Boel_Jarkley

In my experience as a picture book author/ illustrator self-publishing on Amazon, it's not profitable. I even tried using their advertising services that basically only advertises to people looking at similar products and spent about $5 dollars with no purchases. It's an even bigger bummer when I take into account that I pay $600 every year for Adobe Creative Cloud and making children's books has basically become a really expensive hobby.

If you're really good at getting attention on social media, you could maybe clear a couple hundred dollars on a self-published book every month, but even that is a lot of work. People have to care enough to share what you've done. I think that making a career out of it is really only viable through traditional publishing. I've self-published two picture books and have only made about $20 in the last two years. I'm not trying to discourage anyone from creating picture books, just have realistic expectations of what you'll get out of it. I didn't. I thought Amazon would be an amazing gold mine of revenue for a self-published book, and it is just not at all. At least not for me, anyways.

True. I'd rather put money into something I love doing, like creating picture books, than into a savings account... I am not good with money...