How to Make Money with KDP: Artist Guide

Hello there! Here is a new “How to Make Money as an Artist ” article.

One of the many ways I made Money as an Artist was with KDP and I’m here to share with you what I have learned in the past few months. From how to get started with Amazon Kindle Direct Publishing, to how you can make money with it as an Artist.

What is Kindle Direct Publishing?

KDP is a self-publishing platform where you can sell eBooks, paperbacks, and hardcover books for free.

You can publish many types of books, including:

• Fiction
• Non-fiction
• Coloring books
• Journals
• Notebooks
• Activity books
• Children’s books

You might be wondering now if this requires artistic skills or writing skills, but truth is, you don’t need any!

These are just a few examples of the books you can create and sell. In this article, I will be focusing on three types: Journals/notebooks, activity books, and coloring books.

How to Make Money with KDP: Artist Guide

1. Journals and Notebooks

Journals and Notebooks are known on Amazon as no-content books. You don’t need any artistic skills to create them.

To create your first journal or notebook, you need to first create a KDP interior, find a profitable niche, and design a cover around it which I’ll explain below. 

a. Creating your KDP Interior

Your book’s interior is called a manuscript on Amazon. A journal/notebook interior looks like this:

The first page is a contact page “This book belongs to”, and the rest are blank lined pages. Just as simple as that.

One of the easiest ways you can use to create your customized KDP interior is in Canva, because of the available elements, fonts, and ease of use. Once you know the dimensions of your interior, create a new document in Canva with those dimensions.

The most popular dimensions for notebooks are (5“ x 8”) and (6” x 9”), with 100, 110, and 120 pages. I use a 6×9 inch size and 120 pages manuscript for my notebooks.

I have some ready-to-use 6×9 inch 120 pages journal pdf interiors that you can use for free. feel free to enter your email so I can send them to you.

b. Finding a Profitable Niche

Now that you have your manuscript ready to use, the next step is finding a profitable niche. 

Finding a profitable niche within the category of Notebooks/Journals can be the one thing that either makes your book successful or a failure. Finding a niche also helps you figure out what your cover design will look like.

Say you decided to create your journals within the work niche, you don’t need to create a new custom work-themed manuscript or interior for your book every time. What you need to do instead is to create different cover designs related to the work-niche, which could be related to funny work quotes journals, funny coworkers quote journals, that could be given as gifts to coworkers…

Now, the work niche is a general niche that might be competitive, but you could as well narrow it down by searching for “funny work quote notebook gift for coworkers”:

My strategy is that I scroll down for a bit through different pages while opening new tabs listings that have got low BSRs, then I’d search the title or cover text to narrow down the competition, as displayed in the figure below:

NB: BSRs stands for: Best Sellers Rank and that is the metric that Amazon gives to marketers and businesses to help them understand how their products perform.

I also like using the BookBolt KDP Spy Tool for the niche research process. You can just type “work” for example, and it will show you endless winning designs in that niche with details included (title, description, publication date, price, BSR…).

You can also use it to publish your books automatically, design your books…

I know a niche is trendy & profitable when:

• The results are low (under 200 results)
• Low best-seller-rank (under 300k BSR)
• Books published recently (1 month ago preferably).

I have a 2022 updated 10 kdp niches spreadsheet for notebooks. Claim yours in the form below.

c. Designing your Book Cover

Now that you have your book interior and niche, one last step before publishing is designing your book cover.

Before you begin designing your book cover, be sure you use the proper dimensions for your cover. KDP has a cover template calculator that gives out the exact dimensions for your cover and allows you to download a PDF and PNG Template.

Now that you’re all set. It’s time to explore your creativity!
I personally enjoy using Canva for this step, because of the available elements, fonts, and ease of use. If your niche is text-based (a quote that sells well) like “My Favorite Coworker Gave Me This Book”, you can create it in less than 5 minutes. You can get a free Canva trial account here so you can Make Money with KDP as an artist easily.

If the cover is something more than just text, I like to use Canva to create high-quality professional designs.

2. Activity Books

Activity Books are known on Amazon as low-content books and are typically aimed at children, they contain interactive content such as puzzles, quizzes, coloring pages, mazes, spot the difference, and other elements that require writing or drawing in the book itself. You don’t need crazy artistic skills to create them.

The most important step in creating your first activity book is choosing your niche, then creating your interior, and finally a child-feeling interactive cover design.

a. Choosing your Niche

Choosing a niche for your activity book makes a big difference in this category because it will make the process of coming up with content for your book easier. Most activity books are themed based on holidays, seasons, and other topics such as family, farms, flowers, food, animals, history, and cultures.

I like working in the holiday niche and I like to do it by narrowing down the competition and working in sub-niches. For example, “Unicorn Christmas Themed Activity Book” or “Summer Traveling Themed Activity Book”

b. Creating your interior 

Say you decided to create your activity book in the Unicorn Christmas Theme. Now you need to figure out what activities your book will contain.

I would recommend you to create about 50 designs total (which is 100 pages), size 6×9 in. Including:

• Coloring pages
• Simple crosswords
• Quizzes
• Spot the differences
• Mazes
• Word search puzzles

You can create all these activities, by:

• Drawing the images
• Using clip art
• Converting photos into coloring pages

I like drawing the images on Illustrator (affiliate link) when I’m creating a coloring or activity book because I enjoy the process. But you can use whatever method suits your needs best.

Once you have finished and exported all your images, you need to create the manuscript now. For this step, I like to use Canva because it’s easy to use.

You need to create a contact page “This book belongs to”, leave a blank page, then import the design, leave the next page blank, and so on, as the image shows. The following page is left blank to ensure better quality and crayon feeling…

You can also buy ready-to-use activity books, graphics, fonts, backgrounds, illustrations, and more from CreativeFabrica.

c. Creating your Book Cover

Now that you have all the previous steps done, congratulations! I know it’s a headache creating your first activity book’s interior. Whether it took you 2 days or 2 minutes, I’m proud of you! 

Activity book covers usually look like this:

Yes, Activity Book covers do require some time and skill to create good-looking cover designs that might sell. Remember we are targeting kids aged 4-10, so make sure you create child-feeling covers to get their attention! Your book cover should include:

• A clear title: A clear big title helps attract kids’ attention and give an insight into the content of the book (Christmas Unicorn Activity Book for Kids)
• A graphic design, drawings, or elements that reflect the book’s theme with catchy colors
• A summary of the activities included in the book: coloring pages, crosswords, quizzes, etc…

3. Coloring Books

Coloring Books are also known on Amazon as low-content books and are typically aimed at both children and adults, and contain coloring pages only. These are my favorite because they’re easy to make and don’t require as much research as Activity Books do. I recommend you experiment with Coloring Books as an artist when self-publishing on KDP as it doesn’t require crazy artistic skills as well.

Just like Activity Books, the most important step in creating your first coloring book is choosing your niche, then creating your interior, and finally a cover design.

a. Choosing your Niche

When choosing a niche for your coloring book, I like to narrow down and sub-niche as much as I could due to the high competition in this niche. The themes I focus most on when creating a coloring book are Holidays and Seasons related themes. I tend to focus most on Christmas since it makes the most money compared to all other holidays combined. Other than Christmas, I also like to work on Halloween, Thanksgiving, and Valentine’s. Then, I like to work on animals, flowers, and culture-related themes as evergreen niches that sell the entire year.

Similar to activity books, I like to mix niches such as Unicorn Christmas Theme, or any animal really, as a way to sub-niche and get a higher chance to make sales.

Note that:

Before you choose a niche, always make sure to make a quick search on Amazon to check out the competition. If there are under 200 results with a BSR of under 500K, you’re in a good niche.

If this isn’t as familiar to you yet, I do have a spreadsheet updated for 2022 containing the best evergreen niches that you could get right now at $0.99 only, it’s got 25 niches that you can work on right now, and start making sales! 

b. Creating your interior 

Creating your Interior for coloring books is similar to the activity books, but easier. You can create your coloring pages, by:

• Drawing the images.
• Using clip art.
• Converting photos into coloring pages.

I like drawing the images on Illustrator(adobe affiliate link) when I’m creating a coloring book because I enjoy the process. But you can use whatever method fulfills your needs.

Once you have finished and exported all your images, you need to create the manuscript now. For this step, I like to use Canva (affiliate link) as mentioned above.

The manuscript creation progress is the same as an Activity book, as mentioned above.

PRO TIP:

If you want to Make Money with KDP as an artist in a quicker way learn this:

• A tip I would give you that I wished someone told me when I was just starting is that you need to keep your drawings to reuse for other coloring books because it’s so useful.

• I used to create new drawings for every book until I realized I can reuse the same to create multiple books at once.

For example, if your book contains 50 drawings, you draw 60 to 70 drawings and create 3 books off them, instead of creating 150 drawings.

PRO TIP 2:

• For holidays, I would recommend you create 200 drawings, if your book contains 50 coloring pages, and create 8 books.

• The more books you have, the more chance there is for you to make sales.

• Again, you can also buy ready-to-use coloring pages, graphics, fonts, backgrounds, illustrations, and more from CreativeFabrica.

c. Creating your Book Cover

When creating a book cover for your coloring book, it’s good to create one similar to the best-selling ones since they have already sold.

Similar to an activity book, focus on these when creating your cover:

• A clear title: A clear big title helps attract kids’ attention exactly as I’ve mentioned in the previous section.

• A graphic design that reflects the book’s theme: (The main character for your book (Santa Claus), and small based graphics Christmas-related such as presents, socks…) 

• A summary of what the book includes: (50 coloring pages) 

Did you know that you can also Make Money as an Artist Creating and Selling NFTs, I have a Beginner’s guide on that?

And another more advanced article on How To Find a Buyer for your NFT? 6 Proven Ways