Hi Janice, my two cents as a publisher (of over 100 books) and an author of 11 books:
1. Publishers don’t know what sells books, so they realized great cost savings by drastically downsizing their in house PR departments and outsourcing the work to their authors, who either do it for free of pay expensive wads for a PR firm (who give no guarantees and are most often a waste of the authors money).
2. It’s easier than ever to publish a book, but harder than ever to get people to read your books. Just like the music industry, where once upon a time only a select group of musicians could ever dream of cutting a record, d but now anyone have have a well produced song downloadable from a website, or added to Spotify. But, even big name artists don’t make money on their platforms, they make it on their concerts.
The problem for authors is there is no real equivalent to a concert as a money-making gig (rather than a few $100 to appear in a writers’ festival.

The solution, for me, is for most anew authors to accept that they will likely only sell their books in the hundreds, and to be okay with that. Yes, maybe you will hit it big, but, to misquote the Hunger Games, the odds are never in your favor. “

So, write for your small audience. Perhaps your word will inspire someone to take a stand, heal a wound, or spark a transformation. If that’s your goal, you may become a successful writer…which does not means you need to sell 100,000 copies.