Yes, you can make money self-publishing books. Although it may not be a get-rich-quick scheme for most authors, it can be source of a steady stream of income — if you work really hard.
Making money in self-publishing means anywhere from less than a buck to millions of dollars. In fact, over the years, self-publishing has been one of the steadiest online income sources for people — aspiring and pro alike.
Many authors rely on Amazon’s platform called Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP) to earn them some decent, quick cash. Because of the brand’s popularity, these authors find it easier to penetrate the market and introduce their work to the public. However, nothing is guaranteed 100 percent.
In June 2018, investing expert Joseph Hogue, CFA claimed he had increased his monthly income from zero to nearly $2K in less than three years just from selling books in Amazon and was making $1K a month within a year. Sounds too good to be true? Maybe it is!
How much do authors really make?
Self-publishing expert and former trade newspaper editor Heidi Thorne ran a survey in 2018 to find out how much self-published authors were really making. From the 127 participants of the survey who each had at least one book published, 73.46% of them made less than $1K per year in book income. It was a trend that continued from 2016 when she surveyed a smaller number of authors, from which she got almost dead on the same result: 73.02%.
“That’s nearly three-quarters of the people that responded,” Thorne said. She added that if it is a trend that is continuing overtime, then it is not a good trend.
From the 73.46% respondents, 33.67% of them made anywhere between $1 and $99 per year. Meanwhile, about 18% made anywhere between $100 and $499 per year.
“It’s crazy. If you think about it, people are putting their hearts and souls into their writing, and what are they achieving in terms of income? It’s not encouraging,” she said.
In contrast, Thorne noted some outlier authors — respondents in the survey who were making around $50K to $80K per year. About 5% responded they were making $20K or more each year in book income.
“The outliers’ situation are completely unique. It depends on their market, on how well they built their author platform over the years. Just know that these really top-tier authors have some special thing going on. They have great skills — usually from marketing. They have a really high profit niche. There’s a lot of factors that go into that. I don’t think it’s duplicatable, but kudos to them for leveraging all their talents and markets.” she stated in a November 2018 podcast (The Heidi Thorne Show, Episode 60).
What about royalties?
Earning royalties from book sales is the most obvious way to make money from self-publishing in platforms like KDP. Although authors can earn royalties up to 70% for ebooks, it’s important to note that ebook prices in an online retail shop range between $0.99 and $25. This means an author makes only a few cents or dollars in royalties per book sold. Obviously, you’d have to sell a lot of books on a regular basis to make a living out of it.
In short, book sales is so irregular that you earn more than what you need for a household income during the good months, but other months may leave you struggling.
If you’re a serious writer and doing it for writing’s sake, then you should not worry about how much you might earn from it. Your number one goal should be to write because you have to, because you have something to say.
On the other hand, if you’re in it for the money, you have to work hard and wait harder for your turn. Some self-published authors who have been hugely successful achieved it through aggressive promotion; quality and quantity writing (create a good book and create lots of it); building an audience by going social; and pricing book for the right market.