Actually publishing has reasonable royality rates. Authors get about 10% on paperbacks, and 12-15% on hardbacks. At least in most catagories. I understand that the genre romances pay less and have much worse terms on right reversions. IIRC SF books the rights revert to the author when the book is out of print for 6 months, the romances it's more like 10 years.
For a breakdown of costs see
http://journal.bookfinder.com/2009/03/breakdown-of-book-costs.html
