The Latest Changes to Low-Content Books on KDP: Helpful or Harmful?

Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP) has made some changes to low-content books, but will they help or harm your business? 

In this article you’ll learn: 

• 4 recent changes KDP has made to low-content books
• how these changes impact your business

You can learn more by watching this video or reading below for a summary of everything I discuss.

(This post contains affiliate links, which means—at zero cost to you—I will earn a small commission if you click through and make a purchase. Thank you for your support!)

4 Changes to Low-Content Books on KDP

Without further delay, let’s discuss the 4 recent changes to low-content books on KDP and how they affect your business.

1. “Low-Content” Books Are Now Defined By KDP

Kindle Direct Publishing  has finally recognized low-content books as its own category on Amazon. 

They define a “low-content book” as follows: 

“A low-content book has minimal or no content on the interior pages. These pages are generally repetitive and designed to be filled in by the user. Common examples include notebooks, planners, journals, and other similar works. This does not typically include activity/puzzle books or coloring books, [as these] generally do not feature repetitive content on each page.”

– Kindle Direct Publishing

How does this change affect you? What this change means to you is that you’ll now have to identify your low-content books as such when you publish them. You’ll do that by checking a box right after you’ve chosen your BISAC categories. 

Before checking the low-content books box you’ll need to decide whether or not your book is actually low-content according to KDP’s definition. 

If you tick the box and your book is NOT a low-content book, it will likely be rejected (and vice versa).  If you incorrectly identify a book, don’t worry too much about it. This isn’t something that’s grounds for termination. At worst it’ll probably just delay your publication date, though you don’t want to make this mistake too many times.

2. Changes to KDP ISBN for Low-Content Books

Assuming you’ve determined that your book is low-content, the next change that will impact you is that you’ll no longer be eligible for a free KDP ISBN. 

How does this change affect you?  What this means to you is that you’ll have to decide whether to:

• purchase your own ISBN from an ISBN Agency such as Bowker, or
• publish without an ISBN

My recommendation is to publish your book without an ISBN. The reason I recommend this is because ISBNs aren’t necessary for low-content books. If you go out to a bookstore and pick up a notebook or lined journal, they probably won’t have an ISBN. Your low-content books generally don’t need one either. 

Another reason I recommend not purchasing an ISBN is that they are not cheap. A single ISBN costs over $100. You can reduce the cost by purchasing in bulk but it’s still very pricey, especially if you’re just starting your low-content publishing business. 

3. The “Look Inside” Feature Has Been Removed

The next change to low-content books on KDP is that they will no longer have the “Look Inside” feature. Before you press the panic button, there are two things to keep in mind with respect to how this change affects you: 

• Many (if not most) people shop on their phones. The “Look Inside” feature isn’t available on mobile anyway, so there really isn’t a change except to desktop users. 

• You’ll still have the ability to include A+ Content, so customers will still be able to see inside your book. 

I actually think that this last point will be a benefit to anyone serious about publishing on KDP because it will discourage spammers. Spammers currently upload thousands of books on KDP and probably won’t be willing to put in the extra work to create high-quality A+ content for their mountains of low-quality books. 

4. Low- Content Books Aren’t Eligible For Expanded Distribution

“Expanded Distribution” refers to the process whereby KDP makes books available to distributors so that booksellers and libraries can find your book for purchase. It allows for books to be made broadly available outside of Amazon.

Low-content books were removed from eligibility for Expanded Distribution last year so this change isn’t new. 

How does this change affect you? I’ve always viewed any sales that I received from Expanded Distribution as a nice bonus that happened every once in a while. Sales I’ve received from Expanded Distribution never constituted a significant portion of my overall royalty earnings so the impact to me was minimal. This will probably be the same for you. 

The Verdict

To sum it up, I believe that the latest changes to low-content books on KDP will actually help your business in a couple of ways.

Low-content books have been legitimized on KDP

Since people started publishing low-content books on KDP, there’s been a general underlying fear that KDP was one day going to put a stop to it. Something about it felt illegitimate, probably because:

• low-content books didn’t really fit into any of the BISAC or Amazon Browse categories so they felt misplaced
• publishing these books turned out to be so insanely lucrative that it just simply felt too good to be true! People felt like it wouldn’t last and that Amazon would eventually shut it down.

The fact that low-content books are now legitimized means they’re here to stay.

A+ Content will discourage low-quality books

As I mentioned, I think that the amount of extra effort required in creating A+ Content is going to drastically reduce the number of spammers trying to get in on the publishing game by churning out thousands of awful books that give low-content books a bad name. 

This might be wishful thinking on my part but usually, spammers want quick wins and creating A+ content takes work, so perhaps they’ll move on to something else. 

I believe these changes could mean that we’ll start to see a more dedicated ecosystem for low-content books on Amazon. I hope eventually this will lead to a dedicated browse category so that self-publishers can stop having to place their books in irrelevant categories to get bestseller badges, but we’ll have to wait and see.

If you’re really bummed about these changes and want to focus on creating higher value books that aren’t considered “low-content books,” be sure to check out these tutorials: 

• Don’t Overlook These Top 5 Hidden Gem Low-Content Books for Kids
• Puzzle Book Domination 
• How to Create a Coloring Book From Scratch