Three cheers for the Author earnings team.

Find them here, Indies and rejoice.
http://authorearnings.com/report/may-2016-report/

This  time they:
...went deeper. Instead of just looking at Amazon’s bestseller lists, we had our spider follow links to also-bought recommendations and also through each authors’ full catalog. This resulted in a million-title dataset, our most comprehensive and definitive look yet at author earnings. We were able to tally up precisely how many indie authors, Big Five authors, small/medium press authors, and Amazon-imprint authors are currently making enough from Amazon.com sales to land in a number of “tax brackets”.

And do read the article and check the figures. It seems that Indie author ebook sales are still climbing, and the big five publishers sales are declining.

Could that be the crazy price they set on their ebooks?

What is most cheering is that:

Fewer than 700 Big Five authors and fewer than 500 small-or-medium publisher authors who debuted in the last 10 years are now earning $25,000 a year or more on Amazon — from all of their hardcover, paperback, audio and ebook editions combined. By contrast, over 1,600 indie authors are currently earning that much or more.
The gap becomes even more pronounced when we look at those authors who first debuted in the last five years, or during the “ebook era.” And when we look at just the most recent debuts from each publishing path, only 250 Big Five authors and 200 recent small or medium publisher authors who debuted in the last three years are earning a midlist-or-better income from their Amazon sales.
By contrast, there are over 1,000 indie authors who debuted in the last 3 years who are doing so.
We see the same dichotomy play out in the $50,000/year “tax bracket”, which tallies up authors earning what would be a living wage in most parts of the US:

It might be hard work, Indies, but we are better off as Indies.