNo novel. I also blog about writing, and will soon be putting up a blog just for my books. Indie publishing has a lot of advantages, but of course it's also a lot of work. At least you don't have to worry about your publisher going out of business because Borders or some other failing book chain hasn't paid them.

my friend is getting her cookbook published traditionally, she doesn't trust anything online. she's using my auntie's soup tourrine as a front page.

Absolutely there are good points and bad points with both routes. With the traditional publishing route, you have a marketing team to help get your name out into the world. All you have to do is write the book; the editors and everyone else fiddle with layout and illustrations (if necessary), cover art, etc. But with the traditional publishing route, with the big publishing houses, you are a little fish in a pond with much bigger fish. You are still largely responsible for marketing yourself because the company puts the majority of their effort and money into their "sure things." The Stephen Kings and Dean Koontzes of the world get to sit back and benefit from the publisher's marketing resources and an aspiring, budding new talent has to work their a$$ off to eventually, one day become one of those people. Plus, no matter how amazing the new novel, the chances of getting an editor to read it are painfully low. The trouble with traditional publishing is you have to have credibility to get noticed and you have to get noticed to build credibility. With indie publishing, the author has complete control. If you aren't artistic, visually, you can hire a graphic designer to do your cover art but ultimately you get the final say in whether or not their design is what you want. You can hire an editor, or do it yourself. You decide if you want to publish it in the traditional way (paper), as an ebook, or both. You...then... have to market it. You have to schedule signings, you have to get people to read it and review it, you have to get stores to stock it.... But... if a person can succeed with an independently published book, they can succeed at anything. And when someone says indie publishing is only for crap writers who no real publisher would ever touch...Anne Rice publishes all of her own work with no big publisher to back her.

if I had a choice, I would go with a professional publisher. Then you don't have to market your book all by yourself. You'll have an agent who helps you with contracts and dealing with the editors and publishers, and you'll have more of a chance of getting your book and libraries and bookstores. You also may get an advance,and you will almost certainly make more money. Having said that, though -- I think if I do write a book I'll go the self-publishing route. Mainly because it is so very difficult to get a traditional publisher these days. When Borders and Barnes & Noble became very successful, they drove all the small privately owned bookstores out of business. Now, Borders and Barnes & Noble maybe buy from the big publishers. Whereas the small stores often more from small presses. What happened was, when the small stores close down, the small presses went out of business. Yet it is those small presses that usually take a chance on new authors. Many publishing companies that are large to even look at new or unsolicited manuscripts. In fact, in 2007, only 4% of books published by traditional presses were by first-time authors. That statistic is pretty disheartening. Therefore, I think it makes more sense to publish your own book and possibly offered for free in e-book format or for a very cheap price. Then you can get a following her second book by be more successful, because people have read your first book and enjoyed it. Fortunately, self-publishing is a lot easier than it used to be. With print on demand and e-books you don't have to put up a lot of money to do it. I think it's a good route for a lot of new authors.

I think most of us would like the money that goes along with the traditional publishing route, but it is really easy to publish online these days. I am just not sure how much money that brings in though.