Can I upload my book to Amazon and just get sales? Amazon reaches millions of buyers, right? How many sales can I expect per day?

Well, I'm not sure if you should "expect" a certain number of sales. Publishing is a crapshoot, and self-publishing even more so.

The average self-published book sells less than 200 copies. In fact, the "average" is probably much lower, because there is a small percentage of self-published books that do well, and the rest do not. The majority of the good sellers are non-fiction, and they are marketed intelligently to the public.

Every now and then, a lucky fiction breakout makes big money. Christopher Paolini's fantasy-fiction series is an exception. He was originally self-published with the help of his parents and his books have become wildly successful, spawning a movie deal and a multitude of books, games, and other fan-stuffs.

It's very important to have a platform, website, blog, etc-- a combination of these things can help you succeed, even if you have very little money you can still publish and market your book, but it better be good-- well-written and edited, and you need to be prepared to market it. Writing is fun, but marketing is hard work.

And yes, I do spend a lot of money AND precious time marketing my books. Hours and hours each day. I currently have FIVE websites (yes, count 'em)...

1. My publishing company website

2. My author's website (which has a blog that I maintain)

3. My tax marketing newsletter website; I just launched this sucker last week (I use Constant Contact)

4. My self-publishing information website (with a giant list of free book review sources-- just because I love you guys)

5. My two blogs (The Publishing Maven) and my author's blog.

Okay, that's six websites, I guess. And I now publish a monthly newsletter (for tax professionals). I was thinking about publishing a monthly newsletter on self-publishing, too... but there just aren't enough hours in the day, honestly. I still have a publishing company to run (just opened a new business account with Wells Fargo last week-- I hope they don't suck).

All of this marketing takes time and money. But mostly time. And the more time you spend marketing, the less time you have to write. It's a vicious cycle. I know why people love to publish with a traditional publisher, because they (theoretically) don't have to deal with as much of this crap as self-published authors do.

Now, I'm not trying to discourage you. It isn't easy, but that doesn't mean you can't do it. Just be prepared to work hard. Take the time to really understand the business, so you can be set up for success instead of failure.