Sadly enough, independently wealthy people are virtually the only ones who could actually publish consistently and thus possibly earn something out of the whole endeavour — under the assumption that any single book by an unknown / non-celebrity author has equal probability of being a hit.

Reality seems to be that most books are failures, publishers prefer celebrities as that reduces marketing costs, and they prefer established audiences.

This is a good read on the topic: https://www.elysian.press/p/no-one-buys-books

A rebuttal to that article.