Three positive reasons:
(1) When you publish a book with Booklocker, your book will NEVER go out of print. That is especially important for a work such as Source, which has a very long time span in mind.
(2) With Booklocker, I control all the rights. Yep, each and every one. If you publish with a regular publisher, you hand over everything to them. It took me over 30 years to write Source, so you can understand why I would be reluctant to give away certain prerogatives.
(3) Booklocker only prints a book when one is ordered. That means less paper -- and that means a better environment.
Three negative reasons:
(1) To publish a work with a regular publishing house, you must have a literary agent. An agent will take 10-15%, which is fair qand reasonable. My problem is simply they are salesmen, and I do not have the time or inclination to convince salesmen of the selling of the sales, selling, selling, sold, ... sales ... You get the idea. I am sure there are good literary representatives out there, somewhere. Sadly, my experience with agents is that they want you to flirt with them. Sorry, for that they will have to go to somebody else.
(2) As I warned in the preface of Source, the book was written for a small audience, about 500 people involved professionally in the fight against terrorism. What regular publisher would want to publish a book intended for such a small audience? Yes, I could rewrite it for a wider audience; however,
(3) I warned in the preface that the general public should NOT read the book. The reason is, it combats numerous deep, widely held beliefs, assumptions, values, superstitions. (Two specific examples: (i) yes, your homeroom teacher was right, the middle class is a source of moderation and compromise. However, the middle class is also the source of extremism and terrorism. It is taboo to say the latter, much less analyze it. (ii) Contrary to what we are told at home and in college, the middle class is not predestined to grow, much less be immortal or eternal. Rather, the middle class will decline cyclically over the very long run for reasons inherent to our capitalist system. That viewpoint, which is based primarily on Federal Government income statistics, cannot be expressed in the mainstream media.)
The only reason I challenged certain prejudices and taboos is hard experience shows that until they are dethroned, professionals cannot understand middle class rebellion, the source of terrorism. And that is truly fundamental, because over the long run, as the middle class decline becomes more severe, rebellion and terrorism will become more -- not less -- frequent.
In short, I did not write the book to challenge, much less upset, the average housewife or Joe Six-Pack (assuming such people exist). The challenges presented in Source were made, when all is said and done, strictly on a need-to-know basis.
As for your second question: No, I did not have the average CIA, FBI or Homeland Security agent in mind as the readership of Source. My targeted audience is even smaller. I will explain why in another post.
In the meantime, Lee, I hope that cleared things up.