What's the best way to get a first novel published?

[nuxvomica]

I've written my first novel (thank you, Nanowrimo) and I've been researching publishers and agents. It seems that every path is a pretty long haul and it sounds like most people are in the business to just refuse new writers, especially if, like me, they have no history of short story publishing. The novel is also pretty unique and hard to categorize. It's social science-fiction but has no aliens or space travel. Everything happens on earth about 4,000 years ago. I've gotten the first two chapters out to some friends and the response has been extremely positive. (One friend's 11-year-old daughter stole it from him and loves it. She wants to read more but I'm afraid some of the later chapters may be a bit too intense for that age group.) I'm sure you've never heard of an author's friends being really excited about their first novel before. ;-)
I think my biggest problem is that I really, really love the novel myself (yes, I'm prejudiced) and I'm impatient to get it out there but I want to make sure it has a chance to get a wide audience. I've been thinking of publishing it myself on Createspace but I worry that it will just languish there and no publisher would ever want to touch it after that.