KDP Journey as a Non-Writer

M4XW3LL said:

far

Click to expand...

M4XW3LL said:

KDP - Kindle Direct Publishing is a platform on Amazon which allows you to publish books and sell them through Amazon websites.

Authors use it to publish their e-books and paperback books. People like me use it to publish activity books.

The kindle method for non-writers works in three ways:

1. No-content books (notebooks, comics, etc)
2. Low-content books (journals, trackers, prompt notebooks)
3. Activity books (coloring books, crosswords, puzzles, etc)

I've tried each of these in the last month, and I've had the most success with activity books.

I've had 241 sales with 68 books live:
View attachment 118659

The best sellers for me are mandala coloring books. My most popular mandala coloring book has sold 61 times with over $101.46 in royalties.
View attachment 118662

I create my mandala coloring books in Adobe Illustrator with this add-on:

You can buy the add-on here, it's only $11. I could upload and share it, but I don't want to since it's a small investment and I want to support the creator for providing such a useful tool.

For research and listing, I use Bookbolt. I came across a coupon code for it on a Facebook group about KDP and decided to give it a try. The coupon was 20offsale, no idea if it's still valid.
View attachment 118661

I haven't had the time to test all its features, but I'm using the KDP spy chrome extension and the auto uploader to save time.

I could use the mass converter to create notebook covers in bulk (no-content books), but I'm sticking to my mandalas for now even if it takes time and effort to create them. I want to fill my account with at least 500 high quality activity books, and after that I might start uploading notebooks.
People are making money selling empty notebooks only, but my approach is quality first and quantity after.

Another niche that sells well on KDP are puzzles (mazes, crosswords, sudoku, word search, etc).
I've uploaded a few mazes and sudoku books, haven't sold a single maze book but some sudokus:
View attachment 118660

Creating the sudokus manually is quite time consuming, and I didn't like any of the free tools online.So last week I hired someone to build me a sudoku generator that would generate upload-ready PDFs. And yesterday, I came across a promotion (in a Facebook group, you guessed it) of a puzzle generator software. I spent $100 on the developer (bad luck brian), but saved some bucks with the summersale20 coupon on the Puzzle software (it's something ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ ).

I plan on hiring an illustrator to create some coloring books for kids for Halloween and Christmas.
Unicorn coloring books is a very hard niche to enter, but once you're in - they're selling like hot cake.
The idea is to keep them low priced (with no profit at all), and build up reviews for next year. The coloring book niche is a not a sprint, but a marathon. In the long run, I want to get on this level:
View attachment 118658

I consider the KDP method easy, since you have all the niches and ideas in front of you. It just requires effort and constant uploading.

I plan on posting updates at least once a week, in hopes to inspire fellow BHW members to follow along my journey. Wish me luck!

Click to expand...

Roger Marquez said:

I remember publishing a couple of no-content books on my Amazon KDP account. Just a couple of coloring books and after a few months I received an email from Amazon notifying me I had sold 1

I don´t recall doing any marketing, promoting or anything among those lines.

Thanks, OP for taking the time to launch this journey and inspiring me to do the same. Although, I haven´t really followed on this nor dived 100% into this but, still, this denotes that KDP is a legitimate way to earn some extra money.

Click to expand...

minniemouse said:

Thanks for generously sharing your journey, it is really an eye opening!

I'm just a newbie and would like to ask a few questions:

1. Do I need to upload the file in illustrator format or they can accept PDF? What kind of file format can be used?

2. If I do not have illustrator, can I just use Power Point?

3. For book cover, do I need to use very hi-res version designed using illustrator or I can just use those eBook creator like Designrr ?


Thanks

Click to expand...

ayyad02 said:

I just finished reading your journey and all the comments from the first comment without skipping even a single one
A very inspiring journey, I am currently in the same path, earning nearly $ 150 a month
I try very hard to get to the thousand dollars a month
Thanks for the inspiration, I'll try to reach my goal before the end of 2020
Hope to find more updates in the future

Click to expand...

Matteus Islabão said:

Hello everyone, very good this topic really very inspiring. M4XW3LL, how are sales currently? Do you keep creating more books? Your strategy seems very interesting to me, I live in Brazil and the strategies I see on the forum nobody knows here. I am thinking about how I could adapt your strategy to sell in my country. Have you tried working with other languages? What has converted you most with your experience? Thanks

Click to expand...

M4XW3LL said:

You can buy the add-on here, it's only $11. I could upload and share it, but I don't want to since it's a small investment and I want to support the creator for providing such a useful tool.

Click to expand...

TheSecond said:

Can you share the add-on please? it's been more than a year, I'm sure anyone who was interested in buying it already did.
and good luck with your journey.

Click to expand...