To answer the question, we must first know what we a trying to sell. What is a low-content book? A low-content book is a book that has minimal writing and pictures. They are usually planners, journals, or notebooks. Sometimes medium-content books, like coloring books and activity books, are grouped with low-content books. Low-content books are sold in retail stores like Walmart, Target, and Barnes and Noble and they can be sold online through Amazon, Lulu, and Etsy. Selling low-content books at any of these stores has its challenges, but today we will discuss selling your low-content book on Amazon.
Low-content books are not easy to sell, a few years ago, that may have been true, but the market is saturated; it takes a lot of research and work to get your low-content book in front of customers. Low-content books are easier and faster to create than novels or short guides, but that does not make them easy to sell. It makes them easier to create!
Now most of us have heard the saying, if it is too good to be true, it probably is. That’s true for low-content books as well. The most frustrating part is that for months now, YouTube has exploded with people telling you that you can make thousands of dollars a month selling lined paper. “It only takes 30 minutes a day.” “It’s the easiest side hustle ever.” Just design a cover for a template that has been used 100 times already and you can watch the money flow in. This is deceiving. The hardest thing I have found in selling these types of books is getting noticed in the sea of lined paper. Hundreds of people have flocked to Amazon KDP to publish their low-content books. Standing out in the crowd is difficult unless you have hundreds of friends ready to buy your book the moment it is published. Does that mean you shouldn’t do it? Absolutely not!
Let’s dig deeper into selling low-content books on Amazon and how we can make it easier.
Amazon makes it easy to publish your book but very hard to climb out of the basement once it is on their website. Their algorithms can make or break your hard work. You need to be sure that your title and keywords are accurate. What’s the competition for your book look like? Is your description good or is it too long or too short? If all of that is good and you sell just one book, they let you peek out of the basement door, but if that book doesn’t sell again for a few weeks, back to the bottom of the stairs you go. But how do we get out of Amazon’s basement of sad books? We must find ways to stand out.
If you are having trouble with this first step, read this article on how to write your book description.
Amazon took away a lot of features they had in 2022 for KDP low-content sellers. Ways to help customers know what your book was. They no longer give you the look-inside feature, the ability to put videos of your books on the site, and free ISBNs. If you are selling just lined paper, that’s ok. Everyone knows what plain lined paper looks like, but what if your selling lined paper with fun symbols, flowers, or inspirational quotes on each page? Something unique to you and your brand? Lucky for us, Amazon left a workaround that many low-content publishers do not use; the A+ content. Otherwise, known as the from the publisher section under your book. The A+ Content page is your only hope to let customers know your book is not run-of-the-mill lined paper. That your book is special, it’s different.
Remember, we asked, “Is it easy to sell low-content books?” Well, creating the A+ content for each book you published just added more time to your day. As if you weren’t already busy designing beautiful books. Now you need to design your own look inside feature. I think we have left the 30 minutes a day in the rearview mirror.
Here is how I design my A+ content pages and how you can use this awesome feature.
After you have published your book and your A+ content you can sit back a rake in the passive income! Wrong! Remember, we are hanging out in the Amazon Book Basement. We’ve only scratched the surface of selling your low-content book. The A+ content was just in case we got lucky and a customer found us. The next thing you need to do to help your little book along is social media. I said before if you have hundreds of friends this will be easy. But if you do not, now you need to find hundreds of friends. Just like the A+ content, you need to create a post showing off your new book and link that back to your Amazon page. You need to drive traffic to your books from all corners of the internet.
Here are 5 free ways I promote my low-content books.
OK, we have published a book, created an A+ content page for it, and posted it to social media. We are making the big bucks now, right? Sadly, not yet. There are still a few more things to do. If you are saying to yourself what’s the point? I am still not making money. I am out of here. I quit! I get it I wanted to quit at first too. I am not telling you to quit. I don’t think you should. I am just telling you that it’s not the easy side hustle, that a one-and-done thing that our internet friends have told us, but no business is.
You must treat this job like a real JOB! If you want to make money. You have got to give it your all. Walt Disney went bankrupt two times before Disneyland was created. I not saying go bankrupt. I am just saying that nothing is ever easy or free. So we are not giving up. We are persevering and moving ahead!
Have you set up your author page? A lot of KDP sellers don’t bother to use the author page, but personally, think it’s a must. The format on Amazon is a little cheesy and lacks the ability to put your branding flare on it. However, it does let shoppers know who you are and what else you are selling. It’s very simple and straightforward to use since there is not a lot to it. No designing. You will have to link all your books to this page. I usually do it when I am setting up the A+ content for each book. YOu can find this under Author Central under the Marketing tab on your bookshelf.
The last thing we need to do is Amazon Ads. Amazon ads are a whole confusing mess, and I will explain it in another article, but for today’s purposes, you just need to know that you should use them if traffic has been slow or not at all for your books. It will help bring your books up to the first few pages of Amazon’s search. If you are already there, I would not bother with the ads. A word of caution, be very careful with how much you spend on these ads. They can quickly eat up any profit you hoped to have and leave you in the negatives.
To wrap this up! Is it easy to sell low-content books? No, but if you are willing to put in some long hours perfecting your low-content publishing process, treat your new job like a legitimate business, and be open to the possibility of selling your book on multiple platforms. You can make a passive income selling low-content books. I hope this post helped clarify what it takes to make money selling low and medium-content books. Follow us and leave me a comment.
For more detailed information about low-content self-publishing, please click the links below.
Steps to selling your low content book
- Creating your book. I like to use Canva
- Writing your book description
- Creating A+ content and an Author page
- Promoting using social media posts
- Paying for Amazon Ads
- Be open to the possibility of selling your book on multiple platforms
Each day brings a new challenge it’s how we plan to overcome it that allows us to move forward.
As always, thanks for stopping by for some Salty Inspirations!
