Are you an introvert who’s looking for a side hustle where you can be creative, make passive income, and not have to do any self-promotion or ask people to buy things from you? 

I’m here to tell you that self-publishing is one of the BEST ways to earn money (especially if you don’t want to work too hard, like me). 🙂

Maybe you have the next best-selling novel you’ve been waiting to publish. Or maybe you’re an artist looking for a way to make money from your drawings. But even if you don’t have any writing, drawing, or design skills, you can still start a self-publishing business.

How? With Low-Content and Medium-Content Books

If you think of traditional books, like novels and biographies and self-help books, as “High-Content” (as in, having a high amount of content in them), then Low- and Medium- Content books are things like journals, notebooks, puzzle books, coloring books, planners, and logbooks – books that don’t require a lot of writing inside of them. In fact, notebooks and journals with just plain lined pages inside of them are sometimes called “No-Content” Books, because they require absolutely no writing or design inside of them at all. 

Not many people know that you can create one of these Low- or Medium- or No- Content books, publish it for FREE on Amazon, and earn royalties from it while never having to do another thing to maintain it.

And one of the best parts of this (in my opinion)? You never have to talk to another person. That alone just makes my introverted heart sing. 

We introverts tend to be creative, and we tend to be big fans of books. That was one of the things that drew me to self-publishing—I’m passionate about books. I love reading them, writing in them, and creating them.

Here are 9 reasons why publishing on Amazon is a great side hustle for introverts:

1. You can start for 100% FREE

I didn’t spend any money on tools or software to create books until I had made about $300. You can use the free version of Canva to create simple, but beautiful book interiors and covers.

2. It’s a way to create a product that is uniquely yours

You can be as creative as possible. You make the design, and then Amazon will print it out in book form whenever someone orders it, literally turning your creation into a reality!

3. You don’t have to show your face (or even use your real name)

Unlike a YouTube channel or even a blog, it’s not necessarily for you to show your face or spend any amount of time in front of a camera. You can even use pen names if you don’t want to use your real name.

4. Thousands of people who shop on Amazon will see your books

Amazon is the largest online retailer in the world! People who shop on Amazon are ready to buy and trust that they will find something great.

5. Once you publish the book, the royalties that come are completely passive income

After a book is published, you don’t need to do anything else to maintain it. You can “set it and forget it.”

6. You don’t have to worry about inventory

This is huge, because 1) you don’t have to worry about storing boxes and boxes of product, and 2) you don’t have to cover the costs of any inventory upfront! Amazon only prints a book when it makes a sale, so you won’t lose any money if the book never sells.

7. Amazon takes care of the printing, packing, and shipping

You don’t have to lift a finger when you make a sale. Your book will be printed, packaged, and shipped to the customer, all while you’re off living your best life.

8. They take care of the customer service too!

If there is a problem with the order or if the customer decides to return it… you don’t have to worry about that! This is another thing that I LOVE as an introvert. I wouldn’t want to deal with unhappy customers.

9. And of course…. You don’t have to talk to a single person! 😉

An introvert’s dream, right?

Can you make money from publishing low-content books on Amazon KDP?

While some people can (and do) make $1000s of dollars per month by self-publishing books on KDP, it’s definitely not a get-rich-quick scheme for most people. I’ve heard it called a “marathon,” not a sprint. 

That being said, once you start publishing books, you might start making money right away. In my first year of publishing on KDP, I made about $1000 total. It was a little bit slow going for me at first. But in my second year, I made over $10,000. 

In that time, I definitely put in some hours for this side hustle. But it wasn’t a TON of time. I went for months at a time without doing anything at all, but the royalties still came in all the same. 

Now, it’s been three years since I started publishing on KDP, and I’ve made $39,000 on the platform. But I’ve slowed down on publishing books, so it hasn’t taken me much work. In fact, in the past year, I’ve probably done about 20 hours of work total on it.

So, if you think you’d enjoy creating your own books, I’d highly recommend giving self-publishing on KDP a try!

Best of luck!

Before You Go…

I have some videos about my experience publishing on KDP, as well as some tips about it, on my YouTube channel, which you can check out here. 

For full tutorials on how to get started, I recommend searching on YouTube, which is mostly how I learned. Here’s a playlist on starting out from a creator I enjoy.