I'm reading through Lindsay Buroker's blog--she's got a lot of good ideas about marketing, which you know is an area I need help in--and in one post she makes a very good point about self-publishing as a form of entrepreneurship. She's Q&Aing herself in this post:
Aren’t you devaluing yourself and your work by pricing a novel at $0.99? At $0.35 earnings per sale you’ll never even make minimum wage….
I always scratch my head when people bring hourly wages into this. We’re entrepreneurs, guys, not hourly or salaried workers, and we’re creating intellectual property that can pay us in perpetuity — we’re not trading an hour’s work for an hour’s pay.