Make money selling low content books on Amazon

Kingsavvysaver

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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!
Appreciate the response :)
 
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jollyjelly

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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, that is really super! Really good that you are promoting it in the right places too as it will send traffic your way. The first sale is so exciting, here's to loads more for you!
 

jollyjelly

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A nice first for me today - first ever payment from Amazon. It's only for £6.42 but here's hoping I can put some time aside and get things moving.

Hoping things are going well for everyone else!
 

rninja

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No sales since the start of April. Uploaded loads of books recently, so hopefully they'll get some traction. Mostly focusing on hobbies and sports related books.
 

jollyjelly

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Hopefully it'll pick up soon with your new uploaded books, rninja.

I seem to take ages doing a book. Research takes so long and then putting it together. I only have one book that gets sales and they are infrequent but I had my first US sale a couple of days ago so I'm happy with that. I also got a five star rating on the UK market. My aim is to get going in my other area as I want to try using graphics.

Wishing luck to you all for the month ahead!
 
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jollyjelly

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Hi. Has anyone used various shades of grey in graphics when printing a black and white book? Did you buy an author copy to see how it turned out? I hope to do that soon but just curious about the quality of printing.

I also wondered if anyone had made a book and then provided it in Kindle format? I might venture into this, too, and wondered if there was any tips on what to look out for?

Hope you are all selling well!
 

curiousandgeeks

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Hello,

I used different shades of grey on an activity book I made and it turned out fine. I also tried leaving a colored page in a B&W interior and it was printed in greyscale directly and turned out fine as well.

Never tried the Kindle format as my books are not appropriate for that.
 

jollyjelly

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Hello,

I used different shades of grey on an activity book I made and it turned out fine. I also tried leaving a colored page in a B&W interior and it was printed in greyscale directly and turned out fine as well.

Never tried the Kindle format as my books are not appropriate for that.
Thanks. Good to hear that it all looked fine in greyscale. Handy that leaving a coloured page in looks ok too. I suppose I would just need to check that any colours were contrasting enough if I was going to leave a coloured page in a B&W book.
 

rninja

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@jollyjelly, I create interiors on Canva or Google Slides. When I download as PDF print, assume the grey/black shades look the same as the PDF.
 
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unicornrider

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My KPD journey is not going that well, despite me best efforts my sales are stuck at one lonely book. I am doing one more promo on my socials before looking at what I do next. I invested a lot of time and effort into the interiors. And weirdly when I did some market research the area I am in was brought up as something people wanted. Hmmm.
 

unicornrider

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Redbubble is also very much a loss too, but I haven't promoted that at all
 

mum2one

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Again another print on demand opportunity so no money is required just a little time and maybe some design knowledge. If you don't know already Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP) is a print on demand service that allows authors to sell their work on Amazon and get paid a royalty for each sale.

But I can't write? Nor can I but what not so many people know it that you can create and sell low content books through Amazon

Low content books could include....

notepads
study guides
pain logs
birdwatching log
diary/planner
cue book
and literally thousands more!

Here are some examples of ones that other people have created (not mine) you can see they are on the KDP programme as the publisher is listed as CreateSpace or on newer books I've seen it listed as Independently published


How do I design a front cover?

Download one of Amazon's templates for the size book you want to make. 6x9 is a very popular size

https://kdp.amazon.com/en_US/cover-templates

How do I design an interior?

You can use many programmes for example photoshop, illustrator or even word and excel to make interiors!

Can I get a quick start?

Sure I've attached a college ruled 6x9 PDF with bleed. Simple duplicate to how many pages you want in your notebook and upload!

KDP FACEBOOK GROUPS

https://www.facebook.com/groups/amazoncreatespace
 

mum2one

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A friend of mine is a self published author on amazon, she finds most of her sales are kindle downloads
 
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jollyjelly

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My KPD journey is not going that well, despite me best efforts my sales are stuck at one lonely book. I am doing one more promo on my socials before looking at what I do next. I invested a lot of time and effort into the interiors. And weirdly when I did some market research the area I am in was brought up as something people wanted. Hmmm.
It's hard to figure out why a book will or won't sell. Is there something on the market that is similar that is selling. Maybe it is something as simple as a font or layout that people don't like. Can you look at reviews of ones that do sell and see if there's anything to learn there? Or maybe changing your keywords would help, or ensuring you are in the right number of categories.

I haven't tried out paid adverts but there is a lot of training online available. Your social media adverts are a good shout. Hope it picks up soon for you!
 

unicornrider

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It's hard to figure out why a book will or won't sell. Is there something on the market that is similar that is selling. Maybe it is something as simple as a font or layout that people don't like. Can you look at reviews of ones that do sell and see if there's anything to learn there? Or maybe changing your keywords would help, or ensuring you are in the right number of categories.

I haven't tried out paid adverts but there is a lot of training online available. Your social media adverts are a good shout. Hope it picks up soon for you!
Randomly sold two journals over the weekend - that was totally unexpected! I haven't been promoting those, mostly the log books. So have no idea what is going on there. Anyway it has spurred me to get back to doing some better cover art for the covers as the inside layout is exactly where it needs to be!
 

Annie Beau

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Ive dawdled with the KDP idea, but found a bit enthusiasm to look into it again recently. When I googled KDP, the trustpilot page came up and the ratings are shocking. Im well aware that peeople mainly tend to review when they have a bad experience but not even one good review. Ill probably still dawdle along but also when looking at the comments on trustpilot someone has mentioned a self publishing company called Lulu - seems that you can sell on amazon with them so pretty much like print on demand . Anyone used them?
 

Annie Beau

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Lightning Source are another print on demand supplier for books - these alternatives perhaps not as simple as KDP as you have to do your own sales and marketing - but may be worth looking into if you could establish a market place on etsy or siimilar.
lulu seems a simpler option of the two
https://www.lulu.com/
 
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unicornrider

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Randomly sold two journals over the weekend - that was totally unexpected! I haven't been promoting those, mostly the log books. So have no idea what is going on there. Anyway it has spurred me to get back to doing some better cover art for the covers as the inside layout is exactly where it needs to be!
Again another two sales of the journals. Talking to a few people I think I need to change the wording on my log books to something more horsey as I think that's my best product but no sales. So will be changing the name on the cover and see if that helps.
So far I have made £50 so that has nearly paid for the time I put into making them.
 

amyjay

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Thought I'd give an update.

I've been doing KDP for just over a year now and have made just over £11000 in royalties (gross earnings)

My aim for the next year (July 2021 to June 2022) is to earn £30000 net. To do this, I need to have steady regular months as well as an outstanding Christmas.
 

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