Including me! It is probably the best and most complete work on the subject that I’ve seen, and I read a lot of stuff in the genre.
Could I get a link or PM to where I could buy your book? It sounds fascinating and I’m an aspiring author who is probably going to end up going the self-publishing route. 
I know the basics of how it works from listening to James Randi, but even still I would like to know how they do some of the more specific/complex cold reading techniques…
Imagine how many books she would have had to have sold through a conventional publisher to make that kind of money. Amazon pays 75% to the writer … most conventional authors see a few pennies on the dollar. Way less than a dime.
Assuming he doesn’t mind me being his pimp
http://www.thecoldreadingbook.com/
It is a very interesting read 
Apologies, but this is seriously misleading.
First of all, you are perpetuating the analogy of vanity publishing and self-publishing that I sought to correct in my earlier post.
Secondly, I don’t know what you mean by ‘legitimate’. I publish my own work and
occasionally publish other people’s work for them. In what sense am I not a legitimate publisher? I have ISBN numbers on my books. I can sell via Amazon if I want. I can sell via book stores if I want. I sell books and pay tax on my earnings like any other company. Whence am I not ‘legitimiate’?
Thirdly, getting a deal with a large publishing company is a disadvantage, not an advantage. You mention that they will have a sales force. Let me provide some information. Let’s suppose you write a book and get a deal with what you regard as a ‘legitimate’ publisher.
They will hire someone to do a bit of PR and selling for you. They choose this person (usually a friend of someone at the publishing company who works in PR and media). This person will be expensive, whether or not they achieve anything. She (they are usually female) gets paid before you do i.e. the money she gets paid comes out of your earnings from the book.
What will she do? She will call some buyers and retailers and press people and get them to treat her to lunch or dinner. She will have a great time enjoying these lunches and dinners and drinking wine and chatting, and at some point she will mention your title and half a dozen others she is supposed to be promoting. She will, at best, have given your book a quick glimpse and read a couple of chapters.
This wining and dining will, if you’re lucky, result in some sales success, but who knows? The publishing company will only pay for this effort to be sustained for about 2 weeks. After that, the sales/PR lady moves on to other projects.
The sales/PR lady might also make a few calls and try to get you some PR interviews on local radio and so on. These may well be a total waste of your time, e.g. a pointless 3 minute slot on an abscure radio station where the host has completely misunderstood what you and your book are about and is only filling in time between some music and the traffic news. You make your own way there and back at your own expense, and if it’s a totally pointless experience (as it usually is) that’s just tough.
After this two weeks of ‘effort’, the publishing company will make no more active effort to sell your book (unless they do a second edition). They will consider that they have ‘done’ their sales effort on your behalf and they won’t want to throw any more money at it. What’s more, they won’t even be interested in trying to do anything else to boost sales. They will have ‘moved on’ mentally.
On the other hand, because I publish my own stuff, I just about never stop doing things to try and boost sales. It’s a continuous, ongoing effort. I never spend any actual money on sales and PR, because I know how to market my work very effectively without spending a cent, but I do sustain the effort. What’s more, it’s fun. I like doing talks and personal appearances and I make sure I do ones that will be enjoyable and productive.
The internet is the greatest sales medium in history. It’s worth 100,000 old-style professional sales people. And I know how to use it more effectively than any ‘legitimate’ publishing company. This is why my revenue and profit per unit sold is better than theirs, by a factor of about 20.
To avoid any confusion, I’ll point out RealityChuck is a published author.
Michael J. Sullivan published his first few books and they were so successful that he eventually got a publishing contract.
Terry Fallis did quite well. He couldn’t get a publisher interested, so he read chapters from his book and released them as podcasts. He won the Stephen Leacock Award and Canada Reads. I believe he has a traditional publishing deal now.
I read The Best Laid Plans, it was excellent.
Good for him. So am I. What does this have to do with his curious use of the adjective ‘legitimate’? And what kind of supposed ‘confusion’ are you avoiding by stating this?
Also, are you aware that ‘to publish’ simply means ‘to make public’? If you type out what you had for breakfast on a bit of paper and stick it where the public can see it, you’re a published author.
Some people feel that if you are not published by a publishing house, you are not a “published author” just a writer who printed something. A foolish notion, and getting more outdated by the nanosecond. A lot of people need that validation, apparently.