This pandemic has forced us indoors, forced the luddites to — even temporarily- embrace technology, and provided the much needed pause for us to rediscover ourselves and engage in new endeavors that can be accomplished from the comfort of our own home. Personally, I have ventured into a number of hobbies, mainly my youtube channel centered around mechanical keyboards. This has made me learn about video editing, refresh my skills with digital designs, and spend a crap ton of money on keyboards that you can’t find just anywhere. The objective was to amass a following and potentially a new source of income that would be semi-passive, but can be done from home.
Living all of my free time on youtube eventually the algorithm sneaks new things into your feed and I was then reminded that I had an Amazon KDP account which I created years ago that I never used. At that time I was hell bent on writing a book, particularly a book on Kindle and self-publish. I knew a few publishers in the field that I was working in at the time and I felt that “if I had more free time I could write a book”. Initially it was the “textbook” that no one could manage to write that would fit the needs of the organization in which I worked. Later it progressed into potentially writing a book about my experiences, a tell all rant lets say… But who really wants the drama that comes with spilling the tea! Then youtube said, hey low content book publishing.
Now, I love notebooks. I LOVE notebooks. Not your ordinary notebooks. My school notebooks were always imported from South America, because the notebooks were small and cute. Roughly 5.5 x 8.5 inches. Chubby little things contained 3 or 5 subjects. Some of them were large hardcover books that looked like denim. Others were more serious books that simply were vibrant colors. None of them were your standard Composition, Staples, or Mead books. I searched for books like the ones I used before and simply could not find a distributor, called family and was told they are no longer making them. Nostalgia had set in even thought I really had no need for another book being out of school.
Then Amazon KDP re-entered my memory. I said SELF, you can self-publish your own notebooks, similar notebooks to the ones you remember, and new ones that you can create with your new found creative side now that you are engaged in videography/youtubeing/designing that world you have ventured into. So that is exactly what I did. Created my first book: the Notebook!
As a New Yorker of course my first notebook would contain the complete skyline of New York. Cream colored paper is easy on the eyes. The picture you see above is a proof of the book. A big boy at 8.5 x 11 — letter size — full of lined pages that I created with a header on every page with a space for the topic and the date..
I was so excited to see a distant idea become a reality. My daughter saw the proof and her eyes lit up, I thought that is a good sign! I immediately showed my cousin a picture and then the news spread like wildfire throughout my family. They bought a few to support me and I felt accomplished. I said ok, this doesn’t look like anything thats out there. I managed to see a few sales almost instantly (Amazon does not tell you when an order is placed rather they tell you when a sale has shipped — thats when they add a dollar amount to the Royalties Estimator) — family and friends. So the initial rush was real, I was like ok as diverse the tastes are in my family and they liked the book, then maybe others will like it as well. So I shared it with some friends and co-workers. That’s when I realized that the enthusiasm was really more a reflection of how they feel about me rather than a reaction to the product itself.
You need to spread the word: I created a link to make it easier to share my endeavors with those interested: linktr.ee/QcBabe to guide people to my youtube, amazon author page, and some merch sites and this medium page, as well as to highlight some of the books that I wanted people to see.
The book creation process was quite simple really:
a. Have an Idea (I watched a lot of Bones)
b. Find stock photography that can be used for free for commercial purposes either with or without attribution
c. Use a software like Photoshop to create a cover with assistance from the cover templates amazon provides.
d. Create the interior with Word or some other word processing software following the margins and gutter measurements required by Amazon.
e. Save both documents as pdfs.
f. Follow the instructions on the form and voila you have published your first book.
Truth be told, this began a fever. I began designing notebooks/journals of all sizes. Whenever I had some time on my hands I would research the kind of notebook I wanted to create and went to town.
The Jean Notebook as well as a Notebook with one of my mechanical keyboards on the cover, slightly different sizes but smaller than the original large notebook. Then Amazon released a Beta allowing me to create hardcover books! I redesigned some of my notebooks to hardcover versions including the original large notebook and the Jean Notebook.
Ofcourse at this point I had no sales, just family and a few friends, but my daughter was loving everything I made so I just kept ordering author copies of my books. One for her, one for me, and one for my mom. As I churned out books, I placed order copies for books, and did not pay attention to sales or my spending… I was receiving positive feedback and implementing changes related to any criticism, or taking custom orders like:
The time I spent engaged happily in this activity solidified in my mind the true reason why I ventured into this project, I simply love notebooks that are unique, notebooks that I can collect and display and love every time I see them. Just like my keyboards the uniqueness was the driving force behind my dedicating time to this new project, like designing your own Pandora bracelet. I thought there were more people like me out there endlessly looking for something new, a new unique, notebook that could be used as that or a journal.
Then I said ok… all these notebooks… why don’t you make yourself your perfect notebook with a beautiful cover, lined, quad, and dotted pages, a section for a weekly planner for a year, a few years worth of yearly calendars, contact pages, and password pages (because you know hackers also having too much time on their hands), and so I did. I made it never expecting it to sell, made it for me (and one for my daughter). Called it QcBabez Perfect Notebook.
Small and compact, puffy with over 400 pages. With a beautiful cover of the city as well as a washed out view of the former Twin Towers — which I miss. As usual order a few proofs then purchased an author copy — or two.
Author copies: You should know are the exact book that people who purchase your books will receive, you pay for the cost of printing and the cost of shipping but none of the markup. They also take FOREVER to arrive, you can’t prime these at all. The paperback books that I was able to create in the beginning would take about a week to be approved. When the beta for the hardcovers came out I found hardcovers were reviewed and approved fairly quickly, within days.
Made quite a few more books, a wine journal, traditional planner, and some composition notebooks. Each different in their own way. For the composition notebook background I had to learn how to create that marbled look on my own with some tutorials, because to purchase the right to the image was going to be entirely too expensive. For some of the books I chose to use my handwriting as a font, had to find a way to create my font, did so… and so on. I continued to imagine and create, imagine and create and ultimately realized: no organic sales.
So I decided to put some money into advertising my books on Amazon. Already a robust environment for sales, as everyone purchases from Amazon and are already looking to buy something. The suggestions online ranged from use all the keywords imaginable to use only narrowly targeted keywords that fit the exact kind of book you are selling. Then when neither of those worked I then heard statements like, “hey if you are not selling its because people don’t like your cover. Look for the covers that other people are using on their versions of your books and make it look similar.” But that right there, that is EXACTLY what I did not want. I didn’t want books that were similar to other books, I wanted books that expressed my aesthetic, books that showcased what I like. Hey I even made a book with a picture of my dog!
I realized that I was listening to the advice of people with KDP channels on Youtube, their job was to get me to continue watching their videos for advice. As they pumped me with dreams of selling my books, and then telling me they were not selling because my covers were bad, or the market was saturated — what I find to be a total copout. The notebook/journal market has been saturated since it was created. The transition to laptops and ipads has minimized the need for paper notebooks, but the market for these items is still there — ask Staples. For as long as you see a book on lettering, you know people are still writing things on paper. I am the prime example, while yes I am an avid computer user — 2 computers on my desk — dual monitors on one computer and a separate machine with its own monitor, as well and two laptops — one for work one for me… , and finally ‘lest we forget the tablets… plus we all know that phones can now replace a computer.. Hello I have a youtube channel dedicated solely to one computer input device! YET I LOVE PAPER NOTEBOOKS! You can’t tell people hey this will bring in passive income — then in the same breath say well if it doesn’t its cause you are doing something wrong, your books are aesthetically unpleasing, and your creating books in saturated niches. Rather I would say that I’ve seen some rather generic looking books and they are selling… and its not pricing, Ive seen composition books selling for 3.99 when you can buy them at a Staples for 25 cents… my job is to find out what they are doing that I did not do or have not quite figured out yet.
My journey has brought me here, to a place where I absolutely love every single notebook/journal book that I have created, and have not had that much overwhelming instantaneous success that I naively expected. While I will not unpublish my books because of the work I’ve put into them and the hope that one day people will stumble upon my notebooks and say, “hey, I want one of those.” Or those relatives and friends that use my books may be asked by someone, “hey where did you get that notebook!” I will tell you by no means have I even broken even on my investment. At the time I write this entry into my blog I have made a little over $40 dollars in sales which translates into having sold about 30 books. $30 of those dollars in the first month, and so far about $14 dollars this month. I can say most of that is friends and family and maybe 1 book sold to someone who clicked on my ads — according to the advertising stats. How much have I spent on advertising, about $60 dollars and that was because it was a trial and error, and even more errors, kind of endeavor. I decided today that I was going to halt all advertising until I figured out exactly what my approach should be and learn a little more about SEO. Might even take a non-matriculated course in Marketing because I feel I am seriously lacking knowledge in that area.
The intent was always twofold: create something you love, earn money doing it, I accomplished one. I created something I love, I am not making money doing it. I will stop losing money doing it LOL, because hello I have to. My loss of money is tied into reckless advertising and buying too many author copies of my own books — BTW author copies don’t count as sales. But this endeavor has granted me yet another pandemic opportunity to venture into something new and learn something more. What I learned so far is that yes I have the skills to create these books cover to cover, and do not have to outsource any of that. That this is not a get money fast project that all these people make it out to be. I’ve learned that I have chosen to make things I love and hope they will find others who love them as much as I, but I have no expectations. Most important of all I have tapped into my entrepreneurial side, a side of me that I never knew was there. Low Content Book Publishing has given me the opportunity to once again have something similar to those notebooks that I loved, to create new ones to share with others, and to introduce my daughter something I loved when I was younger.
If you were looking into this as a way to make a passive income, I would say do it, maybe you will fare better than I have because you will have ideas that are unique to you, and maybe there is an appetite for those ideas. Go into it with no expectations and you will not be let down.
