Self-publishing on Amazon through KDP is one of my favourite ways to make money online.
I’m not talking about ebooks that you sell through Kindle. I’m talking about selling physical, paperback and hardback books on Amazon using their print on demand book service.
KDP, which stands for Kindle Direct Publishing, is Amazon’s own service that allows you to upload a book interior and cover, make it available on the Amazon marketplace and when (and only when) a customer purchases your book, Amazon will print a copy off and send it to whoever bought it.
It’s a really quick, easy and low cost way to start an online business and to create your own publishing company or brand.
There are three ways that you can go about publishing paperback books on Amazon.
ONE
You write your own book. It can be fiction or non-fiction, it can be about anything you want it to be.
Probably the best way to go about publishing a high content book at the moment is through creating a series and rapid releasing them. What does this mean?
Say you write fiction. You would create a series of books revolving around the same set of characters. Each individual book in the series has a lower word count than traditionally published books. Each genre is different but it could be around the 60,000 word mark.
The idea is that you release each book very close together, typically a month apart. This means you need to write all your books up front then release them one after the other. Or you could write one and release it, spend the next month writing the second book and release it, spend the net month writing book three and release it and so on and so on.
For this to work you (1.) need to be a very good writer and (2.) have the time to be able to write 60,000 in a few weeks.
This method of self-publishing isn’t for everyone.
TWO
Your next option is to pay a Ghostwriter to write your book for you. Dane McBeth and The Mikkelsen Twins do this and are very successful with it. Head over to their YouTube channels if you want to check them out.
This method, obviously, requires you to have a budget to be able to pay someone to do this for you.
THREE
And the third method is by publishing low content books. What are low content books? Well, exactly that. Books that aren’t full of content, aren’t full of written words.
They are all things that are very popular and used every day by thousands of people around the world. It’s things like notebooks, journals, coloring books, log books, activity books.
If you’re anything like me, you have a drawer full of notebooks just waiting to be used because you’re a bit obsessed with buying notebooks and stationery. Or maybe you actually use your notebooks!
There is so much opportunity to create low content books and sell them on Amazon and with just a bit of time and effort spent on research to find the right kind of books to create in niches that have demand you can create some good income.
So, to answer the question – is it actually possible to make money from low content book publishing? The short answer is yes, of course you can.
The long answer is that you’ll need to research, you’ll need to find niches that aren’t over saturated. (And that is also possible.) You’ll need to create unique books that people like. And you’ll need to be consistent. Keep trying until you find what works. You are probably not going to find success after publishing just a handful of books.
So, let’s take a look at some low content niches and books so we can see exactly what kind of income is possible with publishing low content books.
Notebooks – Blue Ridge Art
If you are interested in creating notebooks then you’ll need to create a lined notebook interior. If you’d rather just download one that someone has already made you can get one for free from this link here.
Then you need to design your notebook covers. On the book creation side of things, it’s that simple.
Let’s have a look at Blue Ridge Art who are doing very well with notebooks. What I’ve done is I’ve already looked at the first page of their available books as Amazon lists them according to popularity and I’ve got an idea of how many books they are selling according to their best seller ranks.
Now, the best seller ranks change from hour to hour and day to day but we’ll get a general idea of how well their books are selling.
| BSR 26,820 – 161 sales per month | BSR 199,105 – 25 sales per month |
| BSR 38,790 – 116 sales per month | BSR 41,204 – 109 sales per month |
| BSR 35,579 – 125 sales per month | BSR 174,102 – 28 sales per month |
| BSR 45,463 – 100 sales per month | BSR 117,454 – 41 sales per month |
| BSR 256,286 – 19 sales per month | BSR 74,611 – 63 sales per month |
| BSR 302,161 – 16 sales per month | BSR 191,090 – 26 sales per month |
For the size of their book and the selling price I’d estimate their royalties are around $2 per sale according to Amazon’s Royalty Calculator.
829 sales per month @ $2 royalty = $1,658 per month
Journals – Sweet Harmony Press
The next brand I’ve looked at are Sweet Harmony Press who publish journals. Although journals and notebooks are basically the same thing – they are both just lined pages. It just depends on what you want to call yours.
| BSR 120,907 – 40 sales per month | BSR 24,092 – 177 sales per month |
| BSR 65,642 – 71 sales per month | BSR 42,420 – 107 sales per month |
| BSR 66,422 – 71 sales per month | BSR 258,839 – 19 sales per month |
| BSR 137,974 – 35 sales per month | BSR 91,849 – 52 sales per month |
| BSR 108,525 – 44 sales per month | BSR 310,054 – 16 sales per month |
| BSR 174,379 – 28 sales per month | BSR 586,465 – 8 sales per month |
Again, I’d estimate that this brand are making around $2 royalty on their books sales.
668 sales per month @ $2 royalty = $1,336 per month
So now we are going to step up to books that take a bit more work and time to create but this is where you’ll find those niches that still have room to be able to get good best seller rankings on your books and therefore, more income.
Coloring Books – Jade Summer
If you are already familiar with low content publishing or coloring books in particular then you will have no doubt heard of Jade Summer. She is the queen of coloring books on Amazon.
I haven’t gone through a lot of their books, I only went through the first five and that’s because I don’t need to go through many to show you how much money they are making and I’ve also been researching this brand for about the last month.
So, from their first five books I looked at on Amazon we have:
| BSR 371 – 4315 sales per month | BSR 1,072 – 2093 sales per month |
| BSR 1,363 – 1762 sales per month | BSR 2,888 – 1008 sales per month |
| BSR 7,947 – 453 sales per month |
Some books are 200 pages some are 100 pages so royalty ranges from $2 per book to $3.50 per book so I’ll just do this calculation at $2 per book.
9,631 sales per month @ $2 royalty = $19,262 per month.
Log Books – Happy Eden Co
This brand creates logbooks, in particular camping log books, as well as some notebooks and journals. This is a great example of picking a smaller more targeted niche and creating a logbook design that appeals to that customer base.
| BSR 1,777 – 1451 sales per month | BSR 27,933 – 155 sales per month |
| BSR 173,359 – 28 sales per month | BSR 304,115 – 16 sales per month |
| BSR 89,202 – 53 sales per month | BSR 276,472 – 18 sales per month |
| BSR 527,400 – 9 sales per month | BSR 141,163 – 34 sales per month |
| BSR 146,795 – 33 sales per month | BSR 573,362 – 8 sales per month |
| BSR 43,610 – 104 sales per month |
1,909 sales per month @ $2 royalty = $3,818 per month
Activity Books – Activity Nest
| BSR 1,260 – 1864 sales per month | BSR 31,224 – 140 sales per month |
| BSR 24,126 – 176 sales per month | BSR 224,378 – 22 sales per month |
| BSR 356,937 – 14 sales per month | BSR 192,609 – 25 sales per month |
| BSR 367,523 – 13 sales per month | BSR 759,681 – 6 sales per month |
| BSR 663,545 – 7 sales per month | BSR 803,587 – 6 sales per month |
2,273 sales per month @ $2 royalty = $4,546 per month
You can really see here the jump in income between those notebooks and journals which a super simple and quick to make and the more involved logbooks, coloring and activity books.
Putting in that extra effort seems to really pay off.
So, I think we’ve answered that yes, it is 100% possible to make money from low content books. If you take a look at any of the brands I looked at today, you might notice that their best selling books were uploaded to Amazon in the last 2-3 years. What does that tell you?
It means you need to be consistent and persistent. Unless you’re very lucky, you aren’t going to upload a book and have it become a best seller overnight. Aim to produce books that you will see returns from possibly a year or two into the future. Think about the long game.
And while you’re waiting keep looking for new niches and keep creating quality books. And keep uploading them to Amazon and eventually you will hit some successful niches and over time you’ll build up a nice income that will come in month after month.