Overview
Questions and Answers
What is this?
-I found out it's possible to design your own notebooks for free(sort of) and amazon will post/print/sell them for you/to you. It's called something like "no content or low content publishing using amazon kdp".
When did this start?
-After my shoulder surgery on 2/15/2022, I could only use my left arm and youtube started recommending videos about making contentless books using amazon kdp.
Is this a scam?
-Yes, like everything, actually a little bit more than everything, it's a scam, BUT on the other hand, I've always kind of wanted to design my own notebook cover. Not really enough to ever think about it though, until now.
Do you think it could work?
-It already has a little bit because I already made a notebook and sent it to myself. Actually 2 notebooks, but one of them had some problems.
but work like make money?
-Probably not, it only could if I were to make thousands of them and luckily make one design that people start buying. People also make word search books and stuff like that, and I wouldn't mind doing that either. This is also a way that I could publish and print my own books without any approval from anyone. So I think it's kind of a good thing to know about even though it's unlikely that I'll ever build up the willpower to do it enough to make any money or to make other people happy. I would need to take some extreme measure like adding making one book into my schedule every day.
What resources did you use to learn how to do it?
Probably the best channel about this was Rachel Harrison-Sund's channel, I signed up to be on her email list and in her sales funnel and got the pdf that explains how to make a small journal. I never bought anything from her, but I don't think she's bad, i considered taking her class but it was of course very expensive, so I didn't. I don't really have more to learn, I already know how to do it, just from watching free videos, but i would need to be very dedicated to do it. i also block youtube ads with adguard plus, so I'm not getting tricked, youtube is. I am subscribed to canva though, so maybe it's a canva scam and it worked if that's true.
Links
Here are some links to related youtube channels and other resources that I used.
How to Make Your Own Book Cover in Under 10 Minutes, Using Canva
My Low Content Book Income | First Month!
STILL Haven't Published Your First KDP Low Content Book Yet? Watch This
Canva Tutorial: How To Get The Dimensions and Template For Your Low Content Books
Canva Tutorial: How To Create Lined Journal Interiors Within Minutes Using Canva
eBook Creation Folder Location
Folder Location
The main project folder is on the d drive of my laptop. It's called ebook creation.
Problems with this project
- my larger notebook was supposed to be red, but the author's copy they sent me was orange. I don't know why. This shouldn't matter all that much, i should just fix it, but it somehow became a psychological block that stopped me from wanting to work on making more notebooks. Now that i'm writing it here, i see it's a smaller problem than i felt like it was.
- the lines in the large notebook have a slight gap at the far edge, this could be good, but i have to check normal notebooks to see if that's how notebooks are supposed to be or not.
- I like colored lines in notebooks. I have a draft in canva of a blue lined notebook. Unfortunately it would cost more to print it. Still I need to print one with that draft next time, if i decide i'm ok with or learn how to fix the small line gap.
- being subscribed to canva costs money and is against my belief that I should own the programs I use, and have them on my hard drive. This isn't the only thing i subscribed to canva for and I do break this rule sometimes, tinkercad is free, but still breaks this rule, even steam breaks it a little, there's no one who cares if i subscribe to things or not other than me really, so I can break this rule whenever i want, but in general i don't want to have other people own my files and i don't want to be paying large sums of money to be subscribed to too many things that i don't even use enough and that there are alternatives to.
Ideas
- gain an understanding of the color problem, search for other people who may have had the same issue, try to make a red notebook that really is red, try to make a green notebook, etc.
- create a notebook with each color.
- try to publish more than one notebook at a time to see if it works
- I need to Remember that I found a creative solution to amazon banning blank notebook covers, I put the title on the side, and found the correct measurement to do that and it worked. this should be an advantage, maybe I need to improve my search terms or something.
- make a graph paper notebook, that would be a good next step.
- i eventually want to get off of canva and learn how to do what it does for me, for myself, with libre office or something, but that ability will come if i do make enough notebooks, because eventually i will learn the dimensions of everything on an intuitive level and then i hopefully won't need canva to do it for me. Maybe there will be a downloadable or open source replacement for canva eventually too, maybe the free version of canva along with another program could work.