Seems about right.

The retail amount of sales of my own books I've made in my store would probably make most authors pretty happy.  In the end, I'm guessing I'll make much more money from that actual profit margin on a tradepaperback, than I will in any other format.

Only because I already own a business.  I'm making Keystone on every book.  I'm making five to six times what I will make on royalties and advances with each book I sell.  If I worked every day, it would be even more.  There are lots of tourists downtown, so lots of new people to show my books to.

But really, I'm not going to be looking at the numbers for another couple of years at least.  For one thing, it takes forever to get an accurate gauge of how things are doing.  For another, I feel like I'm in the start-up phase of a small business.

One thing that running a small business for 30 years taught me, is that you can't always monitor success or failure by the numbers.

You get a sense in your gut as to whether you are making progress, or falling behind.  Sometimes the numbers will lie.  Such as having increased sales, but knowing intuitively that the store is on shaky ground, and vice verse -- the store has falling sales, but you somehow know you are on the right path.

That's how I feel about writing right now.  I'm on the right path.

Not that I'm unhappy with the numbers I've seen -- actually, I haven't seen 2/3rds of the possible numbers, because of the delay in reporting -- but what I've seen seem all right to me.

I went into this with a realistic appraisal of the possibilities, I think. 

Another thing I learned by building a small business is how long it takes to get anything done, and how much upfront effort is required. 

So this writing thing doesn't surprise me much -- it seems about right.