Honestly, it wasn't some deliberate strategy. Self-publishing is simply the fastest way to get anyone at all to read your book. And there's something thrilling about that: your book, "all grown up," sitting out there in the open on the internet, and anyone can open it right now — not in a year or three.
Because the path through a publishing house is anything but fast. A manuscript can wait its turn for years, even if it's good. And it's not always about the quality of the text. Publishers have a plan for the year — which genres they're pushing right now, what's already "filled" in their catalog, what's trending at this particular moment. Your manuscript might be wonderful, but it just doesn't land at the right moment, in the right genre, in the niche they happen to be looking for right now. And then there's the plain human factor: the editor reading your manuscript is tired, has a hundred others waiting in line, and how carefully they read yours in particular is largely a matter of chance and their personal mood that day.
Self-publishing works completely differently in that sense. You're not waiting on anyone's decision. The book comes out — and that's it, it already exists. You can keep sending the manuscript to publishers in parallel; nothing stops you from doing both at once. But while the fate of your manuscript is being decided somewhere in yet another editorial queue, your book is already available to readers, and you can promote it yourself on social media, gather your first readers, get your first reviews — real, living ones, not a rejection letter after six months of silence.
That doesn't mean self-publishing is easier. It's simply faster, and it's in your hands. The path through a publishing house is a difficult, slow process that depends on much more than you — one you can pursue in parallel, but shouldn't turn into your only bet.