[gmw]

The "less risk" with a traditional publisher is only after the point at which you've been accepted. The expectations of new authors going through tradpubs and their agents these days is such that you need to put almost as much work into submissions as you do to actually publish (editing etc.), if you want your "draft" to be taken seriously (about the only thing you can avoid is the cover). And even then it's a roulette wheel as to whether you find someone that will pay attention to your work even to the end of the first page. So the risk is still there, it just happens outside the view of the normal comparison done by proponents of traditional publishing.

The cynical/pessimistic view of the choice between traditional publishing and self-publishing is: do you want to be lost in the slush piles of traditional publishing, or lost in the mire of the self-published deluge?