7 Things NOBODY Tells You About Publishing Low Content Books on Amazon KDP - What You Need To Know!

in this video i'm going to talk about seven things that nobody tells you when publishing a low content books on amazon kdp so if you are a beginner to low content book publishing or have been wondering why your books aren't as selling as well as you thought they would this video might help you out welcome to my channel my name is caroline and if you are new here please take a moment to subscribe i would love for you to stick around for new videos that i upload every single week about making money online so low content book publishing is something that i started doing towards the end of 2020 and low content books are the kind of books that have very little to no content in them in terms of a word count they are books like notebooks journals and logbooks and then there are other books that are a little bit more involved to create and they are books like coloring books activity books and puzzle books one big thing that always comes up from people who are thinking about getting into this type of publishing is does amazon even let you publish low content books anymore and the answer is yes they definitely do and they have really embraced the demand that there is for these types of books and have recently specified guidelines for low content books specifically they have now categorized them into a type of book able to be uploaded to the amazon kdp platform so they are not going anywhere anytime soon there are some things that i have learned along my way to figuring out this business model that i thought i'd pass along and share with you because from the outside it can seem like a very easy way to make money i mean you don't need any experience you don't need to write a book or edit a book or anything like that you can make these books super quick and you can upload hundreds of them in the space of just days and then we have people who do share their income reports showing that they make thousands of dollars every single month from making these kinds of books and while i love those type of videos i find income reports extremely inspiring and motivating and i am a little bit nosy i like to know what people are making with their different business models but it can also sometimes set an unrealistic expectation when people don't know the whole backstory of how long it's taken and what kind of struggles that person has gone through to reach that type of income and it definitely isn't always as easy as it seems and there are some things that you do need to know about this business model that i personally don't often hear people talking about and that's what we're going to go over today the things that nobody talks about but that you need to know to be successful with publishing low content books on amazon kdp the first is that you need to market and promote your books yourself i think most people upload their books to amazon kdp and they think that that is it their job is done that's all you need to do and amazon will sell your books for you just sit back and the money comes rolling in and sadly this isn't the case the way that amazon's algorithm works is that it shows books to customers that their algorithm shows will have the most chance of making a sale so what does this even mean so it doesn't matter how perfect your book is for that customer how perfectly exact your keyword strategy strategy has been with what that customer is typing into the search bar on amazon it doesn't actually matter how perfectly you've optimized your keywords in your title in your subtitle and in your seven keyword slots or how amazing the interior of your book is all to a certain extent of course those things do matter but amazon shows their customers the books they think that customer will buy based on the past sales history of other customers and what they've purchased when seeing specific search results sounds unfair doesn't it you've created this book that perfectly suits what the customer is looking for and searching for on amazon yet amazon shows them something else that is almost what the customer is searching for or the keywords aren't perfectly optimized to what the customer was searching for but the algorithm knows that the customer is more likely to buy that one why that book is probably more established has a sales history probably has a decent amount of good reviews so when your book is new or it doesn't have a sales history you need to help give it one and as much as we hate to admit it amazon is in the business of making sales everything they do with their website with their algorithm with the search results that come up when a customer searches it is all to make a sale you need to show amazon that customers do want to buy your book and that they hopefully like it you need to bring it to the attention of the amazon algorithm you are going to have to help your book get sales by promoting it and getting those sales yourself so you can build up a sales history within amazon if you can do that the flow on effect will be that amazon will also start to show your book organically within its search results to its customers who are most likely to buy your book the next thing is that it can take months to make your first sale now it's not always the case but a lot of times that is what happens and there can be lots of reasons why your book might not sell right away maybe you picked a highly popular niche maybe you picked a niche that has too little demand maybe your cover isn't standing out from all the others maybe the interior of your book isn't professional looking enough and maybe you aren't promoting the book there's lots of reasons why your book might not be selling but usually when we start out with making low content books the first few just aren't that great even if we think they are sometimes it can take a few tries at making books and designing books before we get the hang of the right design or the layout for what sells best or the type of covers customers are looking for in that niche but the more we make the better we get or if you are making books in a highly competitive niche it can take a really long time for your book to start ranking at all purely because the sheer volume of the amount of books within the niche you've chosen but usually the two main reasons that it can take months for your book to sell is because you aren't actively promoting it enough yourself and this might sound a little harsh but your book just isn't good enough to compete with the other books in your niche so what can you do about that well some of the answers are fairly obvious promote the book if you're not promoting it look for a less competitive niche if you are finding it too hard to get high enough in the search results to make sales but what if it is just because your book is not that good you need to keep practicing and you need to keep making books until you get better until you are making books that are on par if not better than the others that are available within your niche and you also need to understand that it's a process that will take time but you will get there eventually if you're consistent and you really take the time to figure out what works for the niche and what customers are looking for in the particular type of book that you're making but the main point here is do not expect to sell books when you first start publishing for quite a while the next thing that nobody tells you is that you do need some kind of graphic design or cover design or basic design experience or at the very least have an eye for design i see a lot of really badly designed books uploaded to amazon kdp specifically low content books some of them honestly i cannot believe the person who made it actually thought it looked good enough to upload and actually sell and that might sound really mean and really harsh but the reality is there are thousands upon thousands of really well-designed books on kdp and then there are people who are new coming to publishing low content books thinking well anyone can do it because it's just a line notebook and it's just a lined journal right there's nothing to that kind of book anyone can do it but that's not actually the case a cover still needs to look professional and well designed no matter what the inside of the book is like because the cover that thumbnail that tiny thumbnail on the amazon search results page is basically what gets a customer to click on it to either look into it further or to buy that book customers aren't out looking to buy ugly notebooks and ugly journals or whatever other type of low content book you're making so if you do have an eye for design and you can understand the principles of graphic design then you probably will be able to create a well-designed attractive sellable book especially with a bit of practice and experience but if you are someone whose strength just isn't in design just accept that there is nothing wrong with that it is totally fine your strengths would probably lie elsewhere and those strengths are what you need to focus on you will just need to find an alternative way to get books made like outsourcing them to someone else who can make them for you the next thing that nobody tells you is that you will get bad reviews about the print quality of your book and there is absolutely nothing that you can do about it unfortunately this is just part and parcel with printing and selling books through amazon because their operations are so big and they print their books across multiple warehouses across multiple different countries the print quality definitely can vary you can order the exact same book that gets printed in two different warehouses and the quality can be very different personally i haven't had any major issues with the print quality of any of my books at this point but i have heard many stories from other people and from reading reviews on books where a customer receives a book they ordered and halfway through the book a totally different book is printed in there or things like pages are ripped or damaged from the printers or there's ink smudges on the covers and things like that and a customer will leave a bad review about this because they don't really understand or maybe they don't even really care about the process of a print on demand company and that someone other than amazon actually created and designed this book and the review process through amazon is for a customer to leave their experience with whatever product that they've purchased through amazon and that includes the printing quality of it too and it can be very frustrating when you get these kind of reviews on your books you kind of take it personally and you just really want to contact the customer to explain to them that it wasn't you who printed the book but you just can't and i see lots of people asking about how to get reviews like this removed from your amazon listing but that just doesn't happen amazon sees the overall experience of a book as being worthy to leave a review about whether that's about the book itself in terms of the content in the book or whether it's about the the printing and the actual binding and creating of the book so they will not remove view review they will not remove reviews about the printing quality of the book you just have to accept it and move on and just hope that you don't get too many cases where amazon does makes mistakes when they're printing your books the next thing that you need to know about publishing on amazon and for this one it doesn't matter what type of book you're publishing whether it is a low content book or a high content book and that is it will take at least two months to get paid for your sales on amazon that's right once you have sold a book you will receive a notification of how much royalties you are going to receive for selling those books but you won't actually receive that money until at least two months after the end of the month that the sale was made in and i say at least two months because there are payment thresholds you need to meet which means you need to make a certain amount of royalties before amazon will release them into your bank or whatever payment method that you use and this will also depend on what country that you're in and how amazon can pay you in that country so for example if you are based in a country where your only option is to receive your royalties through check or wire then you need to earn at least 100 us dollars from the us store the amazon.com store before they'll pay you if you make sales in other marketplaces australia for example canada maybe they also have payment thresholds that you need to meet before you receive them so even if you make a substantial amount combined the payments are done separately through each marketplace so let's say that you make fifty dollars one month and then you make twenty dollars the next month within the us store amazon still won't send you that money they will hang on to it until you have reached the payment threshold and then they will forward you the royalties which could be three four months after making your very first sale it can feel a little bit unfair sometimes that they can hold on to your money that you've earned but this is just the way it is with amazon and once you do start consistently earning over the threshold amounts and um making money every single month you won't really notice the fact that you are waiting two months to receive your money the next thing that nobody talks about is that you do need some specialized tools to help you be successful with low content book publishing and this can be something like professional graphic design software something like adobe photoshop or adobe illustrator if you do plan on making books yourself i highly recommend learning these professional programs because they will only help you make better books and this is the way to make the most professional books that you possibly can i know that a lot of people use canva i've used it myself for basic sorts of things or if you're only just starting out and you're not sure whether you need to invest in a professional graphic design program because you're not sure if this type of business business model is something you do want to do for the long term then that's okay but i do think that to create high quality and more professional designs ones that will compete with the books that are already selling on amazon you will need something professional but that's not all there are also softwares to create the interiors of your book whether that's something like adobe illustrator or just a word processing program like microsoft word or even microsoft powerpoint there's tools to help you find niches if you need help with that or keyword research tools to help you with developing a keyword strategy and for your amazon seo there are tools out there like puzzle book software that helps you make more intricate types of books like puzzle books and activity books these sorts of books can be good to get into because there are not a lot of people willing to invest in this kind of software that you need to make them some people are just not willing or always able to i guess invest in themselves or their business whatever it is that you are not strong in in terms of your skill set is where that you should be investing in these kind of tools or even hiring other people to help you so that you are strong in all areas of your publishing business if you have made it this far through the video thank you so much for sticking around and the last thing that nobody tells you is that you are going to spend way too much time refreshing your orders dashboard in amazon kdp reports is anyone else guilty of this when i first started publishing books i think that i was refreshing my reports dashboard every hour or so waiting for that sale to pop up even now that i make sales every single day i still check a few times throughout the day just in case i've had a massive order out of nowhere but i don't know what it is about seeing sales and that's for any kind of business not just kdp where you are just so anxious to see if you made a sale i think it's something that just helps motivate you and help you just confirm that maybe you are doing some of the right things to make the business model work so expect that you will be checking your orders dashboard all the time to see if you've made any sales since you last checked an hour ago i hope that you've enjoyed seven things that nobody tells you about publishing books on amazon kdp it is always good to know what to expect when starting out in your new business so that you aren't surprised or that you aren't disappointed later on when you start to learn some of the truths or some of the nuances behind a business model if there is anything that i haven't mentioned here that you feel people don't often talk about when publishing on kdp let me know down in the comments below i'd love to hear your thoughts and i'll see you in the next video

Channel: My Freedom Empire

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Keywords: kdp niche research, amazon kdp niche research, kdp niche research 2022, kdp low content publishing, low content book publishing, low content books, low content publishing, low content, low content kdp, low content publishing kdp, low content publishing amazon, low content self publishing, passive income ideas, self publishing on amazon, print on demand books, kdp, kdp publishing, kdp niches 2022, print on demand kdp, rachel harrison sund, paul marles, passive income 2022

Id: heKd1y3-tpE

Length: 15min 48sec (948 seconds)

Published: Wed Jun 15 2022