You can make money selling low content books on Amazon through their publishing arm, the Amazon Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP).
That’s right!
Amazon KDP is a business model where you can publish and sell books and notebooks on Amazon.
Registration is free. So that means there’s $0 upfront cost at starting this type online business.
While registration may be free, you may need to invest in a few paid tools to bring results from your effort. Having said that, there are also many free tools as well to help you achieve creating and selling low content books via Amazon KDP.
Before anything else, hello there! Thank you for dropping by my little blog. I’m a stay at home mom who has been trying to profit from blogging. The process is still ongoing. I learned about Amazon KDP when I was searching for an Adobe InDesign tutorial on Youtube. I was designing a calendar at that time. On my Youtube search, I came across a video tutorial about designing a recipe book using InDesign. The phrase “low content books” did not exactly catch my attention.
From that search, Youtube algorithm recommended videos to me about Low Content Books for Amazon KDP. It was quite a discovery.
I did try to create a planner which is another story for another day.
To cut to the chase, a few months later, I did publish my planner or KDP. Without a strong marketing strategy, the planner did manage to make $67 on the first month. It is working and so I tried to learn more about this business model.
What is Amazon KDP?
Amazon Kindle Direct Publishing used to be called CreateSpace. Now what is Amazon KDP really? To define it in the simplest form possible, Amazon KDP allows anyone to publish and sell books and low content books. By “anyone”, it exactly means anyone. You simple have to register at kdp.amazon.com
This business model practically allows you to focus on research, and creation, and marketing, all of them I will explain later. What it means is that this business model allows you not to worry about order fulfilment, shipping, delivery, and customer service. The most important aspect of this business model is that your product sits on Amazon, the highest traffic ecommerce site on the planet.
What you can publish and sell on Amazon KDP are:
- Kindle eBooks
- Any written books that are eligible for digital reading.
- Paperbacks
- Traditional books: These are physical written books such as thriller, stories, romance novels, cookbooks, or self-help guides.
- Low Content Books: These are physical paperbacks with low density of words or content inside. It can have lines (notebooks) or boxes (comics) or you could get creative by adding nice fonts or unicorn graphics.
What are Low Content Books?
Before putting the spotlight onto Low Content Books, let’s know what it really is. It’s a terminology for something simple that we already use on a daily basis. Basically they are notebooks! And it now comes in so many forms depending on its purpose and the intended customer such as the following.
Examples of low content books are:
- Notebooks
- Journals
- Coloring books
- Diaries
- Calendars
- Weekly/Monthly Planners
- Meal Planners
- Sudoko
- Crossword Puzzles
- Tracing Sheets
- Guest books
- Wedding Planners
- Logbooks
Now what type of notebook are they?
Amazon KDP allows you to publish four different types of paperbacks:
- Soft Cover
- Black and White
- Colored
- Hard Cover
- Black and White
- Colored
The two types of paper you can use for the interior pages are WHITE and CREAM paper.
This is available for the Softcover:
This is available for the Hardcover:
Steps to Making Money Selling Low Content Books on Amazon KDP
You would need a few to tools to aid you in creating low content books. But before jumping right into the creation phase, you must research WHO you are creating notebooks for. So let’s make it step one.
1. Research your niche
Niche is basically a specific market or a group of people. They come with their own needs and problems to which you must tap into. And how must you tap? By creating a product that solves their problems, answers their questions, or satisfies their needs.
In a brick-and-mortar type of business, a merchant would practically sell products that someone will buy or else, business may not survive. And that is the same thing with an online business such as selling low content books on Amazon. You must create a product that someone will buy.
As much as possible, make sure to target a very specific niche. You may even dig dipper as into a subniche.
An example of a niche are teachers, students, moms, engineers, and any profession or group of people you can think of.
An example of subniche are teachers for kindergartens, moms of teenager, chemical engineers, and more.
You can even dig deeper as kindergarten science teachers, working moms of teenagers, chemical engineers abroad, and so on.
Niche or subniches does not necessarily mean just a group of people. It can come in a form of an activity or interest. One example is busy working moms who cook, funny memes for kindergarten teachers, and engineers who design from abstract art.
From the list of niches or subniches you can gather, you must investigate which of them can be profitable. So here comes the profitable keywords. Let’s go to step 2.
2. Research profitable keywords
By tapping into a niche, you must also focus on keywords that are profitable. What does it mean?
Keywords practically means the text or phrase that a person types into the search bar on Amazon. To gauge how profitable keywords are, you need keyword tools or you can do it manually on the Amazon site itself.
To manually search profitable keywords on Amazon, I learned and recommend this post: Keyword Research for Selling Paperback Planners on Amazon
Some frequently asked questions about KDP
3. Create interior pages
Interior pages are the content inside the notebooks. Since we are creating low content books, the pages would basically look the same throughout the entire material. Popular tools to create interior pages are Microsoft Word, MS Powerpoint, or Canva. Paid tools include Adobe InDesign and Affinity Publisher.
There are a variety of sources where you can get premade interior pages for free or for a fee. Read my article: Where to get free low content book interiors
For Softcover, the following paper sizes are available:
For Hardcover, the following paper sizes are available:
4. Create a book cover
Depending on your niche and the particular theme of your notebook, your book cover is one of the most important aspect of both design and selling point of your notebook. A few reasons area:
- Your book cover will be displayed as a thumbnail on Amazon search results. Make sure to create an eye-catching design for this size.
- A book cover with text if done well will create credibility. A spelling or grammar error is highly discouraging.
- The overall design on the book cover must attract your potential buyers. If you’re creating a sports log book, create a sports-themed cover. If you’re creating coloring books for kids, create a kid-friendly design.
- Never use copyrighted and trademark symbols or figures. Big No-No!
Some tools you need to generate a cover template:
Some tools you need to design the Book Cover with Text and Graphics:
- Canva
- Affinity Designer
- Adobe InDesign
- MS Powerpoint
5. Publish on Amazon KDP website
To publish your notebook, go to kdp.amazon.com
6. Market your low content books
The heart of every successful business is an effective marketing strategy. It does not only speak true for online businesses, it’s true for every brick-and-mortar business out there too.
While Amazon will promote your notebooks and display them on search results, there are other marketing schemes that can help get your product “out there”.
These are just a few example of marketing steps you can do:
- If you have an email list, send a broadcast announcing your new notebook.
- Create an Instagram account and post your product photos.
- Get help from the influencers in your chosen niche. Send them a product and ask for their feedback and reviews.
- Join Facebook groups related to your niche and announce your new product.
- Create a blog with a theme that surrounds around your products.
- Word of mouth: Share it with your family and friends.
7. Monitor your sales
On your Amazon KDP dashboard, go to the Reports tab. Here you will see the sales report of your products. The reports does not seem be real-time so you may have to check from time to time.
You can try the beta KDP report which will show you sales made for each notebook:
Final thoughts: Making Money Selling Low Content Books
Amazon KDP is a fantastic business model. Your product sits on the highest traffic ecommerce site there is.
Having said that, it is not definitely not a quick-money scheme. It takes a lot of time, effort, and patience. And you must keep learning along the way. You spend significant amount of energy in brainstorming, creating, marketing, and adjusting your strategies in all aspect.
Being a mom of two young kids, this business model is most suitable for me as compared to blogging. Along the way, I realized that I enjoy designing book covers and creating notebooks for my selected niche. This new “business” of mine helps me connect with my audience and help them in their own lives. That’s the beautiful aspect of having business, isn’t it? Helping others.
Having this kind of business made me learn the two roles of an online business owner. As a sole owner of a business owner, you have to wear both the hats of being a content creator and a business person. It takes experience to juggle the two. But if you dive yourself deep into these two roles, you can have a strategic way on how to create your products in a business perspective. And vice versa. I hope it makes it sense.
Hope you all the best! With a quality product and highly targeted niche, you can definitely make money selling low content books on Amazon. Slow and steady wins the race.
Thanks for sharing. I started and on KDP a long time ago and gave up right away. Fast forward to this year and I’m back and know what to do now.
Fantastic Job relaying the information so that others will understand it easily and clearly. Thank you for making this available to all of us newbies.