Self-publishing AI-written books on Amazon

The claim

“Now don’t miss AI publishing in 2026. It’s boring… but if you start today, you could make $3,000 by the end of March.”

@Manu_Sisti, 13 February 2026, 578,546 views¹

“I’m convinced. Amazon KDP is the most beginner friendly business on Earth. I make $50,000/month doing it. • AI writes them. • AI designs them. • Amazon sells them.”

@TommiPedruzzi, 30 June 2026, 126,599 views¹

KDP (Kindle Direct Publishing) is Amazon’s service for publishing a book yourself for a royalty, a share of each copy’s price². In the tweets, an AI tool writes a short non-fiction book and you upload it¹. These two accounts wrote 40 of our 52 tweets (our count)¹. Both are listed as co-founders of Nespola, which sells a publishing programme⁴⁵²³. We could not confirm or disprove their income figures¹.

The sums

Ebook sales needed every month, before costs (our sums from Amazon’s royalty rates)²:

What happens to most people who try

The promoters’ company blog says, before costs: “In the first 6 months, most publishers earn $0–$300/month while building their first 3–5 books.”²²

Surveys cover authors who mostly write their own fiction. In a 2025 survey of 1,346 independent authors, about 80% of those with one to three books reported under $100 a month²⁶. In a 2023 survey of 2,261 committed authors (at least half their working time), those in their first three years had a median (the middle person) of $2,000 for the year, before costs²⁸⁵⁸. People who gave up rarely answer, so newcomers probably do worse (our inference)²⁶.

In one study, not yet checked by other academics, fiction ebooks with substantial AI text were 20% of 14,419 books but took 11.3% of revenue⁵⁶.

The upside

Amazon said in May 2022 that more than 2,000 authors had passed $100,000 in royalties that year: its own unaudited count, out of what it calls millions of authors since 2007⁵⁷³¹. In the 2023 survey the median was about $12,750 and the top 10% earned $190,000 or more (our reading), self-reported and before costs⁵⁸.

A business broker, Empire Flippers, says it checks the revenue of businesses it lists⁵³. We did not see the proof, the broker has an interest in the sale, and only businesses that did well are put up for sale.

• Eleven sold non-fiction catalogues (sets of books on sale) made a profit of $14,964 to $117,205 a year after costs; eight made under $58,000⁵⁰. In seven, paid writers wrote the books, and nine mention adverts (our count)⁵⁰. They were created from 2017 to 2020, before AI writing tools were common⁵⁰.
• The closest match to the tweets is unsold: about 40 non-fiction titles, launched in 2023, showing a profit of $152,780 a year⁴⁹. It was built with “a specialized team”⁴⁹.

A realistic good first year (our estimate): a few hundred dollars to about $2,000, before costs⁵⁸.

What it takes to compete

• A catalogue. Among committed authors in the 2023 survey, median income before costs was $618 with one book and $21,000 with 11 to 20⁵⁸. The researchers caution that each feeds the other⁵⁸.
• A hit, not a pile. In the broker’s records one or two books carry most of the income⁵⁰⁵⁵. A sold business with about 2,090 books made $34,466 a year⁵⁴.
• Years. In a 2019 survey, 69% of authors who had earned over $60,000 in a year had started five or more years earlier²⁹.
• Advert money and a losing start. The promoters’ own site gives $0 to $2,000 to start and says profit can be near zero in months 1 to 4²². Surveyed authors earning over $10,000 a month spent about $4,500 a month on marketing²⁶.

How to tell early (our judgement): a 100-page paperback at $9.99 pays $3.69 a copy (our sum), so $3,000 a month is about 27 sales a day⁵⁶. If your books together sell only one or two a day after three months, you are on the common side of the line.

Who else makes money from it

Amazon keeps 30% of an ebook’s price plus a delivery charge, and is paid for every advert click²¹⁸.

Of our 52 tweets, 45 come from four accounts whose tweets offer a course, training or guide; we checked what is sold only for the two Nespola co-founders¹. Nespola’s site says of its students’ results: “They are not typical and we do not guarantee them.”⁴⁵

The one regulator’s case we found concerns a different company, Publishing.com, with no link we could find to Nespola or our tweets. In July 2026 it and its two principals agreed, without a trial, to pay $1.5 million to settle US Federal Trade Commission charges that it “misled consumers about how much money they were likely to earn”⁴². These cases concern the companies named in them only. We found no regulator action against any account quoted or named on this page, and we do not suggest any connection.