I Published 11 Books on Amazon & Made 1000 Sales (And Why I Failed!)

For a few months, I lived inside Kindle Direct Publishing.

I wrote. I edited. I formatted. I designed covers. I published. Then I did it again. And again.

In total, I published 11 books in about three to four months. Here’s the proof – I made a total of 1056 sales which netted me….

Drum roll…… $13.46 in total! Over a decade!😭😭

I didn’t make zero money. I also didn’t make anything close to what the effort deserved. I mean $13 over a decade for publishing 11 books – that’s a comedy!

This is not a post about KDP being a scam. It isn’t. People do make real money with it. Some make a lot. This is just the honest story of what happened when I tried to do it seriously, why it looked so promising at the start, and why I eventually walked away.

At that time in my life, I wasn’t just looking for a side hustle. I was looking for a way to build something creative—something that didn’t tie me to a corporate job forever.

In my head, the story was simple. People like Stephen King, J.K. Rowling, and other authors wrote books, published them, and then lived off their work. Once a book was out in the world, it stayed there forever. It could keep earning month after month, year after year. That sounded like the perfect version of “passive income.”

The idea was almost naive, but very tempting: keep publishing, build a catalog, and eventually you’re sorted.

That’s the mindset I walked into self-publishing with.

When Self-Publishing Felt Like a Gold Rush

Around 2016, I was deep into researching online businesses and side hustles.

I read everything: big “50 ways to make money online” posts, detailed guides, success stories, forum threads. Two ideas kept showing up everywhere: blogging and self-publishing.

Back then, both felt like a gold rush.

Competition was lower. Kindle was still growing fast. There were a lot of stories about people publishing simple books and making steady money. The promise was very attractive: write once, publish, and earn for years.

Self-publishing fit perfectly into the picture I had in my head. You create something once, put it out into the world, and if it’s good, it keeps working for you while you move on to the next thing. Build enough books, and eventually the income becomes predictable. At least, that was the theory.

It also appealed to me for a more personal reason.

I’ve always liked writing. Even as a kid, I used to write stories. I like thinking through ideas and putting them into words. Compared to video or audio, writing just feels natural to me. So KDP felt like a good fit—much more than something like YouTube.

I didn’t think of it as “get rich quick.” I thought of it as: build small assets that can slowly add up.

So I decided to try it properly.

Why I Started With Children’s Books

I didn’t jump into adult fiction.

I’m not a big fiction reader myself, and writing a 300–400 page novel didn’t appeal to me at all. Non-fiction felt more natural. But when I was researching KDP, one niche kept coming up again and again: children’s books.

At that time, it looked like a smart entry point.

Children’s books were shorter—often 30–40 pages. The format was simpler. Parents always want their kids to read. And Kindle devices and apps were becoming more common. Compared to writing a full novel, this felt like a much more realistic way to start building that “publish and earn over time” idea I had in my head.

There was also a personal angle to it. Even as a kid, I used to write stories. So the idea of writing simple stories for children didn’t feel forced. It felt natural. It felt like something I could actually enjoy doing.

So that’s where I began.

I published around seven children’s books first. They were stories about animals, adventures, and simple moral lessons. And I didn’t just throw them together. I genuinely tried to make them useful.

Each book had:

• A proper story
• Images
• Activities or questions at the end
• Little exercises to keep kids engaged

This was the complete opposite of my YouTube experiment. There were no shortcuts here. I spent time writing, editing, proofreading, formatting, and designing covers. I even published under a pen name, because I’ve never been comfortable putting my real name or face out there.

And to be fair, the start was encouraging.

When I published the first few books, I actually saw sales. I even got a few 5-star reviews and some 4-star reviews.

That felt good. Not just because of the money—but because real people had read something I wrote and liked it.

At that point, it felt like this might actually turn into the kind of slow, compounding thing I had imagined.

When the Numbers Stopped Making Sense

After the first few books, the excitement slowly faded.

I kept publishing, but the sales didn’t keep growing. In fact, they started doing the opposite. The initial spike you get when a new book is released slowly disappeared. Rankings dropped. Visibility dropped. And with that, sales dropped too.

That’s when I started to see the pattern.

When you publish something new on Amazon, you get a bit of attention. Your book shows up more. You might get a few sales. Maybe even a few reviews. But once that “new” phase is over, the book has to survive on its own.

And most books don’t.

The below Kindle pages read snip depicts the reality. At the time of publishing – a lot of traction. Afterwards – nearly nothing!

To keep things moving, you either have to:

• Keep publishing constantly, or
• Actively promote and market your books, or
• Do both

I liked the writing part. I genuinely enjoyed creating the stories and building the books. But I didn’t enjoy the promotion side of it at all. Ads, marketing, pushing links, chasing visibility—that just wasn’t why I got into this in the first place.

Then I looked at the bigger picture.

After two months of real work, I had made a grand total of $13!

For those wondering why I earned only $13 with 1000+ sales, it’s because a lot of the sales happened during promotion times – where I was literally giving the books away for free or for peanuts!

That’s not zero. But when I compared it to the time and energy I had put in—writing, editing, designing, publishing—it didn’t feel even remotely proportional.

That was the first moment I seriously thought: the math here doesn’t look great.

Trying Non-Fiction (And Reaching the Same Wall)

I didn’t stop with children’s books.

Since I was already blogging and learning about digital marketing at that time, I thought maybe non-fiction would work better. So I wrote and published a few books on topics like:

• Digital marketing
• Affiliate marketing
• Starting online businesses

The logic was simple: I was already learning these things anyway. Why not turn that knowledge into books?

The result?

A few book sales. And I remember one affiliate sale coming from one of those books.

That was it.

Again, the reviews were decent – because I had put in a lot of effort. I didn’t want to fool people with shitty content.

But the results?

Financially, it was even worse than the children’s books.

At the same time, when I looked around on Amazon, I could see people who had published 100, 200, even 400 books. They had tons of reviews. Tons of sales. Clearly, the model worked for some people—at scale.

But that’s when the real lesson hit me:

Just because something works at scale doesn’t mean it works at small scale.

Publishing a few good books with a lot of effort doesn’t automatically turn into meaningful income. Without volume, without strong marketing, without a brand or distribution advantage, you’re basically pushing very hard for very little leverage.

I enjoyed writing. I was even proud that some people liked what I wrote. But from a business point of view, it was clear: the output was nowhere near the input.

And that’s when I knew this wasn’t something I should keep doubling down on.

The Effort vs Leverage Problem

This is where my original mental model finally broke.

In my head, self-publishing worked like this:
Write more books → build a bigger catalog → money slowly compounds.

In reality, it looked more like this:
Write more books → do a lot more work → make a little more (maybe) → repeat.

Each book still took real effort. Writing. Editing. Formatting. Covers. Descriptions. Uploading. And after all that, most books just… disappeared into the Amazon catalogue.

Unless you:

• Publish at huge volume, or
• Build a strong brand, or
• Get very good at marketing and promotion, or
• Hit a rare breakout book

…the leverage just isn’t there.

That’s when I realized something uncomfortable: publishing 100 books doesn’t mean you’ll make 100 times the money. In many cases, it might mean you make $200 a month instead of $100—after doing an insane amount of extra work.

The romantic idea was “write and live off royalties.”
The practical reality was “work a lot and hope the math improves.”

I still enjoyed writing. I was still proud that a few people liked what I made. But from a business point of view, it was obvious: this was a high-effort, low-leverage game for me.

And that’s not a great place to stay for long.

How the Market Changed (And Why It’s Even Harder Now)

Even back then, I could already see where this was going.

When I looked at the top sellers, many of them had hundreds of books. They had teams. Systems. Marketing engines. They weren’t just “writers.” They were running publishing operations.

At the time, it still felt like a gold rush. Today, it feels more like a crowded city.

More people know about KDP. More people are trying it. More books are being published every single day. Almost every niche is crowded. Standing out is harder. Staying visible is harder. Making the numbers work is harder.

That doesn’t mean nobody can make money with self-publishing.

It means that the version of the dream I had—write a few good books and let royalties quietly build over time—is much rarer than the internet makes it sound.

For most people, today, it’s either:

• A serious, high-volume business, or
• A passion project, or
• A tough grind with uncertain returns

There’s nothing wrong with any of those. You just have to be honest about which one you’re signing up for.

Why I Stopped (And What It Taught Me)

I don’t regret trying KDP.

I learned how publishing platforms actually work. I learned how visibility fades. I learned how important distribution and leverage are. And I learned something about myself – that I enjoy writing, but not marketing.

I’m also glad I published something that real people read and liked. Those reviews still mean more to me than the money ever did.

But from a business and life perspective, the conclusion was simple:

The output wasn’t even close to the input.

I could use that same time and energy to:

• Improve my skills
• Grow in my career
• Build assets with better leverage (like blogging or investing)

So I stopped.

Not because KDP is useless. Not because it’s a scam. But because for me, at that scale and in that model, it didn’t make economic sense.

And that lesson—about effort, leverage, and where compounding actually comes from—ended up being far more valuable than the thirteen dollars I made!