Sethrow, I would say yes. I know someone who self-published several short books and has sold zero copies (or close to it) because he has no visibility in the areas he wrote about. There's no easy way for people to find out that his books even exist, unless they do exactly the right Amazon search. And even if they find his books, they have no reason to trust what he's written because they've never heard of him. So anything you can do to build some kind of following before throwing your first book into the world will help!