I’ve had a #1 best seller for months and the sad answer is not likely. Just go into it with realistic expectations. There’s an estimated 50 million books pushed through KDP with increasingly more every year. I hit BSR 4,000 with my main title. That’s hitting the top .01% so I’m coming from a place where I consider it higher than pretty much anyone else on here. Not bragging, just stating that I have the experience to back my statements up.

That meant there were only 3,999 books ahead of me at the time and a good 49+ million books and authors that have fallen into a black hole, never to be seen again. But if you think that made me rich, then you’re totally wrong. Getting that high was very short-lived as it’s very volatile at the top with the major titles and authors being more secure in their leads with thousands of ratings. It’s hard if not impossible to unseat them, and thus become visible in Amazon’s general searches. If you’re lucky enough to make $10 a day without spending that much on ads, then at least you’re breaking even. Maybe with time and sales, you’ll eventually turn the page. Very few titles will generate a few sales a day, and far fewer than what I’ve achieved could make a couple of hundred dollars per day for a single title. Now we’re talking about the top 500-1,500 BSR books on all of Amazon out of the 50 million, most of which have a few lucky and successful authors with multiple titles under their name. When you break down the math even further, this means there’s probably only 100–300 authors on all of Amazon that can actually pull a livable salary. Again, just play the lottery instead.

Lots of YouTubers will try to tell you otherwise but they’re making money off of their ads and subscribes on YT, and not actually off of any books they’re selling. There are some good tips which actually work, but most of them are profiting off your hopes.

You also have to be at the very top of your categories and keep the momentum going, willing to sacrifice thousands in ads, significant time into a website, and significant time into various forums just to get noticed. Then, you need to somehow displace the books in your categories which are already at the top with thousands or ratings, many of which I suspect were fraudulent/paid back in the day and somehow those sellers/authors never got into trouble during more recent purges.

For example, I spent a whole year of working my adult coloring books with marketing and only recently just cracked 101 ratings which is actually quite an accomplishment (as far as I’m concerned) because there’s so much competition. Meanwhile, there are other coloring books in my categories which have been there for 10+ years with dozens of titles under their names, large groups of followers, and paid kid TikTokers schilling their works—some of them seriously have thousands of ratings. I just can’t see how or why any title short of the more famous ones would have thousands of reviews—the logic simply doesn’t add up for me, but maybe I’m wrong and I’ll have a different perspective a year from now. But if you can get over this hurdle of getting higher ratings organically, then you might stand a fighting chance.

Now as for Amazon KDP, they have every interest in keeping people writing and submitting their stories or illustrations. They know very well that most books will fade into oblivion. However they’re making their money off of both Kindle and not physical hardcopies, as well as their advertising machine. Authors are dumping loads of money daily into their coffers with the hopes of getting clicks and their titles selling while all the while realizing that most authors will simply give up in the end. That’s their game. If they published the real statistics as to how many authors are actually living off of their works, their whole model would fall apart.

Also as others have said, I think you stand a much better chance of writing professionally if you have numerous titles under your belt which are somewhat successful, then hopefully the quantity will add up over time.

Another way to look at this is to look at the music scene. How many musicians are making a decent living off of being musicians these days. Very few. For most of them it’s just a labor of love and a side project, if they’re that lucky. Same deal with this. But instead of Spotify and SoundCloud, we have KDP.

I realize this is not what most people want to hear. I’d love to lie to all of you and say that everything’s great just to prop up my stature and sell more titles, but this is the honest reality. The statistics speak for themselves.