Low-content publishing involves creating and selling books with little or no text, such as notebooks, journals, planners, coloring books, activity books, etc. These books are easy to create, require no writing skills, and have high demand and profit potential.

Starting During Covid

I started my low-content publishing journey in April 2020, when the COVID-19 pandemic hit the world and changed everything. I was stuck at home, bored and frustrated, looking for something to do. While researching different methods to make money online, I stumbled upon Kindle Direct Publishing(KDP). KDP is a platform that allows you to publish your ebooks and paperbacks on Amazon.

I did some research online and learned the basics of how to create and upload a book on Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP). I decided to write a self-help book. I spent 16 days writing, editing, and formatting my book, which was about 10,000 words long, and then I uploaded it to KDP. I was so excited and waited for the sales to roll in.

But they didn’t. At least, not as much as I hoped. I made only 70 cents on the first month. Yes, you read that right. 70 cents. I was disappointed. I knew that I had to keep trying and learn from my mistakes. I realized that I had to change my strategy if I wanted to make money from publishing. Making 70 cents for 16 days’ worth of work would not make me rich anytime soon.

After doing some research, I learned about low-content publishing. One guy was running a YouTube channel and had made a decent income publishing these types of books. Seeing his results, I decided to give it a shot.

I started creating and publishing low-content books, such as notebooks, activity books, and planners. I used Canva to design and format my books. Comparing it to writing a full-content book, this was a piece of cake.

In the second month, I made my first sale, which made me $2 and some more cents in Royalties. I screamed from the top of my lungs as if I had just won a lottery.

They say the 1st Dollar you make online is the hardest. I guess it’s true. After that, I never looked back.

And by December 2022, I made around $9,000 in one month. That was more than I ever made in a year from my job as an Engineer.

I decided to sell the business after seeing the huge bump in sales in Q4. Read this blog to learn how I made over $80,000 selling my KDP business.

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Things I Learned

Of course, I didn’t get to this point overnight. It took me a lot of trial and error and a lot of learning. Here are some of the most important things I learned along the way:

They say you shouldn’t judge a book by its cover, but let’s face it, we all do. Creating quality book covers is the most important aspect of a successful book. Especially when your book has just launched and doesn’t have any ratings. In such a case, the customer’s buying decision heavily relies on what your book cover shows.

I was worse than a Noob in Graphic Designing when I started creating covers for KDP. However, I slowly improved my skills after designing many covers and learning some graphic design fundamentals. But by no means I am a professional graphic designer. You can either hire a professional designer or do it yourself. I chose the latter because I had no money to hire freelancers when I started. I used a free online tool called Canva at the beginning. But as I progressed, I started using Photoshop to create the covers.

I recommend learning color theory and typography fundamentals to create better cover designs.

The key to creating a good cover is to make it relevant, interesting, and pleasing. Adding humor to your covers is a great way to attract possible buyers.

Targeting Low Competition Niches

One of the biggest challenges of low content publishing is the competition. There are millions of books on Amazon, and thousands more are added every day. How do you stand out from the crowd and get your book in front of the right customers?

The answer is to target low-competition niches. A niche is a specific sub-category or topic within a genre. For example, within the low content genre, there are different niches like hobbies, animals, productivity, and many other topics you can think of. Also, there are different categories of books within the Niche that you can publish, like Notebooks, Planners, Activity books, etc.

The trick is to find a niche with high demand and low supply. A niche that has a lot of potential buyers but not a lot of books. A niche that is underserved and overlooked. A niche that you can dominate and become an authority in.

How do you find such a niche? My main place for Niche Research is Amazon. You can see what other publishers are selling and try out the Niches if you think it can be profitable. Initially, when starting to publish, we used to target Niches with search results of less than 1000 and more than 3 books with BSR of less than 500000. But as KDP has become more saturated, fulfilling these criteria is difficult. Also, these criteria were made back when running ads was not that popular for such books. Now, you could create books on Niches with higher results and get sales using Amazon Ads. The exact number of products for that Niche depends on your Advertising budget. We will talk about details on Niche Research in future posts.

Another thing I learned is to focus on what works. Once you find a profitable niche, stick to it. Don’t chase after every shiny new thing that comes along. Don’t jump from one niche to another without a clear plan.

Instead, keep publishing similar books that are selling. Create a series or a brand around your niche that creates a consistent and reliable income stream.

The best way to do this is to create a different category of book in a Niche that is performing well. For example, You created an activity book for a particular Niche. If the book performs well, you can create logbooks, coloring books, planners, joke books, and other types depending on the Niche.

Of course, this doesn’t mean you don’t explore other Niches. You should keep finding new Niches and test them out. But don’t leave a Niche by just publishing one book if it is selling well.

Running Amazon Ads For Your Books

The last thing I learned is to run Amazon ads for your books. Amazon ads are a powerful way to boost your visibility and sales on the platform. They allow you to display your book to your target audience based on the Keywords and the Related Products they search for. They are also cost-effective, as you only pay when someone clicks on your ad.

The key to running Amazon ads is to test and optimize. You must experiment with different keywords, bids, budgets, and targeting options. You have to track your results and performance.

I mainly used Keyword Targeting and Product Targeting. Looking at the overall performance of my Ads, it was profitable. But, the main target of Amazon Ads is not to make a direct profit. I realized running Ads increases your organic reach of the books. So, even if the Campaign is not profitable at the start, you will get much more ROI in the long run from your Ads. (That being said, you need to have a clear Advertising Strategy and Quality Books).

Running Amazon Ads is one of the most (if not the most) important things you can do to scale your KDP business.

So, that’s how I made over $57,000 from Low-content publishing.

If you are interested in low-content publishing, I hope this blog post inspires you and gives you useful tips. Keep going, and keep learning.

Thank you for reading, and happy publishing!