Having just finished reading your sequel to Me and Her, Me and Him, I, like your husband Steve, have no doubts about your determination to be successful. Hopefully one day I will come close to matching your efforts.

I am not gearing up to self-publish. At the moment I am gearing up to actually finish re-editing something I have written before sending it out to traditional publishers. I am just curious where the publishing industry is heading.

Graham Storrs, who sometimes visits my blog, is one Aussie who has had some success with his ebook Timesplash – he said in a blog a while ago that he was making some decent money from it. He has since been picked up by Harper Collins or a sub of it.

Very good article Graham and well researched.

I think you made a good observation right at the beginning, that the authors had been invited to participate. I would argue that most make very little indeed, particularly in Australia, though it shouldn't matter, but I still feel that somehow, corporations like Google and Amazon skew their promotions towards US authors through things like search algorithms.
I could be wrong but I just don't see Australian authors earning anywhere near that amount.

Are you gearing up for self-publishing?
I have next to no experience with the e-book world, so really, I have no opinion based on experience.

As for word count, well, when I was writing my novels, before my daughter was born and before burnout, I was probably writing about 1,000 a day. But after that first draft I would write nothing as I spent 3/4 of the overall time on a novel in the editing and re-drafting stages.
Especially now as you say, much time is required to promote, even if youre not self-published. I wouldnt take too much stock on word counts and simply work the way you like to work. I hand wrote my first drafts anyway so I never counted. It was more about being satisfied with a day's work.

These days, I write very little. One day, when I'm not so busy being a parent etc I will return to novels.