If you're only writing for yourself and a small circle of friends or family, I suppose it's fine. However, in my experience, most published authors do look down somewhat on self-published authors, even if they won't admit it publicly. I've come under a bit of criticism because over the years, a few of our author guests have been self-published. We're more careful now about checking credentials, though we're grandfathering in the people who have been guests in the past.
If you have confidence that your writing is good, though, why not submit it to publishers? Not all of them require authors to submit via an agent, though that makes your odds somewhat better. Also, it's probably worth looking at small presses as well - your odds with them may be higher than if you submit your work only to major publishers.
I haven't looked at a copy in years, but there's a magazine called Writer's Digest which publishes (or used to, at least) annual books listing all the various markets, for fiction and non-fiction in both short and long forms. For a lot of them, the listings include information about how to submit, whether they accept non-solicited manuscripts, etc. I would suggest picking up a copy, and their monthly magazine is probably a good buy if you're serious about making a career out of writing.
