I stumbled across this post very much at random, but have found it to be particularly inspiring and actually I’ve been refreshing it every couple of days for the past week or so just to see what new comments are added to the thread!
Hundreds of independent authors at various stages in their careers – some just trying to get their first title done, some seeing tens of thousands of dollars a month in royalties, some that have happily left their “evil day jobs” behind and others still working and making good progress towards that goal.
http://www.thepassivevoice.com/06/2014/indie-authors-quitting-their-day-jobs/
Good luck ever mining this kind of professional feedback from traditional publishing… 😉