Ever since reading The Four-Hour Workweek by Tim Ferriss I’ve been obsessed with learning how to create a lucrative passive income stream. I’ve tried several different ways of generating passive income over the years and I can say, without a doubt, that publishing low-content books on Amazon is one of the easiest (and quickest) ways to start making money. In this article, you’ll learn:
- what low-content books are
- how to make money publishing low-content books
- how to create low-content books in 4 easy steps
- how to determine if this business model is right for you
What Are Low-Content Books?
As the name implies, low-content books contain little to no text or images and are generally repetitive in nature. A few examples of books that fall into this category are:
- journals and diaries
- puzzle books
- notebooks
- daily planners
- bullet journals
- manuscript paper
- coloring books
Consider a lined journal. Apart from the front and back cover, the entire book is just page after page of horizontal lines. As you can imagine, a book like this can be produced very quickly and very cheaply with no formal design training necessary.
How To Make Money With Low-Content Books
As I mentioned previously, I’ve tried many different ways of generating a passive income stream and have discovered that publishing low-content books is an easy and quick way to do this.
That’s because they:
- Take very little time to produce. You can go from idea generation to sales within just a few days.
- Require no special technical knowledge, writing, or design expertise to create. There’s no writing involved, and you can either create them yourself in a simple program like Microsoft Word or outsource the work to someone else with little expense.
- Require zero paid advertising, marketing efforts, or major upkeep once they are live. Once you’ve created and published your book you have a royalty-generating asset that will continue to pay you a monthly income for as long as your book remains for sale and in demand.
- Require little to no upfront investment. You can create the book yourself for free or pay someone else to create the book for as little as $10-$15.
- Don’t require you to carry any inventory. As with any book published on Amazon’s KDP (Kindle Direct Publishing) platform, your low-content books will be printed on demand and shipped straight to the customer, meaning you won’t have to store piles of books in the corner of your living room or deal with shipping hassles.
It’s been a total game-changer for me.
- I paid off over $45,000 in student loan debt that had been weighing me down like a ton of bricks for seven long years.
- I didn’t have to find a new job when I was laid off at the end of 2016 due to downsizing.
- I travel the world regularly because my business is completely location-independent.
- I continued to generate $10,000 – $20,000 USD every month while I was caring for my new daughter during her first 6 months of life, even though I didn’t do a single minute of work.
- I maintain my passive income business in just a few hours per week while my baby is napping. Because it’s so low-maintenance, I’m not worried about having to go back to work and fretting about being number 9,999 on a daycare waitlist.
- I have complete control over my work schedule and lifestyle. My work is built around my life, not the other way around.
How To Create Low-Content Books in 4 Easy Steps
Now, on to the good stuff.
Here’s a high-level overview of the framework I used to create multiple bestselling low-content books that routinely brought in combined royalties of $10,000 to $20,000 USD every month, resulting in my income skyrocketing to six figures in just 14 months. (For a detailed look at the actual trajectory of my first two years of low-content publishing royalty earnings, check out my 2017 and 2018 Low-Content Publishing Royalty Reports.)
This framework consists of just 4 easy steps:
- Idea Generation
- Idea Validation
- Create Your Low-Content Book
- Publish Your Low-Content Book on the Amazon KDP Platform
Let’s dive in.
Idea Generation
This is where the creativity begins! Referring back to the types of low-content books I mentioned above, choose one type to get started. Then grab a pencil and a notepad and begin jotting down your ideas.
There are no bad ideas in this stage of the process, so you want to be thinking as broadly as you can while taking inspiration from as many sources as possible. I tend to browse the internet a lot in this early stage and often head straight to Amazon’s Books department to see if I can spot recurring themes, motifs, or current trends that I might be able to take advantage of.
Keep your thinking cap on until you’ve got a nice list of at least 10 to 20 ideas to investigate further. You’ll be discarding many of them in the next stage, so the more you generate now, the more you’ll have left to work with when it’s time to create your first book.
If you need more help generating ideas, check out my article, 6 Ways To Come Up With Low-Content Book Ideas.
Idea Validation
The Idea Validation stage is the most critical step in the process; it’s all about taking that nice list of ideas you came up with in the first stage and separating the wheat from the chaff. It’s the difference between creating a book that you couldn’t give away to a librarian and a book that hundreds—if not thousands—will rush to purchase and then head right over to leave a 5-star review for on Amazon.
The most important thing to remember in this stage is that your ultimate goal is to create a book that people are already searching for so that you can almost guarantee that your book will generate sales before you spend any time creating it. Many self-publishers make the mistake of creating a book that they want to create instead of creating a book that other people want to buy which, inevitably, results in ZERO sales.
To validate your idea and ensure that you create a book that customers will actually take their wallets out and pay for, you’ll need to answer four specific questions:
- Are customers already actively searching for the book you’re thinking about creating? Remember, you want to create a book that people are already searching for before you spend any time creating it so that you don’t create a dud that nobody wants.
- Do similar books already exist? Knowing this will tell you whether there is an existing market or if you’ve discovered a potentially untapped niche.
- Is anyone actually buying those similar books? If similar books are making sales, then you know that there is a market for your idea and that people will be willing to pay you for what you create. If not, then there probably isn’t.
- How hefty is the competition? You need to know that your book will stand a chance against the competition that’s already out there.
There are also some paid and free tools that can help you validate your ideas. These shouldn’t replace your manual search but can be used to help you further validate what people are searching for. For more details, you can check out my YouTube playlist dedicated to keyword research, including my video, Keyword Mistakes To Avoid. Once you’ve carried out the Idea Validation process for all of your ideas, you’ll know which ones to bring with you to the Book Creation stage and which ones to toss into the circular file.
Create Your Low-Content Book
Now that you’ve got a solid shortlist of viable ideas, you can get to the fun part—creating an asset that will generate royalties on a recurring basis! Don’t feel intimidated by this step. Remember, you’re not writing a novel here; you’re creating a simple book full of basic, repetitive content.
For this step you’ll need to produce two separate files:
- a manuscript—the interior pages of your book
- a book cover—the front, back, and spine of your book, created as a single-page document
Although some knowledge of design is definitely an asset, I want to reinforce that you don’t need to be an award-winning graphic designer to make your own manuscript and cover files.
There are plenty of places to get high-quality, copyright-free artwork and photographic images that you can download for free. Even though I’m a designer, I use these resources myself because it saves me hours of work and allows me to create beautiful covers in minutes.
There are also paid resources such as Creative Fabrica, which is another resource I use, that have millions of images you can use for your designs.
If the thought of creating your own manuscript and cover files makes your palms sweat, don’t worry. You can still produce a cover that sells by outsourcing it to someone on a platform like Fiverr. Again, even though I’m a designer myself, I often used freelancers on Fiverr to create my covers when I was publishing nonfiction and fiction books because it saved me time.
Outsourcing is fast and cheap; turnaround time for a book cover is usually only a few days and you can get one made for around $10 USD—a minuscule investment considering the potential to make hundreds, if not thousands, of dollars per month in recurring revenue.
On the flip side, if you mess up in the Idea Validation stage and your book doesn’t sell a single copy, we’ve only lost $10. A very low-risk investment, indeed.
Publish Your Low-Content Book
You’ve done all the hard work upfront and now you’re ready to upload your book to Amazon, hit that publish button, and experience the thrill of making your first sale.
To create your own account on the Amazon Kindle Direct Publishing Platform, visit their KDP resource page. It’s 100% free!
Assuming you’ve done your due diligence in creating your book, you’ll have a nice little asset that brings in some dough on a recurring monthly basis, and utilizing Amazon’s print-on-demand service means you’ll never have to deal with inventory. You will literally just upload your two files, fill in your book details, hit the publish button, and Amazon handles the rest. That’s it—your book is now for sale on Amazon!
Is This Business Model Right for You?
Like any business model out there, low-content publishing isn’t for everyone. While you can go from idea generation to making sales within your first week, it does take some time for the momentum to build and, like any other business, requires patience, dedication, and commitment to reap the enormous rewards.
In addition, because you will be publishing your books on Amazon, this income stream will be tied to an ever-changing platform that requires you to play by their rules, meaning you won’t have full control of this portion of your business. Therefore, I recommend using this business model to create a low-maintenance side-business that can bring in hundreds, thousands, or tens of thousands of dollars of side income, or using it as a stepping stone on the path to building a business that is entirely your own and 100% in your control, which is what I’ve done.
With all of this in mind, you’ll know that low-content publishing is for you if:
- you want to create a lucrative, low-maintenance passive income stream that requires little to no upfront investment or ongoing expenses
- you’d like to create a side income to reach a financial goal, such as paying off debt or saving for a down payment, vacation fund, new car, college tuition, etc.
- you’d like to create a financial cushion that allows you to leave your job and pursue your dream business
- you have the commitment, dedication, and patience necessary to build your low-content publishing business over time
Low-content publishing may not be for you if:
- you want to depend on it indefinitely as your primary source of income
- you’re looking to “get rich quick”
- you’re not willing to dedicate at least 3-5 hours per week to building your low-content publishing business
Ready to Get Started?
Now that you’ve seen how I was able to build a six-figure low-content publishing business in just over a year—working just a few hours a week—are you ready to take a crack at it?
Download my free guide, 3 Steps to Publishing Your First Low-Content Book in Less Than a Day.
Inside the guide, I’ll walk you through the entire process from start to finish: finding and validating your idea, creating your book, and then hitting that publish button!
I’ll also dive into:
- the top 10 hottest low-content niches to get started with
- how to quickly generate a list of profitable ideas
- how to know from the get-go that people will buy your book before you spend any time creating it
- how to quickly create a beautiful, professional-looking book cover with my video tutorial, How to Make Your Own Book Cover in Under 10 Minutes Using Canva
Along with the free guide, you’ll receive a free lined journal template file.
