where if you write it they WILL read it.  It takes genuine skill and a lot of serious work to have financial success and to garner readers.
 ![image](https://img.esteem.ws/3ot7v0pdm4.jpg).

As a writer, you will NOT have overnight success.  You won’t rise to the best sellers list three days after you publish your book.  You won’t sell a thousand copies on your first day, and you won’t have a dozen legitimate reviews after just three days, or three weeks of sales.  It takes time.

If you are writing a book, know that you are in a highly competitive market.  There are nearly 130 million books (titles) currently in publication, and several million more that exist but that are out of publication and still available.  Also, there are 1.5 million new books being added to that list each year that you will be competing with. (Sources; Amazon and K-Lytics)

50% of novelists/poets/writers receive less than $350 a year in royalties. 
Only 10% of novelists/poets/writers receive more than $12,000 a year in royalties.
Only 2% of novelists/poets/writers receive more than $70,000 a year in royalties.
Only 0.002% of novelists/poets/writers earn more than $100,000 a year.
(NOTE: these figures do not take into account technical writers and salaried journalists whose salaries vary between $28K and $120K)  (Sources; Amazon and K-Lytics)

In other words, out of this Writers Group, with 114,644 members of which only about 2% have actually published anything (2,293), only about 230 of them receive $12,000, or more, a year in royalties.  Half of that will earn less than $350 in royalties, and 112,351 will receive nothing because they didn’t publish anything and instead posted meme’s, three-word horror stories, and complained about ‘writer's block.’

If you try and Google the number of living authors in the world, you will find that the answer is unknown.  With the 1.5 million new books published each year you can safely say that there is at least that many (1,000,000). However, it is estimated that the number of writers trying to write who haven’t succeeded in getting published is at least ten times that (15,000,000) and conceivably could be as high as 100 times as many (150,000,000).  That is how many people you are potentially competing with.

This is why, as a writer, you need to be at the top of your game ALL the time with writing, and you must work to improve your skills.  If you want to be a professional writer, earning a living writing, you need to do everything you can to be at the top of the list, writing the best stories, using the best writing skills/grammar/editing possible.  Unlike the lottery, where everyone (regardless of talent) has an equal chance of winning, writing is like the Olympics, where only the very best get the coveted gold.  IF you have those skills, then fancy marketing and flashy covers help to promote your sales higher.  If you don't, marketing isn't going to take you very far as bad reviews will kill you.  Only with outstanding writing skills will you legitimately get all those five-star reviews you cherish.

This post isn’t intended to scare you off from writing.  Quite the contrary, it is designed to make you want work harder to improve your writing skills, to improve your grammar and spelling, to check your own words before posting them and to continually perform at the top of your writing skills so you can receive duly earned recognition for your efforts.  Dreaming of being a successful writer will not make you one, hard work and serious effort will.

Good luck and may the best writers on succeed.

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