I Self-Published on Amazon with $0 Marketing — Here’s the Brutally Honest Truth

Exactly how much money I made (with screenshots)

Photo by Christin Hume on Unsplash

If you’ve read some of my other stories, you’ll know that about a decade ago, I self-published my debut romance novel and became a bestselling author — as far as Amazon was concerned, anyway. Selling a few thousand copies felt amazing, especially since that’s more than many authors achieve in their lifetime. But it wasn’t exactly a huge financial success. I couldn’t rely on it to pay my bills. However, the skills I learned from that experience led me into a career in marketing, and today I work closely with authors in a publishing-adjacent industry.

For a long time, I set aside my own writing dreams, took down my first novel, and quietly kept expanding the story into a full series. After years of supporting other authors and obsessively polishing my manuscripts, I’m finally ready to dive back into self-publishing. However, as I started working on my marketing strategy, book covers, formatting, and all those fun things, one question kept nagging at me. There’s a widespread assumption (one I believed myself) that financial success in self-publishing requires heavy investment in marketing and/or a huge social media following.