Make money selling low content books on Amazon

amyjay

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I'm still slow but happy with the process etc. I am still working on my first niche. As it is hard finding time, I am not going to commit to seasonal books just now (though maybe I'd manage Christmas if I started now :ROFLMAO:). I have had some sales which has been encouraging and I might try bring some of my books together in a series so that is my next thing to look into.

How are you doing? Is the Easter kids book doing well?
I'm about break even after ads on the kids Easter book. My other season books are doing well this month though.
 

jollyjelly

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Awesome. The beauty of it is that your Easter book(s) will still be about next year and with some sales behind them, will hopefully keep doing really well next year.

I ordered an author copy of my first book and I'm not overly impressed with how Amazon have printed it tbh. I have text to the side of each page and have calculated the margins and needed to ensure I was within the safe space for both left and right pages. But, I found that even though my left pages all have the same margin, not all of the text was in exactly the same place on the left pages as I looked through my author copy. Same for the right pages. Some I felt were a bit close to the edge of the page although all still within the safe zone. I've brought the text/my margin guides in a bit for future books. I guess it's just how the pages are cut but still I felt a bit disappointed with the print and went away to check I hadn't accidently inserted a left page where a right page should be (which would then knock off all pages thereafter). I will order a copy of the next book I get up just to see if bringing it all in a bit has helped. Not sure if anyone has come across a similar thing?
 

rninja

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@jollyjelly, how many pages is the book? Must admit I've kept left and right pages with the same margins for 100-120 Page books, just couldn't work out the supposed correct margin sizes in Canva.
 

jollyjelly

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@jollyjelly, how many pages is the book? Must admit I've kept left and right pages with the same margins for 100-120 Page books, just couldn't work out the supposed correct margin sizes in Canva.
It only really matters to me as I wanted the text quite to the edge. The book's 120 pages and 6x9 inch. I'm hoping to put another book up using my same template over the next week so I'll get an author copy and see if it's any better. Will let you know.
 
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unicornrider

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Just a quickie, how long does it take for them to approve a book. I submitted 3 on the 17th and they are all still under review?
 

jollyjelly

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Just a quickie, how long does it take for them to approve a book. I submitted 3 on the 17th and they are all still under review?
It took until day 4 for my first book to be approved. Think they aim to approve books within 72 hours though.
 

amyjay

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Depends on type of book.
Low content books are normally between 2 days and a week for me.

Books with more content, get approved within 24 hours.

In late November / December, approval time is really slow. Can take 2 weeks to get a book approved.
 

charlyn

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I’ve got about 80 books on kdp now, a mix of notebooks, planners and 4 colouring books. Not getting many sales though!
I think I’ve realised I should have done more keyword research as I don’t think my books are getting found as it’s so competitive. I’m going to focus on finding good keywords and I want to start making puzzle books.
Hope everyone else is doing well.
 

jollyjelly

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I’ve got about 80 books on kdp now, a mix of notebooks, planners and 4 colouring books. Not getting many sales though!
I think I’ve realised I should have done more keyword research as I don’t think my books are getting found as it’s so competitive. I’m going to focus on finding good keywords and I want to start making puzzle books.
Hope everyone else is doing well.
Super achievement, very well done!

I still only have three on the go and have made a few sales on one as it is pretty niche but clearly not popular, lol. Instead of doing more books, I've spent what time I have watching videos on Youtube to try learn a bit more. I feel better equipped now and will likely play about with this niche from time to time to try things out.

Looking forward to moving to a different area and want to try images so I will soon be looking at Creative Fabrica's licence to see how it works (couldn't quite see exactly what the difference between the single use and subscription licences were on first glance). So in summary, I've made £9.63 in total (lol!) but learned a lot in the process.
 

amyjay

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I’ve got about 80 books on kdp now, a mix of notebooks, planners and 4 colouring books. Not getting many sales though!
I think I’ve realised I should have done more keyword research as I don’t think my books are getting found as it’s so competitive. I’m going to focus on finding good keywords and I want to start making puzzle books.
Hope everyone else is doing well.
That's great that you're getting some sales!

I actually spend a lot more time researching than I do sometimes making the books and because of the amount of time I spend researching keywords, most of my books sell organically when they're put on without ads.

Some sell only a few copies a month and others sell a lot more.

I have 150 books.
 
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unicornrider

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@amyjay would you recommend using the Series feature to link similar items to increase sales. For example I am looking at doing a journal that is linked to a log book of a similar subject. If I put it in a Series then Amazon will offer them together as well as separate from my understanding. I was hoping that it might get those impulse purchases of the two items to increase sales?
 

jollyjelly

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@amyjay would you recommend using the Series feature to link similar items to increase sales. For example I am looking at doing a journal that is linked to a log book of a similar subject. If I put it in a Series then Amazon will offer them together as well as separate from my understanding. I was hoping that it might get those impulse purchases of the two items to increase sales?
From what I've read, grouping your related books into a series is recommended. You can even mention in your blurb that it is part of a series and if a customer is interested, they'd be more likely to buy the additional book than if they had to find it by chance. If anything, having a series title gives you the chance to include some more keywords which, in turn, should help you to be found.
 
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amyjay

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@amyjay would you recommend using the Series feature to link similar items to increase sales. For example I am looking at doing a journal that is linked to a log book of a similar subject. If I put it in a Series then Amazon will offer them together as well as separate from my understanding. I was hoping that it might get those impulse purchases of the two items to increase sales?
Yes I'd recommend it.

I've got a few series, not sure how much it actually helps me but I do it regardless.
 

jollyjelly

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Hi - I'm going to try out using images. Would appreciate any advice anyone has, thank you.

1. Those that use Creative Fabrica did you initially buy images outright before subscribing? If you subscribe do you always modify the images to make sure you still have POD licence in case you stop subscribing?

2. Printing images with standard black and white settings - do areas of black show up on the next page? In my author copy of a book with text, I can see the black text through the next page and was wondering if anyone gets complaints for any heavy graphics showing through?
 

amyjay

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Hi - I'm going to try out using images. Would appreciate any advice anyone has, thank you.

1. Those that use Creative Fabrica did you initially buy images outright before subscribing? If you subscribe do you always modify the images to make sure you still have POD licence in case you stop subscribing?

2. Printing images with standard black and white settings - do areas of black show up on the next page? In my author copy of a book with text, I can see the black text through the next page and was wondering if anyone gets complaints for any heavy graphics showing through?
I buy and I also buy the full POD licence incase I don't want to edit the image. I do this as often I don't edit the images and if I had the subscription, if you ever cancel, you have to take down the images you've not edited.

I don't use a huge amount of graphics so this works for me.

Can't help with number 2 as I've not actually bought any of my own books.
 

jollyjelly

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I buy and I also buy the full POD licence incase I don't want to edit the image. I do this as often I don't edit the images and if I had the subscription, if you ever cancel, you have to take down the images you've not edited.

I don't use a huge amount of graphics so this works for me.

Can't help with number 2 as I've not actually bought any of my own books.
Thanks @amyjay . I think I'll also just buy to get full POD licence just now until I see if it's worth my while subscribing. I'm likely to edit images in some form so I'd likely be fine with a subscription even if I cancelled. But I'd need to keep track in case I didn't so I knew to either take down the book or buy that specific image POD rights.

I'm fussy when it comes to paper thickness at the best of times so I might buy a B&W book that has something similar to me and see how it looks. I could opt for colour paper as it is (slightly) thicker but will see how it goes. I hate that you can't put it on hold until you've seen an author copy - I need to learn to be more chill, lol.
 

unicornrider

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WOOOOOOO - I have sold my first book. So I had put together a series of Journals and Log Books for Equestrians. I did promote it (for free) on Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, an online forum I am active on and my blog. That went live on Friday, so was over the moon to have a sale on Amazon KPD this morning. Hopefully this is the start of many more.
 

Kingsavvysaver

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WOOOOOOO - I have sold my first book. So I had put together a series of Journals and Log Books for Equestrians. I did promote it (for free) on Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, an online forum I am active on and my blog. That went live on Friday, so was over the moon to have a sale on Amazon KPD this morning. Hopefully this is the start of many more.
Well done :) Must be a great feeling.

Any tips on how to promote?
 

unicornrider

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Well done :) Must be a great feeling.

Any tips on how to promote?
Oh gosh I don't know if I am the right person to be giving advice on this but what I have done is as follows - I have a fairly loyal set of followers on Facebook and Instagram that feed onto my blog. So I realised that if I didn't take the mickey, some of these guys would support my idea. Also the horsey forum I am on, is very popular. I have been posting on there for over 10 years, traffic from that forum to my blog can run to 100s of views a day of my blog. So again, in a subtle way I popped up a link to my blog in a post I wrote and that fed to my website and I can see that a lot of people did follow on the direct links to my books on Amazon. My books are niche and in an area that does not seem over crowded, as I have a fair amount of experience in the area so my books are a bit different to the other generic ones. I hope I get a good few more sales as I did put a lot of time into these!
 
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