If you read the article closely, the data doesn't necessarily paint self-published authors as being quite as delusional as the intro to that article implies.
Only 38% of the writers said they were as good as authors such as JK Rowling, Lee Child, John Grisham and EL James--but what does that number even mean?
If you ask me whether I'm as good a writer as J. K. Rowling, I'll say no, but if you ask me whether I'm as good a writer as E. L. James, I'll say yes. In fact, I'll say I think I'm better.
So is it 38% who thought they were as good as all those writers--or 38% who thought they were as good as one or more of those writers? Because how that question was phrased, and how the data was analysed, makes a huge difference.
The rest of the statistics don't seem too outlandish to me, either. The authors were disappointed in their sales. They think more publicity could have helped. They think the public's lack of willingness to try self-published books probably hurt their sales. There's nothing in those opinions I find surprising or delusional.
78% of them thinking they could have hit Amazon's bestseller lists with "the right professional support" is probably a big wad of wishful thinking, but it's not an unusual belief, either. Trade published authors occasionally grouse about their publisher not giving them the support they need to hit the bestseller lists (whether that's true or not.)
Given that article is written by a PR firm who apparently reps self-published authors (see the lines at the bottom of the article), I view their results with a great deal of skepticism. I think they're fishing for clients and massaging the data in order to skew it into a narrative that serves their purposes.
Lies, damned lies, and statistics, n'est pas?
On one hand, I agree with a lot of what you're saying. On the other, I think there is a tendency among certain people to assume that any fault is not their own. And the fact is, there are certainly people who go into self-publishing because their work was rejected by agents and publishers and rather than recognizing that the reason was that their writing ability wasn't yet at a professional level, they decided it was because publishers won't consider an unknown author, and they're only looking for bestsellers, and so on.
I think in some ways, that skews the self-publishing crowd a bit. There are a lot of people who externalize lack of success, and that makes sense because internalizing it means recognizing that the fault lies in yourself, and that
sucks. It's hard. I imagine a lot of the people that believed their lack of success with publishers was completely external also believe that their lack of success with readers is external. "Clearly the reader is the problem, not me."
Bear in mind, I'm not saying that this is true of all or even most self-publishers. I'm just saying that you'll probably have many self-publishers who fit this description because the
reason they self-published was externalization of problems.
Where this becomes and issue, and granted it's a personal issue, not a generalized one, is that if you always externalize problems, it means you can't improve. The author who can't say, "Maybe there is a problem with my writing" can't learn to write better. Learning a skill requires recognizing your faults and working to improve them. If you're able to do that, you will likely one day be successful. If you can't, you never will.
Honestly, though, I imagine that as more people try at self-publishing and don't become bestsellers, the number of people doing it will start to go do. That's just my speculation, but I imagine it's true. I think you'll start seeing less evangelizing and more honest explanations of what success requires, and more people working hard to do it well.
