My fundamental disagreement with you is that from where I sit, you're treating the exceptional as the norm. My argument is that the exceptional is just that, exceptional.
From the original post:
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Even at just 10 copies a day, that's selling 300 books a month. 3,600 books a year. You can't tell me those are only to family and friends. These are real authors selling real books to real customers.
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That "just" is someone in the top 2% of sales on Amazon.
From the same post, 1 copy a day is better than 80% of all eBooks on Amazon, and going back to her source, 10 copies a month is rank 250,000, or better than 75% of all eBooks on Amazon.
Still, that's an achievable number for many indie authors, 10 copies a month, and if you have a number of titles out, it adds up, and sales can often rise. The problem is that at $2.99 a copy and 70% royalty rates, you need to sell 2380 copies to earn $5000 from that one title ($5000 being a small advance). That takes almost 20 years at that rate of sales.
I'm not arguing against self or indie publishing; I'm doing it myself. My point is that the glowing numbers many people post aren't what the average writer can or should expect. Most writers will not do that well. Some will, some will do fantastically well, but most won't and they have to be ready for that.
It's great that we can self-publish, but passing off exceptional successes as the average does nothing but hurt the industry going forward.