5 Simple Steps To Building Your Low-Content Publishing Business

Low-Content Publishing on Amazon. Maybe you’ve heard the term tossed around, or heard people talking about it on YouTube. You may have heard how people are making some extra money, or even making a full time income from creating their very own journals and selling them on Amazon. If you’ve ever wondered what in the world they are talking about, you’re in the right place.

In this post, I’m going to give you the skinny on what Low-Content Publishing on Amazon is, why you’d want to jump in and get involved, and 5 steps to get you going.

What is Low-Content Publishing on Amazon

In a nutshell, Low-Content Publishing ( I capitalize it because it really is that awesome) is creating a journal or an activity book of some kind or any type of physical book you can write in.

Remember when you were little and kept a diary? You may have spent hours each day writing down all your thoughts and life events so you could later reflect on them, or even read them to your own children one day! (My kids found my diary from 7th grade the other day, and we all had a ball reading about my crushes and teenage angst!.…ahhh….that was a moment!)

A diary is an example of a Low-Content Book you could easily create and sell on Amazon.

Any kind of book that you interact with and write in is considered either a No-Content Book (just a lined notebook) or a Low-Content Book (workbooks, logbooks, activity books, any book with more than just lines).

Think going into Barnes and Nobles and visiting the sections with all the beautiful, colorful, artsy planners and journals. You’d see dated and undated calendar planners, mindfulness journals, memory books, lesson planning books, mileage log books, Bible study notebooks, gratitude journals. There’s all kinds of different types of Low-Content Books.

These (and many more) are the kinds of books you will be creating with your Low-Content Book publishing business.

You may be thinking ‘I have no idea how to make something like that’. Don’t worry about that for right now. It’s super duper easy, and when you find out just how easy it is, you are literally going to be amazed.

Why You’d Want To Jump In and Get Involved

Have you ever heard of the term ‘passive income’? If you haven’t, let me introduce you to the most sought after financial concept ever to exist in the history of the human race.

Passive income is basically when you invest in something once, but reap the rewards of that investment over and over again for years to come, without ever having to work for that initial investment again. It’s like the gift that just keeps giving.

Think stocks. People invest their money in stocks hoping their money will grow. If the market is doing good, their money is out there making more money for them without them having to do any more work after the initial investment.

It’s when money is consistently being sent to your bank account while you are sleeping, vacationing, visiting relatives in France…you get the point.

Low-Content Publishing is a way to create a stream of passive income for yourself. And it’s one of the best kinds of businesses, because it costs exactly $0 to get started. Unless you want to invest in some of the tools that have been created to help with design and finding niches, you won’t have to spend a dime to get your first books created, uploaded, and sold on Amazon’s KDP (Kindle Direct Publishing Platform).

You won’t even have to pay Amazon to print out your books first. When you upload a paperback book into your KDP dashboard, Amazon will only print out your book if it sells. They take a small percentage of your selling price, and ship your book to the customer. You don’t even have to worry about shipping.

Some of the books that I have created over the past few years, I have never actually seen a physical copy of. I just create them, upload them, add all my listing information, and move on to make more.

A friend of mine bought a few of my password log books for her family as Christmas gifts one year, and she brought them to church to show me. They were even more beautiful in person than I’d imagined! And it really brought me a sense of joy to know that I had created something like that! I felt very proud.

I don’t make a living from Low-Content Publishing as of this writing, but that’s only because I have not been able to give it the time it takes to do that. It takes time. Just like anything else in life that is worth anything. I do, however, make a nice chunk of change each month that really helps my bottom line out and I’d definitely miss it if it wasn’t there. I work part time and homeschool, so most days it’s like trying to keep my head above water juggling all my different roles, so when I open up my KDP reports and see my sales, it really brings a smile to my face.

Do you want to learn how to create Low-Content Books on Amazon and make some passive income too?

5 Simple Steps To Building Your Very Own Low-Content Publishing Business

Let’s start by taking a look at the big, bad graphic below. (Pin it on Pinterest for later so you won’t forget!)

Step 1 – Do Your Research

When I say research, I am referring to researching what kinds of Low-Content Books people are looking for most on Amazon (your niche), finding out how much competition there is in that niche, and if there is high demand and not much competition, moving on to create a book in that niche.

There’s some really clever ways to do this research, and I talk you through it with the steps you need to take and the free tools that are available to you here – Keyword Research for Selling Low-Content Books and Journals on Amazon.

If you get your research right, your book will be a winner right out of the gate. Skip this step and you’ll probably be where I was a few years ago when I had this ingenious idea of creating a book that I thought was in a secret, hidden niche no one had thought of yet (because there were zero books like it on the market). However, the real reason there were zero books like it on the market was because absolutely no one was searching for or wanting a book like that. The post I linked to above talks about that failure. If you want a good laugh, check it out. You’ll be shocked at what the ‘hidden’ niche was!

So, yea, my bad…you live and learn I suppose.

I knew about research too, and how important it is. But, for some reason, in all my brilliance, I thought I had uncovered a gold mine. Ha!

Bottom line, make sure you research your niche BEFORE you go spending time on creating a bunch of books.

Step 2 – Create Your Interior

Once you have concluded your research and you’ve narrowed it down with good keywords and you’ve studied some designs of your competitors, it’s time to create the interior of your book.

Free Tools I Use To Design My Books

Canva – I use (and LOVE) Canva to create my interiors and my covers. It’s free. And paid if you want access to more images and features. I used the free version of Canva for quite some time before I upgraded to the paid version. I only upgraded because I really wanted to be able to resize my images without having to create all new ones, and I also sell KDP Book Covers and Interior templates on Etsy for anyone who doesn’t want to spend a dog’s age creating their own. And in order to share an independent copy of the template with anyone else, you need the pro version of Canva.

The pro version also has alot more images to choose from when designing your books and it’s only like $12 a month. Totally worth it in my opinion. We’ll talk more about Canva when we get to the designing your cover step.

Powerpoint – You can also design your interiors in Microsoft Powerpoint. If you have Powerpoint, this is a great option, which will give you lots of flexibility in design. I say this is a free tool because most people have Office 365 installed on their computers anyway, and already have access to Powerpoint.

When I first started out in Low-Content Publishing, I took this course that showed me how to get started and it also gave a step-by-step on how to use Powerpoint to design interiors and covers. I had never used it before, and I was surprised at how much you can do with it.

I made my very first journals following the detailed instructions in that course, and was able to get my little business up and running a lot faster than if I would have tried to figure it all out on my own.

I had never used Powerpoint before, but since starting my business, I find myself using it for a lot more now.

Book Bolt – If you don’t want to actually design your own interior, Book Bolt has free templates you can use. They also have free interior design software you can use to design your own, or take one of their’s and edit it to make it your own. They are kind of like a one-stop-shop for all things Low-Content Publishing. You can do your niche and keyword research using their tools, you can create and design your books, and they even have puzzle creation software you can use to make activity books for things like word searches and Soduko. They really are the bee’s knees when it comes to Low-Content Publishing tools. A monthly subscription will run about $9.99/month, but they offer a ton of free tools too, so take advantage of those.

I see people mention using Google Slides and Microsoft Word to create interiors also. I have never personally used either, but I know it’s possible, so if you are a Google Docs or Word expert, give it a try! Let me know in the comments if you do, and how it works out.

When you are searching for covers or interiors to use for your books, be sure they come with commercial rights. Always be sure to check with the seller and read the terms and conditions well when making your purchase to ensure you are allowed to use them on products you sell and make money from. This is another reason why I like to get my interiors from websites like Bookbolt. They exist solely for the purpose of providing you with tools to use to help you make money, so there’s never any doubt about usage rights.

Step 3 – Design Your Cover

After you have chosen your niche, identified lucrative keywords, and designed your interior, the next step is to design your cover. A lot of people don’t give this part of the process enough time and thought. Your book could rank on the first page for your keywords, or even be #1 on the first page, but if you have a crappy looking cover, you probably won’t get many sales. Especially if there are other books in your niche with better looking, more appealing covers.

I get it. Researching a niche and its keywords can be so time consuming, by the time you get to the design part of things, your brain is mush. However, you are only halfway to the finish line at this point, the way you run the second half of this race will make or break the success of all your previous efforts.

The design of your cover plays a major role in beating out your competitors. When shoppers land on a results page and see your book, you’ve got to give them a reason to click on yours, and not all the other books residing on that page.

Don’t worry if you don’t know a lick about design or what software to use. After you get a few designs under your belt, not only will you get good at designing book covers, I’ll bet you it even starts to become fun!

The first thing I usually do after I have chosen my niche and decided on a low content book to create is look at the books published by my competitors. I especially look at their covers. I take note of the following:

• Which books did my eyes go to first?
• What kinds of color schemes are the best sellers using?
• What types of fonts and font combinations do they use?
• What size books are the best sellers?
• Where are the images and text placed on the covers that caught my eye?

Answering questions like this will help you to decide on your own design strategy. Take some time to get to know what your competitor’s books look like. Emulate those designs. Don’t copy them. That will get you in hot water. But do use your competition as inspiration and guidance on what kinds of covers appeal to that niche’s specific target audience.

Are most of the best selling books in your niche bright and cheery in color and font? If so, creating a dark cover with alarming images or creepy looking font probably wouldn’t get you too far.

Are most of the best selling books in your niche 8.5 x 11? If so, ask yourself if the size of the book matters. Is it the case that a smaller book wouldn’t make much sense for your chosen niche for some reason? If so, you may want to also create a book that is 8.5 x 11 in size.

Guest books are a good example of books that are usually square or rectangle in design, so if you are making one, you might want to explore KDPs less common sizes, like 8×8.

Dive deep into analyzing the way your competition looks so you can run with the best of them.

Out of all the steps in the low content book process, I like designing my covers the best. I use Canva to design my covers, and like I said above, I love it. I used to use Photoshop believe it or not, but I find Canva so so much quicker, less bulky, and because my computer is just your typical middle of the road consumer quality machine, Photoshop bogs my system down and everything begins to run slow.

Canva, on the other hand, is online, so nothing is stored on my computer’s hard drive. So convenient. Like I said, I use the pro version of Canva. In the pro version, I can resize my images, which means I can easily repurpose my designs for different size covers. I can also delete background images and download as .pngs with the pro version, which is helpful if you want to extract images out of other images and place those extractions on other images in a natural looking way.

The pro version also has many more images you can use commercially, so I don’t have to go buy stock photos on expensive websites like iStock or Shutterstock. Don’t get me wrong, those websites have some awesome images and graphics you can use, but Canva has just as many, they are just as nice, and I can pull them right onto my design with a mouse click. So, yea, if yo go pro with Canva, you won’t be disappointed.

You definitely don’t have to go pro, the free version of Canva is what I used to create my first 50 or books, and it was a very good experience. I learned a lot about design just using Canva. Because you can drag and drop so easily, and it’s so user friendly, you can quickly become a design pro without any of the hassle of feeling like you have to learn a new, complicated design software.

So if you have been hesitant to get into Low-Content Publishing because you are intimidated by the design aspect, fret no longer, just sign up at Canva, and test it out for yourself. You’ll be pleasantly surprised at how easy it is to use. I just signed my 10 year old up with his own account, and within 30 minutes he walked into my office with his laptop and showed me a short video he edited for YouTube and the thumbnail he created to go along with it.

If a 10 year old can grasp how the program works that quickly, just think how easily you will pick it up.

Ok…..end rant about Canva!

Another great, very easy program (I also already mentioned) you can use is Book Bolt. I talked a little above about Book Bolt when we discussed creating interiors, and we talked about all the tools they offer for niche and keyword research, but they also have a cover creator. They really are a one-stop shop for low content book publishers. They have lots of images and fonts to work with. Enough to get you up and running for a long time. One nice thing about the Book Bolt cover designer is they have the KDP sizes already templated out for you. There’s no creating your own cover image, and hoping you get it right, Book Bolt lets you choose which size book you are creating, and how many pages your book will be, and it creates just the right size template for you to work with. Here is a neat tutorial on how you can create a patterned design using their cover designer.

There are lots of ways to get creative with your covers. You just have to dive in and start doing it, and you’ll be a pro in no time!

Some other programs you can use to design your covers are:

• Powerpoint
• Microsoft Word
• Photoshop
• Illustrator
• Google Slides
• ….any program where you can insert text and images is fair game for making a KDP cover.

KDP also has their own cover creator you can use for free.

There are also a ton of videos on YouTube that show you how to make a cover. Just type in ‘how to make a cover for KDP paperback‘ and you’ll find tutorials on how to do it using all kinds of different programs.

Step 4 – Upload To Kdp

The next step in the process is to upload your book to Amazon KDP. You’ll need to create a KDP account first and get familiar with the KDP platform. Creating a listing is very simple.

• Set up your title and subtitle – Probably the most important place your keywords will reside. Your title and subtitle are weighted the heaviest when it comes to where Amazon ranks for keywords. That means you want to put the keywords/key phrases you are trying to be ranked for most in your title and your subtitle. Look at your competitor’s titles. How do they weave their keywords in? Are their titles long or short? Do your best to insert your best keywords here in your title and subtitle. Don’t be spammy though. It has to flow. No one wants to look at a title that is just a bunch of random words strung together. Your customers won’t have a clue what your book is about and Amazon will probably not want to rank you for fear of bad customer experience if you keyword spam your title and subtitle. (Note – The title in your listing has to match the title that is on the cover of your book or on the spine of your book. If it doesn’t, chances are, the reviewer approving your book may kick it back. Your subtitle, however, does not have to be on your book cover or spine, and it can be used to describe your book in more detail.)
• Write your description – When writing your description, you’ll want to use as many keywords as you can, and still sound natural. One good way to do this is to look at your competitor’s descriptions, and study how they sprinkle important keywords into their write up. Look for any words they use that would be relevant to your listing, and copy and paste those words into a Word doc or text file so you can create your own descriptions using those words. Some people don’t think Amazon looks at your description for ranking you for keywords, but I personally think they do. I have no proof either way, but I can’t see how they would just ignore such a relevant part of your listing when deciding where to rank you. Google definitely picks up keywords from your description, so make sure you put effort and thought into your description, because your Amazon listing will show up for Google searchers based on your keywords.
• Choose your categories – Amazon lets you choose 2 categories for your book. Don’t get too hung up on this, just try your best to choose the most relevant categories. Many times, Amazon will put your book in different categories than you have chosen anyway, so while you should take some time choosing the best fit, don’t over think it. Also don’t spam categories that are obviously irrelevant. You’ll find lots of low content books in weird, off the wall categories they don’t belong in, and I suspect it was probably the seller trying to choose a category they could rank as a best seller in, however, Amazon is unpredictable, and in the blink of an eye, can wipe out your whole account for something you’ve been doing under the radar for years. I personally wouldn’t risk it and always would choose to pick relevant categories.
• Set your price – I hate to sound like a broken record, but once again, take a look at your competitors. What are the average prices books in your niche are selling for? You’ll want to be around that average number. Too high and buyers will skip you over, and too low, they may mistake the low price for low quality. People are funny that way, everyone wants to get the lowest price, yet, most people subconsciously associate a low price with low value. So it actually works out in your favor to list your book higher than the lowest priced books.
• Insert your back end keywords – When you are on your KDP listing page, there is a place where you can insert extra keywords and phrases that pertain to your book that maybe you weren’t able to use in your title or description. There are 7 slots you can input strings of keywords. Use these slots wisely. They are very important. Use them to their entirety. You can fit multiple words or phrases in each slot, separating them with a comma. Use up all your characters. Think of these slots like real estate. Don’t leave any real estate left, use it all up! (Note – you don’t need to use a word more than once. Amazon does not recognize subsequent instances of words. For example, if my keywords were “journal for her” and “journal for him”, I wouldn’t have to write the word “journal” more than once. I could input them like: “journal for her, him”. When you repeat words, you are just wasting precious real estate.)
• Your ISBN number – You can either buy your own ISBN number, or Amazon will offer you one for free. I have always used the free option. I have never purchased my own ISBN, so I wouldn’t even know where to direct you to do that. I imagine it would get pretty expensive to buy an ISBN number for each of your books when you have hundreds, or even like some, thousands, of books listed. The free option really comes in handy when you are creating lots of books. The only downfall I can see to letting Amazon give you a free ISBN number is that you can’t use that ISBN number anywhere else. It can only be used on KDP. So , if you would happen to want to publish your journals on a different platform at some point, you could not do so using Amazon’s issued ISBN. You can read more about Amazon’s ISBNs here.
• Expanded Distribution – There is an option to enroll your book in expanded distribution. If you choose to enroll in it, Amazon will make your book available to distributors so other book sellers can find your book and order it. Some people have found their books listed on other websites like Walmart.com even though they never listed it with Walmart. That’s just one example of expanded distribution. It’s free to enroll your book in expanded distribution. If you do choose to enroll, your book will be made available outside of Amazon. You can read more about expanded distribution here.
• Choose your print options – Before you upload your interior and cover to KDP, you’ll choose your ink and paper type, trim size, bleed setting, and cover finish. That sounds really complicated, but it’s really not. Basically, you are choosing black ink or color ink, white or cream paper, the size book you created, if you want bleed (use bleed when your images run to the edges of the page), and if you want your cover to be matte or glossy. For more information on your print options, go here.
• Upload and Preview – When you’ve got all your information inserted, Amazon will ask you to upload your interior and cover. It’s pretty straight forward. After they are uploaded, you’ll be able to preview exactly what your book will look like from cover to cover. The previewer will let you know if there are any problems, and it tells you exactly what is wrong so you can correct it before submitting your book. To learn more about uploading and previewing, click here.
• Publish! – When you have done all of the above, hit publish. This is the exciting part. Unfortunately, it’s also the part where you will wait anxiously wondering if your book will be approved. If you have followed all the rules, your book will have no problem getting approved. Sometimes it can take a few days depending on how busy the Amazon reviewers are. Real people review KDP submissions, so you’ll have to be patient. I have personally never had a book rejected by Amazon. I know it can happen for issues like copyright, but like I said, if you follow the rules, you will have no problem getting published.

If you are making and uploading more than one book at a time, a KDP lister tool is extremely helpful in speeding up the process. Book Bolt has a lister tool built in to their software that will drastically cut down the time you will spend uploading books to KDP.

Step 5- Repeat the Process

Once you have gotten your first book published on Amazon KDP, you will have the confidence to go a second, third, fourth ,and hopefully many, many more rounds. Repeat the process. And then repeat the process again. Soon you will have built yourself a nice little KDP empire, and if you stay the course, you might even be one of those really successful low content publishing success stories I hear about in the Facebook groups who are making $10k/month or $20k/month.

Yes, I said per month. You didn’t read that wrong. I have read more than a dozen testimonials from real people (who weren’t trying to sell me something) who provide screenshots of their KDP dashboard reports showing how they made this kind of income. It’s unbelievable, but inspirational at the same time.

It’s nice to know it’s possible to make that kind of money, and there is room enough for all of us to get a slice of the Amazon pie.

Good luck to you on your KDP journey!