Self Publishing - Author's monopoly or loss

Like any other new technology  with the advent of e-books, there came a fear of traditional publishing dying a natural death. And slowly it is indeed. With options like e-publishing and self-publishing, traditional publishing is being pushed into the back ground. But what we are concerned about here is, is self-publishing in favor of authors or simply another blow to their profits ?

In article The future of publishing: as frightening as any Stephen King story? by Naomi Alderman, she discusses how best selling author Stephen King presented an example being a self-publishing author. Even though his experiment failed, he set an option for all big authors(who are few, but control majority of publishing business). She goes on to say that if major authors like JK Rowling, Patricia Cornwell, Dan Brown, etc start publishing their books online, without any publishers or agents, they would make more profits and eventually drive publishing houses out of business, both online and offline.

Normally they receive only £1 for each book sold. But if they self-publish and employ a PR, editor and designer and sell books for £2-3, they would still make more profits.«But this would mean publishing houses would have to shrink and small authors, who are not international names, would start to disappear or look for second income sources. 

But to contradict the above fact, Melissa Foster in her article Are Self-Publishing Authors Killing the Publishing Industry? in Huff Post details how self-publishing authors are actually making lot less. She talks about indie-post poll that says "who have 2 or less 99-cent eBooks on the market that revealed that 75% of authors are selling less than 100 eBooks per month at that rate, with 46% selling less than 10 eBooks per month." Even though Stephanie Bond made great success as self-publishing author with her three books, the point to be noted is she was once a traditionally published author and had good standing in the market. What Foster is emphasizing here is that self-publishing is not such a good idea after all, especially for new writers and that in turn is major blow to traditional publishing houses. These eBooks are priced at 99 cent right now, with major price war going on, but where will they be after this ?? There is no where to look for after free !! 

References: 
Naomi Alderman (February 19, 2009). The future of publishing: as frightening as any Stephen King story? the guardian. Retrieved from http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2009/feb/17/ebooks-stephenking

Melissa Foster (October 24. 2012) Are Self-Publishing Authors Killing the Publishing Industry? The Huffington Post. Retrieved from http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/10/24/self-publishing-authors-killing-publishing-ebook_n_2008374.html