Writing is hard. And writing well is a skill that you’re either blessed with naturally or you spend years honing.
Ask any very successful published author earning a great living from their work and they’ll likely tell you it wasn’t an easy road to get to where they are.
Many spend years battling their way to the top and would say it takes blood sweat and tears to move a potential hit manuscript from the corners of their minds into the hands of an eager audience.
But who has the time or inclination to wait years for inspiration and subsequent success? What about mere mortals who most likely will only be able to dream about writing a best-selling novel? And furthermore, what options do you have if one of your major goals is to be a successful self-published author, but the reality is that you’re really not that great at writing?
The answer?
This may sound crazy, but the fact is that many individuals are earning good money by creating and selling books that have very little, and in some cases, absolutely no content inside of them.
If that sounds good and you’re interested in trying your hand at publishing your first low or no content book, here are seven simple tips to help you get started.
- Start with what you know.
Creating your first low content book is a fairly simple process once you resist the urge to overthink things. It’s best to start with what you know.
As a writer you probably have a niche that you already focus on.
- Cooking
- Business
- History
- Travel
- DIY
- Mystery
- Adventure
- Romance
- Science Fiction, etc.
You could take any one of these niches and come up with a long list of ideas for low content offers that can be created very quickly.
For example, if you usually write books that help people learn how to do specific DIY tasks, you can break big projects down into smaller tasks and teach them how to do each one step-by-step with a series of pictures and captions.
The result is a very valuable visually oriented DIY guide book that is very low on content but big on selling potential.
- Laser-target your audience.
One of the most important aspects of creating a successful low content book is niche selection.
It is not enough to say you want to create a coloring book for people who like animals. While it’s a good start, you would likely have much more success by creating an offer for people who like dogs, or even more specifically, those who like Golden Retrievers.
The more specific you can get when you niche down your ideas, the better.
The only caveat is making sure that you don’t niche down so far that you don’t have much of an audience at all. Aim for a group that is specific but that also has a decent level of demand.
- Simplify your product creation.
Leverage is the name of the game when it comes to low and no content books. All it means is making the most out of whatever offer you decide to create.
One idea is to create a basic template for a specific offer, let’s say a diary, and then leverage that template for different markets.
So for example:
- A diary for dieters
- A diary for students
- A diary for anxiety sufferers
- A diary for people who want to quit smoking
By building on one idea, you make better use of your time and can make the most out of every segment of any niche you choose to target.
- Explore the possibilities.
Starting up with no and low content books opens up a vast world filled with opportunities for you to be creative and reach several cross-sections of people with your work.
Some of the many direction you could take include:
- Diaries
- Notebooks
- Cookbooks
- Children’s Books
- Calendars
- Log books
- Journals
- Picture Guide Books
But don’t just stop at books. There are many more ideas for low content offers that you could try like playing cards and greeting cards.
Use this short list as a starting point, then do some research to gather more ideas for low content creations and let your imagination run wild with the possibilities.
- Don’t be afraid to outsource important tasks.
As a self-published author, you’re probably used to doing everything on your own like writing and editing your manuscript, creating layouts and designing simple covers.
However, when you decide to step into the world of no-content books, things aren’t necessarily going to be that simple.
Publishing a low or no content book usually requires kicking things up a few notches in the quality of your graphics. In every case, your audience is literally going to be judging your book by its cover.
People who purchase low content books expect the cover to be a real eye-catcher. So if you’re not the best graphic designer around, it’s best to outsource the task to someone who has a knack for creating the kind of visual impact you’re going for.
Outsourcing is also an important step if you’re interested in creating multiple low- content offers quickly.
- Use print on demand services.
When you’re just starting out with creating your own low content books, the temptation will always be there to come up with a design and then run out and have a few thousand of them printed up and ready for sale.
The problem is, that if something goes awry and they don’t sell, you are left with a lot of books that you can’t do anything with.
The solution to this problem as well as a way to make self-publishing your low content books a reality, is by using one of the many print-on-demand services available like Lulu, Ingram Spark or CreateSpace.
Using any one of these services ensures that you can test your idea out properly without needing to print and hold any books. As an added bonus, if your offer does take off, you never have to worry about running out of stock.
- Leverage winning ideas.
The key to achieving massive success and growing your low content empire quickly (if you want to) is to leverage ideas that are already doing well.
For example, if you come up with a concept for a diary aimed at women and it does well, keep the momentum going by targeting other groups with a similar offer. You could try a diary for men, a diary for teen girls, a diary for new moms or a diary for the newly divorced.
Drilling down and exploring different segments of a niche is a great way to build out a stable of products without much more effort than it took to come up with the initial idea.
Once you’ve exhausted the niche, move on to another area with several potential subset groups and repeat the process.
While the idea of creating a book that either has minimal or no content at all may seem ludicrous at first, the longer you think about and explore the possibilities for creating new in-demand offers quickly the more you will begin to grasp the huge potential of this publishing method and opportunity.
Start brainstorming ideas today and take action! In just a matter of days you too could have your very own low content book published and clocking up sales.
J Marie Booklets says
Amy,
I love all of these ideas! I’m bookmarking this page so that I can refer back to it as often as needed. You just got yourself a new subscriber!