You don't need to be a best-selling author like Stephen King or Dean Koontz to make a
killing publishing books. In fact, you don't even need to be a writer at all.
In this video, we'll be talking about how you can start selling low-content books
on Amazon's Kindle Direct Publishing platform, also known as Amazon KDP.
Low content books are paperback books that are comprised of little to no text
or images. The pages of these books are generally repetitive and designed to be
filled in by the reader. These often include things like journals or notebooks where every
page contains a few lines for people to write in.
Amazon will print these books to order whenever you make a sale, so there is no need for you
to worry about maintaining an inventory. And since Amazon also handles fulfillment,
there's no need to spend all of your time packing and shipping your books to your customers.
The great thing about this is that low-content books only take a few hours to create. With
this model, you can turn a couple hours of work into hundreds or thousands of dollars per month.
And of course, once the book is created, it’s an entirely passive source of income - all you have
to do afterward is collect your monthly revenues from Amazon, or continue making more books.
But the best part is, that you don’t need to know how to use complicated software and you
can do this without any upfront costs. Here’s how you can make the most out of Amazon KDP.
The Options Are Endless
Since low-content books contain minimal text and imagery, creating them is incredibly
simple. We already mentioned a few examples of low-content book ideas, but a few others include
puzzle and activity books, sketchbooks, bullet journals, recipe journals, calendars, and more.
But you can niche down even further with any of these ideas to create a best-selling item
on Amazon. For example, consider a gardener who may want to journal the items they’re
planting and harvesting. This might not be much different from any other journal,
but by designing your book for a custom purpose like this, you can
boost your chances of consistently reaching a target audience and selling a ton of copies.
How To Get Started
To come up with a good concept for your low-content book, it's best to start by
researching a niche. Refer back to the various types of low-content books we mentioned,
choose one, and start brainstorming ideas for making it your own.
You can also use Amazon's book section to see if you can spot any recurring themes or trends
that you might be able to jump on. At this point, however,
you don't simply want to recreate something that's already been done.
As we said, if you want your low-content books to stand out, you'll have to make them unique.
You can also use Google, Etsy, Pinterest, and other social media platforms for identifying
trends. Once you identify a few key terms or trends, make a list of ten or twenty ideas
to further investigate. You'll likely end up discarding most of these, but all that matters
is that you come up with at least a few decent ideas to work with when creating your first book.
After you've come up with your list of ideas, try to think of which ones people
will actually be searching for. At this stage in development, you'd be wise to
see what search terms are currently generating the most traffic. You can use tools like Google
Trends or Exploding Topics to see if your idea is trending in the right direction.
The best ideas will have great search traffic opportunities without being
oversaturated by books that are similar to yours.
Creating Your Low-Content Books
Once you've done your research and come up with a few ideas, it's time to create your
low-content book. This step might seem a bit intimidating, but it's really pretty simple.
You only need to create two separate files. The first is a manuscript containing the interior
pages of your low-content book. This can be done in a word processor like Microsoft Word,
or you can use more powerful tools like the Adobe Creative Suite if you need to make tables,
lines, charts, and other elements. For a free alternative, you could also use Canva.
The second file is a cover for your book - it should include the front cover,
back cover, and spine. Again, Canva and Adobe Creative Suite are great options
if you want to do it yourself. If you don’t have a knack for creative design,
you could easily outsource this to someone on Fiverr for a few dollars.
Overall, you should be able to create a low-content book design for well under $100,
even if you outsourced every bit of it. If you’re up for the challenge of doing it yourself,
you can get it all done for free.
Publishing Your Low-Content Books
Once you've created your files and you’re ready to publish your book on Amazon KDP,
simply visit the KDP resource page, upload your two files,
fill in your book details, and tap the publish button. Then, Amazon will handle the rest.
Then, you simply wait for people to make orders on Amazon. Amazon will print and ship your books for
you without you lifting a finger, so all you have to do is get paid. Keep in mind you’ll probably
only take home about 40-50% of the listing price on Amazon. Some of the sale price goes to fees
for Amazon’s printing service and fulfillment service, and they’ll take a cut on top of that
too. So definitely consider this when pricing your books and estimating your potential income.
Prepare for Failure Before you have a
go at creating low-content books and selling them on Amazon's KDP platform,
there are a few things you should know. For one, this isn't some kind of get-rich-quick scheme.
At first, you might struggle to come up with an idea that generates sales.
You may have to publish a few books before you finally get some traction. Be prepared to
learn from your failures and continue creating new ideas until you find a formula that works for you.
Grow Your Business Even once you make a sale or two,
your work isn't done. From there, you'll want to create more and more low-content books.
One low-content book is unlikely to provide you with a steady source of income, but if you create
several, your chances greatly increase. Pros that have been doing this successfully for a long time
often put out several hundred low-content books a year. Once you crack the code, it’ll be easier
to put out successful books, and you can even begin hiring freelancers to create them for you.
To increase your sales, there are a few things that top-sellers often do.
For one, creating a website or social media account that directs potential
buyers to your Amazon listings is a great way to promote your low content offerings. Then
you can reach people before they go to Amazon and search for your product.
This also helps create brand recognition. If your plan is to put out several dozen
low-content books that are all directed towards a specific niche,
using a consistent pen-name or 'publishing company name' will let your customers know what they can
expect from your material. So, if you're going to be publishing diaries, log books, planners,
and calendars that all feature a specific theme, you could offer them all under the same brand.
At first, it will probably feel like you're just throwing everything at the wall to see
what sticks, and that’s pretty much how it works in the beginning. But once you identify the niche
that works for you, you can stick to it and expand your brand to a massic source of passive income.
Making Money on Amazon
Hopefully, this has prepared you for getting started with Amazon KDP.
But, it’s not the only Amazon side hustle out there. In fact, we recently did a video about
several great side hustles on Amazon that can pay hundreds or thousands of dollars per month.
While Amazon FBA gets all of the attention, there are tons of other ideas that often go unnoticed.
Check out that video here for more Amazon side hustles. If you have any questions or requests,
drop them in the comments below, and we’ll see you in the next video.