One of the biggest mistakes, a lot of beginner low content and medium content book publishers on Amazon make. And therefore the biggest reason they don't make any money is that they decide to publish in niches like coloring books, kids activity books and kids handwriting books. So if you've already published in one of these niches and not making any sales or you're thinking about publishing one of these types of books, then stop because you could be making a big mistake.
And instead what I've got is what I think is a better KDP niche for beginners. And as a result I think you've got a better chance of making sales and therefore making money online on Amazon. So if that is you, then follow along.
Now, if you've not bit as chime before, then welcome. My name's Paul Marles and I do videos on how to make it keep it and grow it, and that's your money I'm talking about. If you do like videos like that, then please do give a thumbs up, hit the subscribe button and smash that notification bell.
So this is the problem that a lot of beginners make. They think about what books to create and they go for something like coloring books because most people know what a coloring book is and then they scroll through, they all look exciting and colorful. And by looking at the best sellers ranks, they're making a lot of sales.
The lower the best sellers rank, the more sales a book is making. And as a result they see that these books are making a lot of money and they are, take this one for example, this one has got a bestsellers rank of 605. Now we can put that figure into a book sales calculator and we can see that it's selling between three to 6,000 books a month.
Now if we take the price of $8. 99 means that book is making around $3. 20 per month in pure profit, which means that one book is making between $10,000 to $20,000 a month in pure profit, which is life-changing amounts of money.
So it's no wonder that people go into these sorts of niches. But there are a number of problems with this, especially if you are just starting out. The first thing is these books have a lot of competition.
If we see here the adult coloring book, there's 60,000 search results, that's a lot of other publishers competing against you. So the chances of getting your book on this first page, which is where you need to be, or at least on the second page, is very slim. So customers aren't going to see your books, you're not going to make any sales.
Now you may say, but I'm gonna run some ads and get these sponsored ad positions here, high upon the first page. Well, yes, you can do that. The only problem with that is it's probably going to cost you $2000 to $3000, probably considerably more dollars a month in ad spend to get your books in these positions.
So that's a huge investment, especially if you are starting out and you've not yet made any sales with your books. And we can see from things like kids' activity books, 80,000 search results, huge competition and handwriting workbooks, 9,000 results. Still a lot of competition.
Now the next big issue is the design of these books. You only need to scroll down here and see how good looking these covers are. They're bright, they're colorful, they use the right fonts, they're professionally designed.
Same goes for the interiors. And they need to be because there's a lot of competition and these books need to stand out to catch a customer's attention. So the chances of you creating one of these, particularly if you are not an illustrator or graphic designer, is very slim.
You're not gonna be able to create something as attractive as these. Can you in the long term? Well, absolutely yes, but it is gonna take time to learn the skills to create illustrations, to use software like Adobe Illustrator, Photoshop, Affinity Designer and such like.
And all too often someone will contact me, say they're not making any sales, it's a coloring book. Can I take a look at it. Straightaway, the biggest issue almost 100% of the time is the actual cover design.
So that's gonna be a challenge for a lot of beginners. And the next big issue is this. A lot of these publishers have a marketing platform.
Now we've touched on the fact that these publishers are spending money on ads because they're already making money and can reinvest that in their books. A lot of these publishers know how to do keyword research, know how to optimize their books with keywords. Again, you can learn all this.
They know how to pick good sub niches within an overall competitive niche. And so get the ball rolling on the sales of their books. And also a lot of these publishers might have things like websites, a Pinterest page, an Instagram page where they can get traffic and direct it to their listings on the Amazon page.
Again, you can do this, but it all takes time to learn. And these books that you see on the first and second pages and probably third and fourth pages have got all lthis together. It's all meshed together.
So all these factors are working together and it enables them to make sales. So if you're just starting out, there's lots of factors to learn. So the chances of getting all this working together straight away is going to be very slim.
And all that happens is you create one of these books, you publish it, you don't get any sales and you get discouraged. And that's why a lot of people publish one or two books and completely quit and say, you know, something like this business is a scam or it's oversaturated or something like that. So I've got another suggestion for you.
And in fact, this is a niche where I get about 70% of my monthly sales from. And it is the logbook niche. And this is an overall niche now, not what you're gonna say.
This is dull and boring and exactly, I agree 100%. And that's the beauty of this niche. It is dull and boring.
And as a result, not as many people create books in these niches. I'm gonna show you an example. Here, we have an accounting ledger.
Straightaway we can look at the number of search results, only 454. Now books in these different log book niches are not gonna sell as many as the coloring book niches, but we'll find, as I'll show you in a moment, they are a lot easier to create. Therefore you can create more and therefore have a better chance of making sales and actually build up a decent amount of overall sales.
And it's the way I got my first breakthrough in this business by creating sports training logbooks. So we'll take a look at this counting ledger only 454 results, a lot less than that 60,000, 80,000 that we've just seen. Now if you scroll down the listing, let's look at the cover designs.
These look, you could argue almost dull and again boring. But that's good also because it means these covers are a lot easier to create and you can easily create one of these if you are a beginner to this business. Same goes for the interiors.
Now I'll have a look at this book here, this brown accounting ledger. Again, basic cover, but just look at the interior. It's basically a series of columns and rows and headings.
A lot easier to create than one of those puzzle book interiors or one of those coloring book interiors that require a lot of skill. Now you can find a lot of these types of interiors on a site like Creative Fabrica. I looked at accounting ledger interior, 555 results.
So you could easily find something here that you can use for the interiors of your books. And the beauty of these as well is that you can easily modify them, which I always recommend. So you can change the columns around, you can change the fonts, change the headings.
You can even take a basic interior like this and turn it into a completely different interior like say a stamp collecting log book. And also on my Gumroad shop, if I scroll down, I've got lots of interiors and keywords here. The link is in my description.
I think, yes here it is. I've actually got a logbook template, which if we have a closer look, absolutely free of charge to download, it's just a very basic template in vector format. So you can edit it on software like Adobe Illustrator, Affinity Designer or free software like Inkscape or Gravit designer.
And you can use this as a basis to create almost any type of logbook interior. All you need to do is, just as said before, delete columns and rows and add different headings and sections and easily come up with something that looks like this. Now here I've got a list of suggestions for different types of logbook ideas.
Now these are ideas I've actually collected over the last four or five years. And what I've done over those years when I've done my research on Amazon, I come across books all the time. I think, oh that looks interesting, haven't thought of that.
Ooh that's selling well and I make a list of it. I usually do it on Microsoft to do. And so what I've taken from that list is the log book ideas that I've collected.
And here I've got about 57 I think it is. Now I'm gonna scroll through these slowly just having a look at them. What I suggest you do is pause the video, take some screenshots, and then you can use these ideas as a basis for your own research.
Or you can just go straight ahead and take these ideas and go and create your own books. And in fact, with 57 Ideas, you could create one book in each of those and have a good collection. And I would be almost certain that you would make sales with those.
So I've got a few interesting ones here. Start off, sports log books. And what I didn't mention with these types of books is that they are also evergreen, which means you can create them now and hopefully 5, 10 years time they'll still be making sales.
In fact, if I look at my dashboard, here's the book sales over the last 12 days of March. And these three books here, are sports training log books. I created these almost five years ago in 2018.
They are still selling, haven't done anything to them at all. Those three books are made about $350 already this month, which, you know, is a reasonable amount. And.
So I'll just scroll down here so you can take your screenshot to get the ideas. And we've got lots of. Different suggestions.
Here. Some you may have heard of, some you may not. And in fact, one here caught my eye, which is very interesting to look at.
cattle breeding carving record book. Now you may. Say who on earth is going to buy a.
Book like that. Well, you'll be very surprised. And here I've done a search for cattle breeding logbook.
Look at the number of search results, only 177. And if we just scroll down, are these books making any sales? Well.
Best sellers rank. 321,000. Yeah, that's making sales.
But look at this, this book. It's a KDP. Book, independently published, bestsellers rank 91,000 making good Sales.
And again, this one here, 44,000. Let's look at the interior, very similar to that accounting ledger I've just shown you. Very basic.
And you. Can create it. From that basic logbook template I just mentioned, or even go to somewhere like Creative Fabrica.
Again, I'll leave a link to that in description below because they're running a special offer. You can get this type of interior as well. And as I said before, I always suggest just making some changes to it to make it a bit more individual.
Make it your own, make it a bit more original. Now, with these types of books, when it comes to marketing, yes, you can run ads on them if you want to. I think with these, with the the the lower amount of competition, it's not always necessary.
And in fact most of mine have never run an ad on. But if you did, you'd find the cost would be a lot less and there's less of a need for things like a website, Pinterest page or Instagram page. I would advise eventually over time as you create more books, get more experienced to create those assets because you can then send traffic to all your different types of books.
But it's certainly not as necessary in these particular niches. So you've got a lot of suggestions here to work with and start looking at. Now, if you are a complete beginner, beginner at this and you've not yet created a book, then what I suggest first starting with before you even get to these logbooks, is something like a basic lined notebook or journal.
I remember when I started, I think my first, don't know what it was, 5,000 books even. Were just plain lined notebooks and journals because you get experience with creating the books. That's the cover, the interiors, the formatting of the interiors and the upload process to Amazon.
So if you are a beginner and are interested in creating that type of book, then I suggest watching this video next where I run through the whole process and the upload process to Amazon. I hope you found that useful. Thank you very much for your time.
It is very much appreciated. Don't forget to hit that subscribe button and until next time, goodbye.
