How I Self-Published on Amazon While Being Homeless

and how much $$$ I make

i have been sleeping in this van for the past 6 months

1. I reply to every DM. I just prefer when it’s Asian girls wanting to fuck me…

2. Here’s how Self Publishing Works on Amazon:

• You make an account on Amazon KDP…

• Upload a .pdf file + cover art…

• click [SUBMIT]…

• and they automatically print/ship your book to you for ~$5 USD
  

  (it’s fucking nuts)

• They send you a “proof copy” with this grey Not For Resale bar on it. (I sent mine to an Amazon locker because I am homeless.)
  

• If it looks GOOD, you go back on Amazon KDP and click “APPROVE” …
  

• Then, their algorithm does some magic to determine your book doesn’t have photos of you raping children in it (though with the current political vibe shift, who knows), and then..

…

• TA-DA!!: Your paperback novel about cheating on your girlfriend is magically available for purchase on Amazon.com!

• They print and ship it to customers for you, forever.

💸 How much do you get paid?
(Amazon takes a pretty big cut)

Short answer:

In total, for me, about ~40% of every sale.

Real answer:

It is different for everyone, but I will use my current sales as an example:

Book sales as of 4/12/25 (4 days since release):

Paperbacks:
131 units sold * $12/book
= $1,572.00 gross revenue

eBooks:
40 units sold * $7/book
= $280.00 gross revenue

Total revenue = $1,852.00

But then the Happy Merchant takes his 60% cut…

and… total “Royalties Estimated by Amazon” = $707.45

“Oh man, Amazon’s ripping you off! You could be making so much more on other sites!”

I know. But I have never bought a book from a website besides Amazon.com in my entire life. Have you? I’m eating that cost to make it as simple as possible to buy. And if the product is good, it will spread. Steve Jobs talks about this.

Also, don’t forget, they are PRINTING and SHIPPING every book for me, automatically, with ZERO editorial oversight. That shit is priceless for a visionary homeless retard like me…

The whole process is very transparent. They even have this handy calculator:

***OH NO, NUMBERS!! LADIES SHIELD YOUR EYES!!!***

So basically I need to sell ~10,000 copies/year to make a decent living wage… or ~5,000 copies and I could be a king in Southeast Asia…

I believe in the project.

That’s the high-level overview. But if you’re actually going to get in the weeds and do this yourself, there is one more thing you should know:

FORMATTING IS ANNOYING

Here’s how I originally built the book. In a google doc:

I like google docs. Simple. But when you upload a file like this to Amazon KDP, it has a panic attack and gives you some shit like this:

This part is kind of complicated, and if you’re a Girl you should probably just pay someone to do it for you…

I personally did not feel like spending weeks squabbling with margins and spacing (and then crawling back into my van to sleep in the Planet Fitness parking lot…) so I tried to throw some money at the issue myself:

Didn’t work. BUT THEN… this wonderful anon

MASK

introduced me to Atticus:

Atticus is $150 software that you can paste your book into, customize, and generate a file that looks relatively clean on Amazon KDP:

It beats Zoom calls with Indians on Fiverr…

But what really sold me… a 30 Day Money Back Guarantee…

You know what, I think I’ll actually take you up on that!

I’m going to get my $150 back from Atticus because I’m a bad person, but I will give them a shining endorsement and say that their formatting software really did help make the book look clean and professional and, in the end, save me a lot of time.

So yeah that’s pretty much it. I still live in the van. I’ll be in the Northeast US for the next couple months.

Thank you to everyone who has bought the book so far. I don’t know how long it will stay up on Amazon (plagiarism on the cover, defamation, “revenge porn,” etc…),

but however long that is… it was good while it lasted.

4/19/25 update - 272 books sold

5/2/25 update - 327 books sold

if you want to get in on this, financially, send me a message