If you're looking for a creative way to make sales from home—without dealing with inventory, shipping, or spending months creating a product—you might love the business model I’m about to show you. In this post, I’m walking you through, step-by-step, how I design and sell books on Amazon using Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP), even without writing a full-length book.
Why Low-Content Books Work So Well
Most people think you need to write a full novel to make money with books on Amazon. But that’s not true at all.
There’s a whole world of low-content books that sell extremely well—things like:
- Journals
- Planners
- Logbooks
- Travel diaries
- Coloring books
- Prompt-based notebooks
These books often sell for $5–$20 each, and Amazon handles printing, shipping, and customer service for you. That means I can focus solely on the creative part—designing and publishing.
The Tool That Makes the Entire Process Easy: Book Bolt
Recently, I found a software called Book Bolt, which has completely changed how I create these books. It lets me:
- Research keywords
- Analyze competition
- Find profitable niches
- Design the interior and cover
- Format everything correctly
- Publish on Amazon
And the best part? It all happens in your browser. No downloads required.
This means I don’t have to manually format pages or guess which niches make money—Book Bolt does the heavy lifting.
Selling Through Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP)
Everything I make gets published through Amazon KDP, which allows anyone to self-publish:
- Ebooks
- Journals
- Paperbacks
- Low-content books
I’ve published books before through KDP, and the biggest perk is that Amazon prints each copy on-demand. No upfront printing. No storage. No shipping on my end.
You simply upload your files, choose your pricing, and KDP takes care of the rest.
Step 1: Starting With Keyword Research
Inside Book Bolt, I start with the keyword research tool. This tells me:
- What people are searching for on Amazon
- How competitive a niche is
- Estimated monthly sales
- Related keywords worth targeting
For this project, I decided to create a travel journal—something people can use to document their trips and relive memories later.
The keyword “travel journal” gets around 3,400 monthly searches, which is solid enough to get sales without crazy competition.
I saved it to my favorites and moved on to the design phase.
Step 2: Creating the Book in Book Bolt Studio
Inside Book Bolt Studio, I created a new 6×9″ low-content book with a black-and-white interior. This size is perfect for journals, and KDP supports it easily.
Using AI to Create the Cover
For the cover, I used Google’s Nano Banana model inside Google AI Studio. It lets me generate:
- A front cover
- A matching back cover
- The exact border and style I ask for
Once I liked the front design, I simply told it:
“Great job. Now make a back cover using the exact same border, color scheme, and style.”
And it matched perfectly.
Step 3: Designing the Interior Pages
Book Bolt has built-in page templates so you don’t have to design everything manually.
For my travel journal, I chose:
- A vacation planner template for odd pages
- A wide journal page for even pages
This gives the book structure:
- One page to plan each trip
- A matching page to write notes and memories
After applying the templates, Book Bolt auto-generated the entire interior for me. I saved the project and downloaded the PDFs for KDP.
Step 4: Uploading Everything to Amazon KDP
I logged into KDP, clicked Create Paperback, and walked through the setup:
1. Book Details
I used the insights from Book Bolt’s keyword search to write:
- A strong title
- An optimized subtitle
- A keyword-rich description
I also selected several categories related to:
- Travel
- Journaling
- Event planning
- Travel planning
- General writing
2. Keywords
Using Book Bolt, I added keyword combinations with solid search volume and manageable competition.
3. Interior and Cover Upload
Both files must be PDF format.
Book Bolt downloads everything in a ZIP folder, so I extracted it and uploaded:
- Interior PDF
- Cover PDF
Both uploaded successfully.
4. Print Options
I used:
- 6×9″
- Black & white interior
- White paper
- Matte cover
These settings match the Book Bolt project.
5. Previewing
Using the KDP Launch Previewer, I confirmed everything lined up perfectly.
Step 5: Pricing Your Book
KDP showed that printing each book would cost about $2.30.
Depending on niche and competition, journals in this category typically sell for $10–$20.
At $19, the royalty would be around $9–$10 per sale, after Amazon subtracts printing costs.
I chose a competitive price that still leaves room for profit.
Once pricing was set, I saved and hit Publish.
Step 6: Getting Reviews and Ranking (What Comes Next)
After publishing, I’ll need to focus on getting the first few honest reviews. Some ways to do that:
- Offer the book free or discounted at launch
- Ask real reviewers (not friends/family)
- Run low-budget Amazon ads
- Promote through social media or a niche audience
Never use fake reviews—Amazon is strict about that.
Why This Business Model Works
When I look at Book Bolt’s product research tool, I see tons of independently published journals making:
- Hundreds of monthly sales
- $1,000–$5,000+ in monthly royalties
- Passive income over time
These are regular people—just like you and me—who aren’t major publishers.
This is why low-content publishing is such a great opportunity.
Want to Try Book Bolt? Here’s a Discount
Since Book Bolt is the software I used to create this entire journal from scratch, I’ve partnered with them to offer a 20% lifetime discount with the code:
JUSTIN
They also offer a 3-day free trial, which is long enough to create several books and test the full process for yourself.
Final Thoughts: Your First Steps
If you want to start your own low-content publishing business, here’s what I recommend:
- Choose a simple niche (journals, planners, logbooks).
- Use Book Bolt to research keywords.
- Create and customize your book interior using templates.
- Use AI or your own designs to make a professional cover.
- Upload everything to Amazon KDP.
- Get early reviews.
- Publish more books as you learn.
If you treat this like a long-term asset, each book you publish becomes a small piece of passive income.
Start simple, stay consistent, and scale over time.
Note: BookBolt was kind enough to give my readers a 20% discount and will pay me a commission if you use my code. That being said, I love their service and think it's the best Amazon book creation platform I've seen. I would recommend it, even if they didn't give me a commission.
