[fjtorres]

How to tell if a book is self published?
There is no certain way because there's dozens of ways to get published these days.
The easiest clue is when the publisher listing is the author's name. And those are growing fewer by the day for business and tax reasons.
But a whole lot of Indies publish under personal LLCs and multiple pen names while others front for friends and partners. So many names could be one person and one name could be many people.

Because of this, the term INDIE is getting currency as the more accurate term because hardly anybody publishes all by themselves; even single author operations hire proofers, editors, artists, formatters (or license professional formats), hire narrators for audio editions, and even batch print pbooks from china just like the big boys. Many hire IP lawyers and agents to negotiate foreign rights.

If you look at the Author Earnings report they have a cateory for "single author publisher" for when they aren't sure if it is a tiny tradpub startup or a front for one or more authors.

From a story standpoint it really makes no difference. The main difference is for the authors. and their pocketbooks.