When I first heard about selling low-content books on Amazon, I thought it was too good to be true.

“You make a book with blank pages inside? So all you have to design is the cover? And then Amazon will take care of the rest, while you sit back and enjoy thousands of dollars in passive income?” I thought.

Not surprisingly, it turns out it wasn’t quite as simple as that. 

In my first year of publishing on KDP, I only made $1000 total. That was the time when I was still learning how to create quality books that people actually wanted to buy.

As I improved, I made more and more each month, until I was regularly making $1000-$3000 a month. Since I first started, a little more than 3 years ago, I’ve made around $39,000. My KDP business has always been profitable, and it always will be.

Even though that’s not quite a full-time income for me, it’s been an awesome side hustle because it’s very passive. After a book is created, you can “set it and forget it,” so you can work at your own pace. In the past year, I’ve only published 2 or 3 books, which only took a handful of hours to make, but the royalties from my older books continued to come in.

Here are my tips on how to be successful in Amazon KDP:

1. Create books that you would actually be excited about buying.

I started off making plain notebooks for small niches that I wasn’t a part of. A few of them sold, but many of them didn’t. 

When I finally made a book that I actually was pumped to use myself, my sales took off. I didn’t come up with this idea while doing keyword research; it just came to me and I couldn’t stop thinking, “That would be such a fun book.”

Then, I focused on making it the best it could be – with plenty of pages and a gorgeous cover.

2. Be as creative as possible, then see what’s already out there.

Since Amazon is already flooded with plain journals and notebooks, it’s quite difficult to compete in those niches.

Rather than creating books that lots of people had already created, I would brainstorm unique ideas for books, stretching myself to think as far outside the box as possible.

When you’re brainstorming ideas, try to phrase it like this: 

“A book for [group of people] to do [activity or outcome]”

Then, you can make an endless list of ideas by filling in the blanks! Be as random as you want.

Examples:

A book for senior citizens to do crossword puzzles.

A book for band geeks to write down visualization exercises.

A book for cat lovers to record their weight loss goals.

A book for 8th graders to improve their handwriting.

Once you’ve brainstormed a whole long list of ideas, see if any of them resonate with you as something that you would actually buy (for yourself or for a friend). 

Then, search for similar books on Amazon. Do they exist? Have they sold copies? Can you make something better?

If so, start creating that book!

If no books like yours exist, it may be because it’s too random of an idea… but trust your gut! If you think it’s a winning idea, maybe others will think so too. You could be the first one in a new trend.

3. Focus on the cover.

I’ve found that the cover is the most important thing that sells the book.

If it’s a beautiful, gorgeous cover AND it’s a book that’s intriguing or useful to a potential customer, they’re going to have a hard time saying no.

Look at other book covers that are in similar niches to your book and ask yourself what is good or bad about them.

Study best-selling books in other niches and determine what makes them so effective.

If a cover stands out to you as a million-dollar cover, save a screenshot of it and use it as inspiration. Don’t copy the cover, but identify what the cover does well and incorporate that into your own design.

It will take you some time to get good at cover design, and if you don’t want to learn the ins and outs, you can look into hiring someone to create a cover for you.

Conclusion

Can you make money from Amazon KDP? Absolutely!

It’s not a quick fix, but it’s a great way to be creative and make passive income (plus, it’s a perfect business for introverts!)

If you want to get started publishing on KDP, I recommend doing some research on YouTube, as there are a lot of creators with super helpful (free) tutorials. I enjoy The Home Boss and Rachel Harrison-Sund.

Best of luck!