Make A Living Selling Books You Didn’t Write

Did you know that it is possible to make money selling books that you didn’t even write? Well, let me tell you, it is definitely possible. How? You can do this with low content book publishing. I’m about to drop a bomb on you and tell you exactly how to publish low-content books.

What are Low Content Books?

Low content books are books that don’t have a lot of words or information in them. Usually, low-content books have maybe a few words and then a lot of space for you to write or fill in the blanks. It is often referred to as guided content. Some examples of low content books are:

• Journals (bullet, lined, unlined, gratitude, etc.)
• Notebooks (composition, etc.)
• Planners (daily, weekly, monthly, yearly, etc.)
• Coloring books (children and adults)
• Guest Books (weddings, funerals, baby showers, etc.)
• Puzzle Books (crossword, word search, word scramble, hang man, maize, etc.)
• Log Books (diabetes, fitness, sports, blood pressure, migraines, etc.)

There may be other low content books that I did not include in this list. If you know of any other low-content books please let me know in the comments down below.

Some people refer to journals, logbooks, and notebooks as no-content books. However, I’ll be referring to them as low-content for the sake of this article. You can call them whatever you like, though.

Things to Consider Before Creating Your Books

Before you get started creating your first low-content books there are a few things to consider. A lot of things you have to figure out and decide on before you start creating books. Don’t just throw books out all willy nilly.

Take your time and get everything laid out before you begin. This way, you will be better able to flow through the process without having to constantly stop and figure things out. If figuring things out as you go works better for you then by all means do it.

For those of you that don’t like to move forward blindly, this advice is especially for you.

So think about how you want your book to look. What size do you want it to be and how do you want it to be designed. Do you want a paperback or hardcover? How many pages do you plan to have?

These are just some of the many things you should consider beforehand.

How to Create Low Content Books?

Creating low content books can be really easy if you know what you’re doing. You probably have no idea how to even get started so I’m going to walk you through those steps right now.

The very first thing you want to do to get ready to start publishing low-content books is to create an Amazon KDP account if you don’t already have one.

After you create your Amazon KDP account you want to start designing low-content books that you can upload to KDP and sell.

To create your first book and every book after that I recommend using Canva. Canva is free to use but they do have a paid plan that includes extra features and design elements. Just know that you do not need the pro version to create low-content books.

You will need Canva to design your cover for your books. You can also create interiors for your books using Canva as well. And the best part about it is that you don’t have to be a designer or have any design experience whatsoever.

No seriously! You do not have to be any kind of graphic designer. I know this because I design covers myself for my low-content books and I do not have any designing skills at all. But I love the way my covers turn out.

Some Canva alternatives would be PicMonkey and Adobe Indesign. I have never actually heard of anyone using PicMonkey to design low-content covers. However, I do know that it is similar to Canva so it may or may not be a good alternative.

Now, Adobe Indesign is an entirely different story. I’ve tried to design things in InDesign before and I always have a hard time. I would say that there is a steep learning curve with Adobe InDesign. So unless you have the skills prior to starting or the patience, I would stick with good ole’ Canva. That’s what I’m choosing to do because it’s easy for me.

Setup KDP Account

Go to your Amazon KDP Account and this is easy if you already have an Amazon account. If you already have an Amazon account just go to kdp and login using those credentials and you are in.

If you do not have an Amazon account, you’ll want to create one on the KDP screen by clicking sign up.

Use KDP Cover Calculator

Before you can ever design your cover, you’ll need to use the KDP Cover Calculator.

You should go through and fill in all of the fields with your book information like I did down below.

After you enter all of your book information, click the yellow calculate dimensions button to get the size your cover should be.

Once you have the dimensions, I suggest you write them down. The dimensions that you will be entering into Canva in order to design your cover will be the numbers surrounded by the pink box in the screenshot below.

Where do you think we’re going next…to Canva? Nope, not so fast! We have to download the template first. You’re going to need this in Canva as well.

Once you download the template a file will start to download. After it has finished downloading you should extract the files. If you aren’t sure how to go about extracting the files, do a Google search and you will find step-by-step instructions on how to do this.

Now, that you have extracted the files you need to go to Canva.

Design a Cover in Canva

Now, I’m going to walk you through how to design a cover in Canva.

First things first, click on create a design in the top right-hand corner of Canva.

Since you already have the dimensions of the cover you will want to choose a custom size. That way you can simply enter the numbers into the boxes.

Be sure to change the pixels to inches so you will have the right size to start with. Usually, when you try to enter the dimensions as pixels you’ll get red boxes anyway.

You’ll get a screen that looks a lot like this. You should now enter the title for your book. It’s okay to include the word “cover”. This will help you identify the cover from the interior that we’re going to make later.

You need to go to uploads in the menu on the left side of the screen. This is when you will upload the KDP template that you downloaded earlier. Once you have downloaded it, you’ll want to add it to your blank page. It should now look like the screenshot down below.

You should now start adding your different elements on top of the template. You can later delete the template or leave it as is. It’s up to you.

Your design will look completely different from mine. But you should have a background and words on the cover whether that’s a quote or some descriptive words such as gratitude journal or notebook. Take a look at the sample cover I create down below.

It’s really cute and simple. I may have to use this cover for real.

If you are wondering where I got the pretty background, I bought it off of Etsy.

The thing about this is that you do not need to spend money in order to make a nice cover. However, I really like some of the backgrounds I’ve found on Etsy and so I choose to buy different sets.

This is certainly not a requirement.

Create Book Interior

Once you’ve created your book cover you can go ahead and create the inside of your book. Which is known as the interior.

I know the sample says Gratitude Journal but for the sake of not making this post too long. I’m only going to create one page to show you how it may look.

So for the interior, you WILL NOT use the same dimensions as you did the cover. Instead, you are going to create a new blank page and you will enter the dimensions of the book. For example, if you are creating a 6 x 9 in book, then you can enter 6 x 9 in for the size of the interior.

Here is a sample interior that I’ve done, this is only page one:

You can duplicate this page by clicking the plus button that is highlighted in the screenshot below.

Duplicating a page can come in handy when you are creating a notebook or journal. If all the pages are meant to look the same you can simply go through and duplicate however many pages you need. Keep in mind that you can only have a total of 100 pages in any one project.

If you would like to see how to make a Canva project with more than 100 pages, let me know in the comments below and I’ll do a tutorial post on it.

You can add a different page by clicking on the little square next to the duplicate button as shown in the screenshot below.

After you design your book cover and interior you can upload everything to KDP. Read and follow instructions and you will not have a hard time figuring out information to include. However, if you are having a hard time uploading your book to KDP, let me know in the comments and I will do a tutorial post on this as well.

That’s all to it. You have now created a low-content book and can now begin publishing to KDP. Now, on to some important questions that I think are worthy of answering.

Can You Make Money Selling Low Content Books?

Yes, you can make money selling low content books. But not everyone does. Actually, there are more people publishing low content books who don’t make money than those who do.

You don’t have to be one of those that don’t. If you want tips on how to make sales on KDP let me know in the comments and I’ll do a post on it.

I have heard of people making anywhere from a few hundreds a month to over $100k+ a month.

Which Low Content Books Sell the Most?

That’s hard to say for sure but notebooks, coloring books, puzzle books and activity books sell really well.

I believe it just really depends on several factors. If you make really good and interesting covers you could sell a lot of sketch journals even if they don’t sell well overall (but they do!).

If I had to choose just one I would say notebooks probably sell the best of all because who doesn’t need a notebook?

A notebook can be used for multiple purposes and people just love them, including me!

Log books are great sellers as well. People love to keep track of things like fitness, diabetes, blood pressure, etc. So a nicely designed log book has the potential to make you a lot of money if you do it right.

How Many Pages Should a Low Content Book Have?

A low content book should have at least 120 pages. I have looked at several books and 120 pages seems to be the standard. If I’m not mistaken, 120 pages is the minimum number of pages that you can upload when creating a hardback book.

This does not apply to paperback books but even then, 120 still seems to be the standard. You can have a lot of pages but how many exactly depends on things like trim size.

Final Thoughts

Writing a book can be tough, I know because I’ve written three. Being able to create low content books and publish them is nothing short of amazing.

If you follow my steps closely you will be able to make a low content book in no time. Leave me a comment and let me know if this post was helpful for you. And if there is anything else you’d like a tutorial on such as how to upload a book to KDP just comment down below!