When is an author an author?

This morning's paper listed local authors published in the Arts Update section. One listed was Stuart Sexton of New Haven. Curiosity carried me to amazon and hence his books. They were, as I suspected, self-published via Lulu. While I'm not going to get into the quality of the writing (bad science fiction), I am going to raise the question: when is an author an author and when should such authorship be announced? Does self-publishing count? The ease of self-publishing has opened the floodgates to all manner of words on pages. I suppose I'm upset at the way the newspaper handled it. If my book gets published would I be lumped in with the self-publishers of the area? I may be grousing about nothing since the book isn't finished. Comments appreciated.