http://www.michaelastackpole.com/?p=1088

So, we have some numbers that seem to agree, and Jonathon at least backs up the income numbers, between $15k and $20k. We have Lulu paying $6 per eBook. How much do authours make per physical book? My understanding is something like 15% cover price. For a $25 hardcover, that is $3.75. For the $8 paperback, it is $1.20. And that is only after a certain number have been sold, perhaps several thousand or more. Even worse is if they get paid by publisher’s wholesale instead of cover price, as that cuts the royalty in half or more.

And we have seen that Lulu will edit for about $200 and copyedit based on the length of the work. I was generous and called it $300 more, for a total of $500. While their editorial staff is likely subsidized by the other business centers, freelance copyeditors charge anywhere between $15 and $40 an hour, or a good deal more in the academic world. Of course, this cost is part of what a publisher provides, but you can be certain it is part of the calculation for the royalties to the authour. If a copy editor spends a full week on a novel, that would be $1600 at the top rate. Half of the royalty by Lulu would have that paid off after 530 eBooks sold. Find a less expensive copyeditor, and you can shave $1000 off the cost, meaning 200 eBooks to pay them off.

In any case, you can assert anything you want, but unfounded assertions are the very definition of fantasy.

As you say, some writing is worth more than other writing. Are you sure you are worth $15 more than the best of the ‘free’?

Maybe – but these days I find myself reading a lot of free.

PS: Including a lot of public domain works that were prev. ‘published’. Free isn’t just dredging the bottom, it’s also reviving the past.

I stand by the statement of zero-success in self-publishing. A simple google will bear it out–once you wade through all the self-promoting self-publisher services and get to real numbers for real books.
Ok, here is a short list from Wikipedia:

Self-published works that find large audiences are extremely rare, and are usually the result of self-promotion. However, many works now considered classic were originally self-published, including the original writings of William Blake, Virginia Woolf, Walt Whitman, William Morris, and James Joyce.

* Spartacus by Howard Fast (during the McCarthy era when he was rejected by previous large scale publishers)
* The Celestine Prophecy by James Redfield
* A Choice, Not An Echo by Phyllis Schlafly [8]
* The Joy of Cooking by Irma Rombauer
* What Color is Your Parachute? by Richard Nelson Bolles
* Poems by Oscar Wilde
* In Search of Excellence by Tom Peters
* Chicken Soup for the Soul by Jack Canfield and Mark Victor Hansen
* The Christmas Box by Richard Paul Evans
* Invisible Life by E. Lynn Harris
* The Visual Display of Quantitative Information by Edward Tufte
* Contest by Matthew Reilly
* Eragon by Christopher Paolini [9] (The book was later published by Knopf)

Other well-known self-publishers include: Stephen Crane, E. E. Cummings, Deepak Chopra, Benjamin Franklin, Zane Grey, Rudyard Kipling, D. H. Lawrence, Thomas Paine, Edgar Allan Poe, Ezra Pound, Carl Sandburg, George Bernard Shaw, Upton Sinclair, Gertrude Stein, Henry David Thoreau, Walt Whitman and Mark Twain.

I would hardly call that ‘zero-success’.

I think the part I highlighted in the first sentence is the sticking point. If seeking a large audience is the goal, it is also not being served by publishers now. Barnes and Nobles has shelves full of books by current publishers that don’t find a wide audience. Your assertion as to the low volume of sales currently with the backing of a publisher demonstrates that.

As I said, the pieces of the self-publishing business are already there and have been for years. …Major publishers are completely skippable already and if the contention that self-publishing will replace them were true, they would have made a major impact long before now.
You must be aware that technology does not immediately alter the landscape the instant it is introduced, right? The internet was ‘invented’ in 1961, the first steps towards that weren’t taken until 1966, the protocol for data transmission wasn’t created until 1972, the algorithms for networking weren’t around until the 80s, and the World Wide Web was ‘created’ in 1989. Almost thirty years from conception to execution, and you think eight years of Lulu should have transformed a media that has existed for six hundred years is enough time?

Your contention that the copyeditor market–or any production job–will expand to such an extent that their fees will drop in any major way is not reality. It demonstrates a lack of respect and value being attributed to the good, quality work that goes into producing a good book.
It demonstrates no such thing. It certainly doesn’t demonstrate any lack of respect on my part. I know people that do copy-editing, I have no illusions about the work. It is basic economics that greater competition leads to more stable pricing. If five people can do a certain task, they can charge just about whatever they want. When that number grows to five hundred, they have to offer more competitive pricing, and the workload is distributed more evenly, meaning more input from suppliers (authours) and those suppliers have a more reasonable expectation of fast, efficient and overall higher quality work.

I’m very aware of the difference between vanity publishing and self-publishing, but when it comes to actual sales in either case, the numbers tell the story.
It appeared you weren’t, as self-publishers are not encouraged to purchase half of a print run, as vanity publishers are. You seemed to assert they were.

And I also should point out you have twice made reference to not rolling in money. You are confusing the Stephen Kings and JK Rowlings of the world with the vast majority–and I mean vast–of authors who, right now, make an average of $20K.
Which is slightly higher than the amount I based my previous calculation on, $15k. Hence, I am not confusing anything.

So, two novels a year for $30k, and some ancillary work, like short stories or collections of short stories for another $10k. In the physical book market, it is entirely possible that half of that could be eaten up by the unit cost of a book. In the eBook world, however, Lulu charges significantly less:
$ 1.49 Base Fee
+ 2.00 Royalty
+ 0.50 Lulu commission (25% of your Creator Revenue)
======
$ 3.99 Price

So, $1.50 per unit. $10 eBook has a commission of $2.50, plus the base cost is $4 per unit, profit of $6 per unit. Lulu offers editing for $200 and copy editing based on the length of the book, so another $300 (estimate) on a novel. Just over 80 books sold, and that is paid off. Every sale thereafter is $6 in the authour’s pocket. Sales will naturally fall off over time, but unless the authour pulls the book on their own recognizance, it will always be available for sale. No dropping the title by a publisher because the sales numbers don’t justify keeping it in print.

1200 copies is $18k, right about what you claim they are making now. 100 copies a month. Where is the benefit, then, in staying with a publisher?

And that is using Lulu. The costs for self-hosting an eCommerce site would drop even the $1.50 by quite a bit. However, an authour would then need to procure the services of a copyeditor on their own, among other things.