The thing a lot of people don't get is just how low most author's sales are. Sure, the Kings and Pattersons sell tens of millions per title but for every one of those there are thousands that barely break 4 digits in sales per title. And that is in tradpub as well as indie.
A simple order of magnitude calculation shows how low the *average* goes:
Take the randy penguin: they make up half of the BPH US sales or a bit less than $4.5B a year gross. That is adding up hardcover, trade paperback, mass market, ebook, audio. They get there by putting out 15,000 titles a year. A handful sell by the millions... the rest? Well, the gross average works out to $300,000 per title which seems a lot but since it includes the publisher, distributor, and retailer cuts as well as the author's and it comes from all editions--from $9 mass market paperbacks to $25 and up hardcovers and audio books as well as $9.99 ebooks--the net take is a lot lower. (The publisher's net, for example runs around 11%.
http://the-digital-reader.com/2014/0...ustry-numbers/ ) If we use a $15 average price across all the editions that $300k comes from 20,000 average sales per title.
20,000 is only from averaging the big name sales with the midlisters and the newcomers. The low end runs very low.
Bookselling is a Pareto-style business: a few books (and authors) sell a *lot* while the majority sells very little.
The BPHs make a lot of money because they deal in bulk and pay little to the majority of their "suppliers" of which they seem to have an endless supply of aspirants willing to work for what is, effectively, sweatshop wages. (Hence the wailing coming from the Author's Guild et al. Not unjustified even if they are complicit in maintaining that sad state of affairs.) Their business is low margin times high volume. Especially on the print side.
Indies can make decent money because they typically run lean operations and sell at lower price points. Their business is very high margin times low volume.
Lower margin times lower volume? Not good.
Books are a lot like sausages: if you look at how they're made you may not like what you find. It can get pretty ugly.