Correct me if I'm wrong (I may well be) but you've self-published only non-fiction thus far, correct? Which is a whole 'nother ballgame from fiction. Any number of non-fiction authors have done very well self-publishing; I don't think anyone will dispute that. Or the reasons why that is. But those reasons don't necessarily pertain to the fiction market.
Non-fiction writers still have to provide a quality product, that is well-written, properly-edited, correctly formatted, wit h a professional-looking cover. And then they have to market it.
Personally, I have nothing against self-publishing for those authors who wish to get into it. My only concern, as a fellow writer, is that they go into it with eyes open.
I've seen a number of people make that same point, that the purpose of this subforum is all about helping writers make educated choices about whether or not to self-publish. If so, the stories of people who have self-published and their variety of experiences (good, bad, or ugly) and what they learned from them, can add great value to the forum.
Especially those who have been successful, because you can learn what they did right and use those same techniques. That's the same in any industry. Ditto with the ones who have failed totally-learn what they did wrong and avoid the pitfalls.
The problem is that there is very little of that information here, but a whole lot of bickering over what is provided. As a newcomer to this place, I am glad that I had already made my informed decision about self-publishing long before I joined, because all I've learned about self-pubbing from the forum is:
1. Threads on the topic turn ugly very quickly
2. People who are successful at it are considered "outliers" and exceptions and their experiences don't count.
3. Self-published work is a slushpile of poorly-written crap that your book will be lost in forever
4. If your work is "good enough" for publication, you should spend the next few years trying to get it commercially published
5. Thou shalt not call thyself "indie", even though the media has been using that term to refer to self-published writers for several years
6. People who are commercially published have more opinions on the subject than the actual self-publishers do
7. Only friends and family will buy a self-published book, because they are not good enough to have been commercially published
8. Non-fiction books fail when they are self-published
9. Non-fiction books are successful when they are self-published
10. Only the "gatekeepers" of commercial publishing are the arbiters of what is good and what is not
11. Writers will argue endlessly over terms like "legacy", "indie", and "traditional".
12. Writers will argue endlessly over what consists a self-publishing midlist.
Had I not already made my decision, which is informed and what is best for me and my book, I think that the peer pressure might have changed my mind and I'd have started sending out queries because I'd have become more concerned about what other writers will think about my work than anything else.
Which would have been disastrous. No commercial publisher is going to make sufficient profits from a book with a hyperlocal market to justify the investment required. Most importantly, the topic is hot and newsworthy now. It probably won't be in a year. Two years from now it will be stale, old news.
Unfortunately, there are self-publishers who draw rather questionable conclusions from minimal facts, or state opinions as if they were facts, and generally give the impression that writers are foolish for not going the SP route.
That's basic human nature. From what I've seen both sides of the coin believe the other is foolish for not going their way. And you find that in many types of human endeavors. People tend to believe that the way they do things is the right way and any other way is the wrong way.
I'm not interested in reading arguments on the subject between the people who I've learned most of the items on my list from. None of it is relevant, and none of it does anything except churn up bandwidth, generate negative energy and get threads locked.
Instead of arguing over Amanda Hocking's status as an "outlier", we should be picking over exactly what she did to achieve that status, analyzing her results and borrowing anything that will work for others. Learn from success-don't discount it as magic. Disasters also have much to teach us.
I am interested in hearing experiences, ideas, and suggestions from people who have been through the self-publishing process, what worked, what didn't, problems and pitfalls, etc. That information is helpful to me in making the continual choices involved in self-publishing.
Advice, no matter how well-intentioned, from people who have no experience with self-publishing is not helpful nor valuable to me. I wouldn't seek advice on pregnancy and childbirth from someone whose children were all adopted.
Focus