I should have said self first. Because traditionals started as self. Only, they forgot that.
I read that about 130 million books have been published to date. Correct me, somebody. 129,864,880 total books according to Google books as taken from https://www.mentalfloss.com/article/85305/how-many-books-have-ever-been-published.
That is still far short of the total population of the world at 7.9 billion. Even if just 10% of this mammoth number reads a book the number would still be 790 million.
But wait. How many books are published in the world in a year. UNESCO says, I hope they really said this, 2.2 million books annually according to data of 2019. Taken from https://askwonder.com/research/business-books-published-worldwide-year-annual-numbers-past-ten-years-ideal-qcrwjft2o
And how many of these are from the big five as they encourage people to address them with more respect than they deserve and other traditional publishers. About 300,000.
Go the self publishing way. It is heavy duty pressure and expensive. But you don’t have to wait years for a favour which you are doing.
You won’t be counted for the Nobel. But neither is Mathematics, the queen of science. You won’t be counted for any kind of prize or mention anyone had even heard about. But have you heard about the Fields prize, or the Abel prize. And did you know that Bertrand Russell, whose magnum opus is the Principia Mathematica received the Nobel for Literature.
So your books won’t be read and discussed in major academic circles. Not a single person will say here is a remarkable book. Do you really care. If you do, go Traditional with the big T. Meanwhile ask yourself would Moby Dick be published today if it were not for the first sentence. And it would be cut to half its length.
Fact is that no one has time for serious literature anyway.
So I would choose the self publishing route. And I do hope the figures given above are accurate.