Selling Books To Get Rich???

Have you ever thought about self publishing books to get rich? I know this sounds like a dumb question but I've been thinking about it lately. Most books you can write under a pen name so nobody will even know its you anyways. You can get a self publishing company to put it together for you and distribute it through Amazon.com and BN.com and see how it does. One site I checked out was iUniverse.com that offers self publishing and distribution through BN and Amazon. You get 20% royalties on all sales and they will publish it for you at around $300 to $700 or so. I'm sure there are others as well that maybe offer even better deals.

If you can write a book and sell it for $20...

100,000 copies at $20 = $2,000,000 x 20% = $400,000

Say you diversify your book publishing like stocks and publish 5 books in a year that are mediocre or average and hope that one pulls through for you.


10,000 copies at $20 = $200,000
1,000 copies at $20 = $20,000
3,000 copies at $20 = $60,000
500 copies at $20 = $10,000
30,000 copies at $20 = $600,000
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Total: $890,000 x 20% = $178,000

You have to also consider that you will get residual money coming in over time from future sales. Especially if one is fairly popular.

So assuming you just do those 5 books and your sells are the same roughly over 10 years.

Total: $890,000 x 20% = $178,000 x 10 years = $1,780,000.

Now, lets say we are conservative and the results are half of what is expected above. It could be because our books are only around $10 each or that sales aren't as high.

Total: $890,000 x 20% = $178,000 / 2 = $89,000 x 10 = $890,000.

What do you think? I mean you could write a few books under pen names and see what sticks. All you need is one to be a hit. It's a gamble obviously but it could work. Any thoughts?