How I Made $2,714 in My 2nd Month Publishing Tiny Books on Amazon KDP

I’m starting to figure out the Amazon algorithm.

Over the years, I heard conflicting things about self-publishing on Amazon KDP — with some YouTubers claiming to make upwards of $35k per month, while others vehemently cried out that it’s an oversaturated dead end for writers.

Being an optimist, I decided to give it a try despite the naysayers.

I started creating short nonfiction books in late October 2021.

November 2021 was my first full month on Amazon KDP, and I earned almost $800 in royalties from a handful of short titles that I published in late October/early November.

I continued publishing 1–2 new titles per week throughout November and December.

The hard work paid off.

In December (my second full month publishing on Amazon KDP), my earnings were $2,714.81.

I thought that maybe this was a fluke due to the Q4 uptick in sales that most people experience because of the Christmas holiday.

However, to my surprise, my earnings haven’t decreased that much in January.

I’m on pace to earn around $2,500 this month from my books. I’ll post an update in early February with January's earnings (be sure to follow this pub if you’re curious.)

How I Did It

I will do my best to concisely explain the steps that I took to get this result.

A quick disclaimer — I realize that my results are probably not typical. I put a ton of work into this over the past couple of months.

Also, this should not be taken as “advice.” I’m not an expert. I’ve only been doing this for two months.

This is MY case study, so take from it what you will.

1. I changed my mindset around what a “book” is

Previously, when I thought about writing a book, I believed that it was a process that took years of hard mental labor.

For a lot of writers, this is the reality.

When I decided to take on this challenge, I knew I needed a different approach, so I changed my mindset around what it meant to write a book.

One thing that I noticed about “traditional books” is that they tend to be a bit bloated. In fact, for every best-selling nonfiction book on the market today, you can find a written “summary” that hits all the major points that is one-tenth the size.

Companies like Blinkist have created multi-million dollar businesses by summarizing best-sellers.

Instead of spending months perfecting an outline and battling writer's block to pump out a bloated 250-page “book,” I set out to write as concisely as possible.

Most of my books are between 10,000 and 25,000 words — the equivalent of a dozen or so Medium articles.

Note: I made the personal decision early on to stay away from “no content” and “low content” books like notebooks and planners. No shade to low-content publishers, but it’s a trend that too many people are following.

I like to “zig” when others “zag.”

2. I “write to market.”

Years ago, I read the book “Write to Market” by Chris Fox.

If you are interested in nonfiction self-publishing, I can’t recommend this book enough. It’s a short read, but it’s full of gems.

The basic idea is that if you want your book to sell, you must write it with a specific audience and/or keywords in mind from the start.

The mistake that a lot of self-published authors make, is that they write books that they want to write, rather than books that the reader wants to buy.

When coming up with book ideas, I always start with topics I am personally interested in and/or have experience with.

But then, I use keyword research tools like Book Beam, Helium 10, and Publisher Rocket to understand the market demand in the niche or topic.

These tools will tell you how many people per month are searching for specific keywords on Amazon. I use this data to refine my book’s topic, create my titles/subtitles, and come up with keywords and categories for my KDP listing.

In other words, these tools help me write books that people actually want to buy on Amazon.

Note: I don’t recommend writing about things you are not qualified to write about. However, just like you don’t have to be an expert to write Medium articles, you don’t have to be an expert to publish books on Amazon.

The level of expertise required depends on the subject matter. Use common sense.

3. I write using an AI assistant

Writing on my own, I can crank out 2,000 to 3,000 words on a good day.

However, with an AI assistant, I can easily write 10,000 to 15,000 words in a few hours.

The writing assistant I use is called Jasper (formerly known as Jarvis.) You’ve probably heard people talking about this tool all over Medium and for good reason.

Here’s a peek inside my AI writing assistant —

I essentially write all of my books inside of Jasper.

Here’s a tutorial I wrote if you’re interested in seeing how this works.

It has basic formatting tools and a word counter that lets me monitor my progress in real time.

With the Jasper AI writing assistant, I can quickly create chapter outlines, subheadings, and opening and closing paragraphs.

The best part is that it ELIMINATES writer's block.

If I get stuck, I just hit the “COMPOSE” button, and Jasper will take over and finish the sentence or paragraph. I refine it from there.

One thing to note is that Jasper doesn’t “write” books for you. You don’t just give it a topic and wait for it to spit out a fully formed manuscript.

It’s a writing ASSISTANT.

I bring my ideas, knowledge, and research, and Jasper helps me write exponentially faster.

If you want to try Jasper out for free, you can use my referral link here to get 10,000 bonus credits (about 10,000 AI written words for free.)

Note: There are other AI writing assistants out there. For example, I have tried Shortly.ai, and I thought it was a great AI writing tool.

However, Jasper recently acquired Shortly.ai and incorporated all of its functionality into the software for a fraction of the price of what it now costs to use Shortly.ai.

So, while you can still sign up for Shortly.ai, I recommend going with the Jasper AI writing assistant for this type of work since you’ll get a lot more bang for your buck.

4. I use Amazon KDP ads

While making organic sales on Amazon is possible, it’s not the fastest way to profit — at least in my experience.

Unless you have an audience ready and willing to buy your book, it could sit on Amazon for weeks or months (or maybe even forever) before someone finds it and buys it.

I DO NOT have an audience, email list, ARC readers, etc., for these books. Therefore, I rely on Amazon KDP ads to jumpstart my sales.

And boy, do they ever.

Here’s a little insight into how the Amazon algorithm works —

The more sales your book gets, the more Amazon will do to help you sell it.

By running ads for my books on day one, I can start getting sales immediately. This signals to Amazon that they should rank my books higher for their relevant keywords.

When Amazon ranks my book higher for relevant keywords, I don’t have to spend as much on ads. In fact, I’ve turned ads off for some of my books after about a month, and they continue to sell well.

I’ll write a more detailed post on my entire Amazon ad strategy later, so if you’re interested in that, make sure you follow this publication.

5. I write and publish consistently

I’ve published about 40 books to Amazon KDP since October 2021.

This is not for the faint of heart.

It has taken a lot of consistent daily effort to grow this side business to this point so quickly — and this is NOT my main gig. I run another business as my full-time job.

So, while I don’t want to fall back on the old cliche, “If I can do it, so can you,” it’s actually kinda true.

I’ve had to learn how to prioritize my time, push through moments when I’d rather collapse on the couch than work on my books, and keep up with my professional obligations.

But the point that I wanted to make with this story is that —

It is possible.

August 2022 Update

I had every intention of publishing income reports here each month since I started this experiment.

However, I got involved in some other projects that took up most of my time.

Needless to say, I haven’t published a new title since the beginning of 2022, and this is how much my books, written with the Jasper AI writing assistant, have brought in so far this year.

I spent a few weeks creating those books at the end of 2021 and the beginning of 2022. So far, just this year, they’ve brought in over $20,000.

This is definitely something I plan to come back to in the coming months.

So, if you haven’t subscribed to me here on Medium, make sure you do that if you want to see more updates on my KDP publishing journey.

Note: Some of the links used in this story are my referral links.