Low-content publishing on Amazon and Blurb

Quite many days have passed since my last post. This is because some disturbances and changes appeared in my personal life. Now I'm going to return to this great community and I'll continue to post some useful content on marketing, passive income, online business, personal development, spirituality, productivity and creativity. I encourage You to check out my other posts on Ecency :)

Recently I told You about self-publishing. I hope that some of You tried to publish at least one e-book to check out this simple and reliable method of making money. In the end of this article I'll give you a list of useful links to resources for You to learn the software I mention and for resources You'll use when You'll be making Your low-content books.

When self-publishing is mentioned, we usually think about books, like novels, non-fiction books etc. But there is another kind of content You can publish on Amazon and it is called no-content books. It sounds mysterious, but it is nothing more than various kinds of notebooks, planners, journals etc.

What is great about this, You don't need to invest any money to produce Your low-content books, because they're sold as a print-on-demand books. All the fees for having Your product printed are taken by Amazon from Your customers when they order Your products.

Here is an example of my low-content book - a dream journal. I made it after two days of learning LibreOffice Suite and generall stuff concerning Amazon KDP and its print-on-demand model. Two days of learning and You can start to build Your business, making journals like this:

https://www.amazon.com/Dream-Journal-Creative-Lucidity-Publishing/dp/B085KKM3FY/ref=sr_1_2?dchild=1&keywords=dream+journal+creative+lucidity&qid=1605345520&sr=8-2
https://www.amazon.com/Dream-Journal-Creative-Lucidity-Publishing/dp/B085KKM3DN/ref=sr_1_3?dchild=1&keywords=dream+journal+creative+lucidity&qid=1605345520&sr=8-3
https://www.amazon.com/Dream-Journal-Creative-Lucidity-Publishing/dp/B0858S8P9D/ref=sr_1_5?dchild=1&keywords=dream+journal+creative+lucidity&qid=1605345520&sr=8-5

In fact it's one journal with various covers. I simply made several journals based on one interior. I created my interior and covers in just 4 hours and it was my first product of this kind! Look indside my journal, launch the preview on Amazon. It's pretty nice, isn't it? It contains the directions of how to use it and some kind of fillable table of contents. then the pages for recording one's dreams come. I tried to make it logical.

You can also publish your low-content books on the website called Blurb, but I don't use it, to be honest. I know that the model is very similar here and I'm also going to try to publish there. I think that publishing on Blurb is slightly more difficult, because the technical requirements for files to be printed are more strict than those You encounter on Amazon KDP.

Creating low-content books is quite easy. There is a huge variety of them and You can learn how to make them. You can make it pretty fast. Of course, there are both very simple and very complex products You can create. In the very beginning You can start with the simplest kinds of notebooks with simple and clean, yet visually pleasant layout and design.

What kinds of low-content books are profitable? In fact there are so many of them that it's prettyy difficult to list them, but You just have to track everyday needs of Your buyers. You also should to track various trends and follow the calendar - many books are seasonal.

In the very beginning you can just create the simplest products like lined notebooks or graph paper notebooks. They're called no-content books, because there isn't any text inside them. Of course, the competition here is huge and the factor, which is most important for Your customers, is Your cover design.

You can make lined notebook interiors in few minutes. It's also a great way to see, how the process of adding Your products to Amazon KDP works.

What kind of software I use to make stunning journals and notebooks? All the software I use is free and/or Open Source. I'm also a Linux user. All the tools I list here are available for all platforms, like Linux, Windows, MacOS. some of them are also available as web apps You can use on any operating system. There are also many mobile apps for Android devices and for iPhone and iPad, if you own them.

I use LibreOffice Draw in most cases. It's a tool for making illustration and performing various DTP (desktop publishing) tasks which is the part of the best MS Office alternative, which is LibreOffice Suite.

Another piece of software I use is Scribus. It's an open-sourced Adobe InDesign alternative and You can make beautiful low-content books using this software. It's interface is a little difficult to master. I'd say that it is not too intuitive, but there are many tutorials on Youtube and in the web in general. Just give it a chance and You'll doscover that this is an awesome piece of software.

Another tool I use is Canva. It's an online tool for making graphics for social media, but it is also used as a tool for DTP. You can make awesome low-content books in easy way. It's free, although it offers a paid plan, but it's not necessary to buy it. The functionality of free plan is huge and I've never used the paid one.

Many people also use tools like MS PowerPoint, Google Slides and LibreOffice Impress. They're designed to make presentations, but you can make Your journals using them. You just need to chhange the slide dimension to Your preferred trim size, for example to 5x8 inches. it's easy to add texts and graphics to Your slides, You can rearrange them, You can make some templates for further use etc.

For Your low-content books you have to make good-looking covers, because it is cover which is the most important factor that makes Your buyers click the "buy now" button. you can make your covers in free tools like LibreOffice Draw, Inkscape, Canva, Gimp and Krita. Sometimes I also use MyPaint and AzPainter - they're also free.

I encourage You that you don't delete Your products. Use them as the basis for future low-content books. Create templates etc.

The design of Your journal needs to be attractive. The journal should include some nice fonts and graphics, but most of us can't create even the most simple graphics. It's not a problem here. You can just download graphics files from the web and without any copyright infringement, because You'll use graphics files available on Creative Commons license, and to be more strict, CC0 license. You can use such graphics without any fees and You can include it in your paid products. You don't even need to mention the source of the graphics in Your books, because CC0 license doesn't force You to do this.

As for fonts, use Google Fonts collection. they're free to use in commercial products, You don't have to pay any money for them and they're awesome. There are many fancy fonts there. I really like to use ancient-looking ones. There are also many hand-written fonts or the ones that are based on historical fonts from various periods of the humen history. Learn how to compose more than one font. It's a science itself and you can destroy your work when you combine fonts that doesn't match at all.

I'll also gove You some advice - make one file as a template and make many journals of it. just change fonts and illustrations inside them. You can make it in few clicks. Sometimes I create one journal - let's say recipe journal - for few hours and then I make 15 journals based on this file. I only give other fonts or images. After that I have to make 15 covers, but if You're skilled in the graphic software I've mentioned, You can also make some templates.

I've written this article to help you during the greatest economical crisis we've faced so far. Many of You lost Your jobs, many of You earn less money now, some of You work part-time only because of corona. This methos of making money is easy to learn, you can apply it immediately, You can make money safely, with accordance with the law, ethics etc. Please, use this opportunity and make real money. I hope this article will be helpful!

Now it's time for the presentation of useful resources You'll use in the near future, I hope:

https://documentation.libreoffice.org/en/english-documentation/

The documentation of LibreOffice. you should be interested in LibreOffice Draw and Impress, but if You want to make math workbooks and similar low-content books, learn LibreOffice Math too, because it allows you to edit equations etc.