Don't Give Up The Day Job!

I am becoming less and less a fan of bookshops. Yep, I know that sounds heretical, but from a writer's point of view ( especially a self-published one like me) bookshops are the reason we are bottom of the financial food chain, even though WE are the reason they exist in the first place. It is unfair and I am miffed about it.
Bookshops do not have the writer's best interest at heart. To get books into any bookshop, a publisher has to offer at least a 48% discount. This means that for them to stay in business, publishers in turn offer writers such measly returns on books (10% - if you are lucky, and that's on the discounted figure) that it just isn't worth bothering. The growth of ebooks is as much the greed of bookshops as it is the development of technology ~ they signed up to the scrapping of the Net Book Agreement, allowing them to discount titles and then discovered Amazon/supermarkets beat them to it.
I was recently in a blog discussion about small publishers and royalties, and one of the participants (Dr Teika Bellamy: @MothersMilkBks) helpfully provided the following breakdown of costs:
On a £10 RRP (please note, these are approximate figures)
50% retailer (£5)10% distributor (£1)10% author (£1)20% printer (£2)10% publisher (£1) ← That 10% needs to cover things like ISBN costs, advertising, free books that are sent off to reviewers (and postage and packaging), illustrator’s costs, editing, proofreading, typesetting and all the various running costs of the business (including salaries if employers are paid).  Based upon this, the writer at the bottom of the pile ends up with so little for all their years of hard graft that they might as well go and work in Asda (also selling discounted books).
Large publishers can print books cheaply and in bulk, and take a hit on a couple of titles. Small publishers cannot. And most bookshops still operate their snobby policy that if it's NOT published by one of the big names it is, ergo, of inferior quality. As one who has given up on so many novels by 'famous/hyped authors' because I can't get beyond page 9, I find that, frankly, deeply insulting.
My local Waterstones had a local writer shelf. I was on it. Then it didn't have one. Now it has reinstated it, but they don't take my Victorian Detective books as I am self-published on Amazon and Bertrams & Gardiners (the 2 big suppliers) won't look twice at me.

More evidence of discrimination. Even though the quality of Createspace books rivals many other publishers' stock (and they frequently resort to using POD companies anyway). Same policy with WH Smith. Same with most independent bookshops. Same with their suppliers ~ same suppliers.
I am lucky in that a local gift shop takes my books (at a slight discount) and sells them like hot cakes as I am not in competition with shelves and shelves of other titles. Now I am, let's face it, at the latter end of my career. And most of my sales now come from Ebooks.

But for a writer just starting out, full of expectation and hope, I'd have to say: Be realistic. Love what you do, be proud of your end product, but don't give up the day job. As a fellow writer remarked: 'unless you sell gazillions of copies, writing books is mostly for pleasure, or a little income to subsidise what else you have.'

Is it worth it then? Yes ~ a hundred times yes, as long as your definition of 'worth' is not measured in pounds and pence