To be a writer, you must be thick skinned to survive the endless rejections that are a part of being published. I have sent off 55 requests to literary agents, and received 15 rejections, which isn't so bad since in more than half the cases you don't get a response at all.
To be clear, I'm not griping as this is the norm for the industry. The agents are busy people, getting upwards of 500 queries per month, most they reject without reading. But it has pushed me more toward self-publishing. In the past, the mantra was if the writing is good then you'll be published, if not you have to self-publish. But in the last decade self-publishing has become more robust and even successful authors are choosing to go it alone.
I have had editors look at my debut novel and found it worthy, plus day-to-day readers and reviewers have said the same. So, now I am preparing to go it alone. And the more I look into it, the more excited I am. It is easy to self-publish, but much harder to get it right in a market where over 100,000 new books are published each month. I'm rolling up my sleeves and putting in place the things I will need to make a legitimate go of the effort.