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Authors argue this topic a lot IME, as a way to separate the wanna bes from those who've arrived. Small presses and indies still count as "published", absolutely. But IMO "mainstream" equals:
* books are carried by Ingrams and B&T (distributors)
* available to retailers at the "big 5" discount (usually a 60% discount; most smaller pubs can only afford a 40% discount without losing money)
* fully returnable by retailers to the distributors (covers reported as stripped).
* ordered in advance, and in bulk, but major brick & mortar chains.
Most industry people I know add that if you're not getting a print run of at least 10k, you aren't really mainstream. My first agent told me that there were certain publishers she wasn't going to send my books to, because if they accepted them the print runs would be so low that "no mainstream publisher would ever touch you after that."
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