For all of us, COVID was a watershed event. The world changed drastically and despite the tragedies and immense loss of lives, some changes changed our world for the better. The biggest of course was how it propelled us all towards technology and the other was our mindset towards earning. Most of us realized that passive income streams were important, and the term ‘side hustle’ entered our vocabulary.
Like most people, I too realized that just relying on my training and consulting business was not enough. Budgets shrunk during that period and even in the aftermath organizations were struggling with shrinking economies. I tried my hands at many things but found most of them were not for me until I stumbled on Amazon KDP book publishing.
An avid reader since childhood I always wanted to be an author so book publishing piqued my interest. However, like most people, I thought it meant writing books. You can imagine how surprised I was to find out that there are many genres of books on Amazon that do not have written content. Writing a book and creating a book are 2 different things. The best part is that if you have some basic skills then this is a zero-investment business.
If I’m painting a rosy picture and you want to jump into it let me set the record straight. It was challenging and not profitable at all in the beginning unlike some YouTubers and bloggers make it seem. My first books were children’s story books but they didn’t sell well at all because I had no clue that titles and sub-titles need to have keywords for Amazon to rank our books.
I made a few coloring books but they were a total bust as well because I was buying the page designs from others who were also selling the same to many more people. It was only when I discovered the category of vision board books that my business started to yield results. Later I taught myself AI generative art and made coloring books from scratch which also started selling pretty well.
The lessons I have learnt on this journey are:
- Research your niche before you decide to publish a book.
- Sub-titles and back-end keywords as well as the categories in which your book is listed are critical to success.
- Stick to the genres of books you know about and are passionate about, believe me, it really does make a difference.
- AI is a game changer in book publishing, especially colouring books. You can use AI for content but don’t just ask it to write your entire book if content books are what you are interested in. Usually, I use it to give me ideas for my book descriptions and marketing texts.
- Advertising is important in the beginning to get your books ranked but it is expensive so be ready to lose more than you make.
- Try and use free marketing such as Instagram or Pinterest (I sell most of my vision board books in the US market through Pinterest).
- Think like a customer, what do you look for when browsing books on Amazon? The cover is very important as well as the description of your book so do a good job of it.
- Don’t expect to quit your day job – those claims you see on YouTube about thousands of dollars per month in sales are mostly just that – “claims”. However, making hundreds of dollars per month is quite possible in the beginning if you have a few books, and that is just pure profit.
It is a great passive income source as your hard work is only at the start, but if you are taking it as a business then you do need to constantly adjust your marketing strategies and publish more books. For me, it is an interesting immersive hobby that keeps my mind stress-free and pays consistently each month. Unlike some of my corporate clients, I can rely on Amazon to pay on the 29th of each month.
Authored by Sualeha Bhatti
