Comment by _tom_
The midlist has moved into self publishing. Many more books are published on amazon than by trad publishers. Many of them don't sell, but the numbers (guess) aren't probably that different from fad publishing in terms of success.
Many authors that succeed at self publishing move to traditional publishers. (Hugh Howe, E L James) Others (Tamara Taylor) like to control and much higher royalties and stay self published.
Social media is full of trad-pubbed authors (some with NYT best-sellers) complaining they have to keep their day jobs.
Self-pubbed author groups have far more authors earning far more money. There's a good number of six figure authors and not a few seven figure authors. They're almost all writing to market - tight-niche, mid-quality writing that gives readers a predictable genre experience they want to repeat.
Successful self-pub is equivalent to a bootstrapped micro start-up, and many of the same ideas apply. It's not trivially easy, especially the marketing. But it's certainly easier than trying to pitch from a cold start to the agent/publisher circus.