Income Report Amazon KDP | 20 Coloring Books = How Much Money?
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- čas přidán 6. 06. 2024
- An in-depth Amazon KDP Income Report, looking at how much I made from my first 20 coloring books publishing on KDP in 2023.
In this video I break down my total sales, income, profit, and even look at how many books it would take to make £1,000 on Amazon KDP.
This is a completely transparent look at my finances, ad spend, titles and more and hopefully it will provide you with some great learnings, tips and tricks for your book publishing career.
Make sure to subscribe to the channel and you can check out more from me below...
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Thanks for checking out the video!
If you want the best resource for creating coloring books, check out Creative Fabrica for fonts, templates, images and more: www.creativefabrica.com/ref/2717942/
If you want the best software for making your books, check out Adobe: www.adobe.com/?sdid=49F59KY6
I assume that's self assessment for tax? Is that as a sole trader? been trying to find solid info before I start but finding it a little difficult seems to be so little on the admin side out there.
I take it creative fabrica is instead of canva and a better product?
@@Al_Does_Stuff Yes, exactly r.e. self assessment as sole trader. Perhaps I can do a video on that if that's helpful?
Creative Fabrica has fonts, illustrations, templates, etc that you can use for your books. It's a bit like Canva, but more focused on being the best stock site possible for book publishing. It also allows you to download things and take them into other programs to create books (also gives copyright unlike some issues that have happened recently with Canva getting KDP books banned!)
Very good video! I don't know if you have already been asked in a comment, but I have read that Amazon will control a lot of the work done with AI, do you know how this can be managed so as not to be negatively affected?
@@selfpublishingempire thank you for your transparency & honesty ! Health Wealth & Success to you for the rest of 2024 !
Can we get an update on the progress?
I really appreciate your honesty! I get so tired of people telling me I can make $5,000 a day sitting on a beach doing nothing.
Ha! I hate those videos... "you can make $10,000 from these notebooks" :D
😂😂😂😂
Damn this is kinda depressing eh?
@@siratlas9005it's more of a realistic what to expect if you don't do a lot of good niche research before hand and just pump out books without a good marketing strategy :)
who is Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk?
Alot of people think KDP is just an overnight thing - I appreciate you being totally honest about things. I am an Illustrator and Tattooist with experience in multiple different creative backgrounds, also including book illustration. I am currently working on a set of 12 colouring books which are all hand illustrated and themed, consistent with each other! I'm so very excited to have physical things of my personal style out in the world, not only to possibly earn a bit of passive income, but also to create possible traffic to my day-to-day tattoo work and other possible creative streams.
Thanks for your comment Sarah and good luck with the coloring books :). Make sure to check out some of my other videos, especially on my book launch strategy with ads. Consider adding them all to a series as well, as that'll help repeat purchase. Keep us updated!
Lets assume that you are a talented artist. Make some You Tube videos of your tattoo work. Link them to your books. Make a tattoo book too.
Thank you for being up front and honest about making money on KDP. So many YT videos click bait one into watching them by saying making megabucks.
I subscribed when I saw the low profits, so rare to see genuine results.
Yup you’re absolutely right, as soon as i smell a lie i never go back to that channel.
What a refreshing change from all of those ads CZcams attacks us with, where some spotty kid claims to be be making 100k a month self publishing!
Thanks for such an honest appraisal of your work to date.
Thanks Steve, much appreciated.
That has to be so discouraging! But I guess you have to take the long view and thinking you put in the work first, and then the revenue starts rolling in. Best wishes for you future coloring book empire!
That has to be so discouraging! But I guess you have to take the long view and thinking you put in the work first, and then the revenue starts rolling in. Best wishes for you future coloring book empire! It seems to me that the real key is selling them, and not so much making new ones. So, in order to make £1000 a month you need to sell 300 a month, right? If you got a national chain of craft stores to purchase 3,600 copies of Dinosaurs in Space, you’d reach your goal for the year, right?
It is greatly appreciated that you give us realistic numbers and that your advice is about what one can really expect after paying all the extras (adds, taxes) that generating this type of content implies. Many other videos give you very large income numbers and not based on the sales of someone who is starting out in this buisness, so your video and tips that you give us are greatly appreciated.
Thanks for all of the detail you went into and makes it very real, I appreciate your honesty and transparency.
Great video! I admire how you've managed to come up with ideas for such uniquely themed books. Colouring and activity books are something I am trying out this year.
Thanks for your honesty. It's so helpful to see a realistic presentation of this type of 'side hustle', including a breakdown of the associated costs. I wish you much success in the future!
I have never watched a really honest review like this, much appreciated! I like the mentality does it does not matter if the earnings are not that much now but overtime once your followers and books multiply,the profit would grow overtime. thank you sir!
Great video thanks for being so transparent it's so good to hear an honest account of what to expect.
Thank you so much
Thanks Shane!
So nice to see and hear an honest, down-to-earth report. One fellow I follow says to start each book at an extremely low price just to get reviews, then raise the price. I'm gonna follow that advice. Considering that our only hope is long-term passive income, it may be cheaper than advertising!
Definitely a good strategy! I start them lower and increase them after a month but I’ve not tried extremely low before… i might have to do a case study video trying it ;-)
Too cheap of a price tells the consumer it is not a quality book.
You have no idea how valuable this video is! Thank you so much, thank you!
Thank you for sharing a proper HONEST walkthrough of your experience with actual real world figures. I wish you every success!
Here is a guy in complete harmony with himself, and I even think for whom money does not have that much value, I am very happy that I met a person like that even only virtually.
in France, no one has dared to do this, everyone hides everything and only shows the little, which obviously doesn't help us at all for us who are just starting out, I would like to thank you for your frankness and above all stay like you will certainly live a very long time in peace. Thank you sir
Hello Maya, je suis français également. :) Je partage ton avis / I share your opinion.
Currently, I have four coloring books for sale, and I plan to publish at least twenty more by the end of the year. I've already created the covers premade, and all my coloring books are part of a series. I've got a few other series planned to go along with several Webnovels we have published. I haven't made any more yet as I have not put any money into ads, but I plan to. Thank you for making this video; it was very informative and helpful. It will help us build our brand.
This is the only legit and honest video about the reality of KDP publishing I've seen so far.
Good luck getting to 10,000 books as quickly as possible to hopefully replace your income.
Thanks for being legit and transparent. No hype is appreciated... liked and subbed. 👍
Hello from a fellow Brit :) Thanks for being honest - this is a more valuable and interesting video than the countless "get rich quick" videos I've seen so far. I'm contemplating KDP (although in a completely different genre to the colouring books, notepads, etc...) so it's handy to see what I may realistically get if I go ahead with it. Your spending on adverts is really interesting and something I clearly need to look into more. All the best. Cheers!
Cheers Gareth. If you're doing a different area you might find success a little quicker. With my books it tends to be the more difficult they are to make, the better they sell (likely because of less competition). Good luck :)
Great honest video .. I am very new to this but of course have watched all the click bait videos about earning $$$ a month. Reality is one of my books has seen 10 sales in a month , the rest not a single sale. I am also in it for the long term and believe that if with each release i improve then it is a worthwhile journey ;-). The main point is I enjoy the process and am learning everyday.
I agree with you. Just through repetition, your ad spending will get more refined, your subject choice will get better and better. And your covers will keep improving. Plus you got the passive revenue from your first books when you started. Your profits from the past year might seem disappointing, but I really think you've got something to build on.
Agreed. When I do my August review and end of 2023 review we will see how more books, and better books, have continued the build
Thank you for being honest. Finally someone honest. I'm so tired of these leaches in the Make Money Online CZcams space duping unsuspecting followers into thinking making mass amounts of money doing all these MMO businesses is easy and viable. Especially the ones that haven't even done what they're pitching or are really making money selling courses to get people to try these ideas. A huge thank you again.
Thanks Nich, yeah if I get my book sales up to a level where it's bringing in a good amount regularly each month it's going to be through hard work, volume, quality, good niche research and ad strategy... all of which I'll share my results with you along the way to see what's worked and what hasn't! It's definitely not a get rich quick side hustle, but it can be a lot of fun and give SOME extra money on the side.
@@selfpublishingempire Thank you. I'll keep watching your updates and all the best in the success of your business.
Great video. Good to hear straight-talking about sales and expenses.
Thank you for being so honest and sharing your sales. Wishing you the best for Q4.
Thank you, and you!
Hi Craig! It takes guts and a certain level of confidence to make an honest video like this, which I think is great! Although I don't do AI content in my own books, I appreciate the thought you put into each book.
Thanks Mariel, I do make sure that I'm not just sticking AI images in to a book, that I am adding extra like retouching, copy/etc to try and stand out :). Looking forward to watching your video now!
Thank you for your candor. Far too many people promise that AI publishing is an absolute goldmine with no limits.
I see these videos EVERYWHERE and it's just not the case.
Appreciate the honest look. All the best!
Thank you for your rare, honest report and the actual earnings details. ❤
Thank you so much for this really honest review, especially considering all the expenses! I am tired of these videos saying "It's so easy to make money with KDP" or "All you need to use is Midjourney" or "I made 10,000 with my coloring book". No, KDP is definitely hard work and you never know if you will be successful or not! In my case (I do not only coloring books, but also guidebooks and storybooks), considering all the expenses for ghostwriters, designers, etc. I am still in the red, even though I made a net profit of about $800 last month.
Cheers Marc and thanks for sharing your experience too. I'm definitely seeing improvements as my books and marketing are both improving... but like you say, you need to treat it as a longer term building (ie a business), rather than a get rich quick scheme! My most recent income report shows more success.
Thank you for your honest breakdown. It's eye-opening.
Thanks for being honest and breaking things down like this. I’m currently learning about publishing Low Content books with KDP and this helps me to manage my expectations moving forward.
I used to do Sales for a Digital Marketing Agency and I know how valuable keywords are.
Instead of publishing 300 Colouring books, invest the time into learning how to pick the most profitable keywords and make sure the quality of the book cover is the best it can be and stands out from the others.
Thank you for your honesty, this makes me more confident to publish book myself. Im confident you can make decent amount from this video. Good luck sir.
Thanks a lot for this honest video. Right now, I am researching this whole field around Amazon KDP and this really is one of the first videos that shows a personal, complete honest view on it.
Glad it was helpful!
As everyone else has said, thank you for making this video. Wish you all the best in success for the future
this is very detailed and honest video ! love it
Thanks for your honesty! very insightful and informative video, appreciate your efforts!
Thank you so very much for such an honest video! Very much appreciated! Keep it up! I wish you much success and profitable progress in your journey!
Thanks Beth, and you too!
Thank you for being honest about what you're profit was. Keep going.
Thank you
Thanks. Love your transparency
Love this. Thank you for sharing your experience and the realistic outcome. Didn't know much about KDP. The large income in some vidz seemed too good to be true.
I appreciate the transparency, you earned a subscriber
I'm surprised by some of your books that did not sell well. The aliens one looks terrific.I wonder what your keyword search was for the beard one -- it must have been freaking hilarious! Thank you for your transparency. I'm just at 10 books since march 2023.
Thank you. I look forward to your future videos.
Great video. Nice to hear someone giving a realistic, honest experience. I hope your business keeps growing!!
I appreciate that! Thank you :)
Realistic and up front. Easy subscribe. Looking forward to following your journey. Cheers mate
Thanks and welcome aboard!
Thank you for sharing! This is a very realistic experience for starting on Amazon KDP!
Thanks Catherine. I have had a couple of books perform a bit better than these - and some others perform worse! But I hope the honest overview helps :)
This video has been NEXT LEVEL in terms of transparency. Much appreciated, thank you!
My pleasure! Glad it was helpful
This is a great breakdown of your efforts and paints a realistic expectation of creating these coloring books. Thank you for sharing!
Glad it was helpful!
Thank you for your honesty. Really appreciate it 💜
Thanks for this video. I appreciate your honesty and transparency. Keep it up with the videos. I learn a lot from them. 😊
Ah thank you so much for the support :), I love watching your videos and learn from them as well!
@@selfpublishingempire 😊
Good job on being honest about it. I am a professional book designer and children's book author and have been considering trying out some coloring book ideas. I know it's not easy to just generate a good amount of passive income by doing this, but it is a decent way to build something up as long as you can keep the good ideas coming. Thanks for the video.
Great video, thanks for sharing your books.
Thank you for sharing your experiences with us 😊👍🏻
Craig, thank you for a very clear, refreshingly honest and helpful video, great job!
Thank you! I have had other books that have performed better since then, so make sure to check those videos out :)
Honest and personable. well done.
You learned a lot through producing and publishing these books and i guess you also helped some people to have more fun in their lives
KDP works very well for people who already have a large audience who are looking for extra content to buy into. But with a small or no audience, I believe you're better off trying to build an audience first - maybe low thousands of followers/subscribers. In whatever medium your into, be it toys, DIY, crafting, cookery etc etc build that first using socials, CZcams, local markets and your own online presence. And then, once you believe you have enough of a crowd who are hungry for your 'stuff', create a book or two on the subject, launch it and then tell your followers. You'll get much better results in a shorter time frame. Build it and they will come is great in theory, one in a million chnace of success in practice.
thanks for doing this breakdown. it really puts it in perspective.
You're welcome!
Brilliant video! Thanks for the honesty 😀
I wish more CZcamsrs would be this honest on these things... Great video, shared it in my group.
Much appreciated! Thank you for sharing :). Please check out my recent one now I've reached 100 books as well.
Super useful video! Thanks for the transparency and realistic expectations and the work involved 👍
I saw this video by chance and I want to say that I am surprised by the amount of honesty and transparency that is lacking in this business. I just subscribed to your channel because you deserve that. Keep going Brother wish u all the best .
Thank you 🙏
I appreciate your transparency.
One more thing..your KDP journey might be slower as expected, but the speed your youtube chanel grows is really impressive 👍
Thanks Tom!
Really helpful. Thanks for the honesty.
Thanks for your honesty man, tired of the BS. You won yourself a new sub.
Thank you for sharing your experience
thank you man! you are the only honest CZcams till now, the others trollers are still claiming to make 5000$/month with colouring books and various journals
Thank you, and thank you so much for the donation 🥳
Great honest video and explaination
Thank you 🙏 for your assessment and transparency, it is much appreciated.
Glad it was helpful!
You really helped a lot to providing this useful information
Thank you so much for sharing your valuable experience with us, I'm sure if you don't give up those numbers will increase in no time, wish you the best!🎉🎉🎉🎉
Thank you! They've already started rising which is promising :). My August report shows that a little bit, but like you say it's about not giving up and keeping going!
appreciate the transparency
You deserve the views for honesty!
Thank you so much! This really helps!
I have only subscribed due to your honesty .So refreshing Thanks .
Thanks for the sub!
an honest and realistic experience. Thank you :)
A fresh of breath air compared to all the other "I made 60K per month with A.I."
Thank you, and I hope you do well in your jounrney.
Thanks :). I think if you get lucky and/or get a book to rank well in a profitable niche there's potental to make good money, but it'll take a good amount of ad spend along the way.
@selfpublishingempire one thing I'd like to do (as would many people) is get the colouring book rights to an I.P like Spongebob or Scooby Doo.
@@toxicGumballz If you know anyone, let me know :D
@@toxicGumballz I used to work in entertainment licensing. I think your chances are slim to none. First off, the licensor will only license a set amount of categories. (eg activity books) per licensed property, and will 100% require you to follow their 'style bibles', which means def no AI, and definitely the employment of a professional artist who understands licenced property guidelines. Every single image will have to be approved by the licensor (via their agent), which can take ages, and almost ALWAYS requires some kind of amendments (ie more money to spend for you). And then you have the financial aspect of the deal. ALL licensed property owners will require you to enter a guaranteed royalty agreement. This is where you will guarantee a minimum amount of royalties the property owner will earn over the license agreement (typically 2/3 yrs). Not only that, you will have to pay a large percentage of that guarantee royalty up front. This causes a big issue for small operators, as they will often agree to a HIGH ROYALTY, and OVER ESTIMATE the earnings. and then end up paying a HUGE advance on that guarantee, and NEVER actually make it back. PLUS under contract, you are obliged to pay the licensor the minimum of the TOTAL royalties you guaranteed in your agreement. And to top all this off, if you make one tiny mistake, and do not follow their license guidelines, they will terminate your license (after all they have a very profitable brand to protect). If after all that you are interested, then the licensing agent for Scooby Doo is www.warnerbros.com/company/divisions/consumer-products and you can find the licensing agents for many other characters at www.licenseglobal.com/
@@RJMCTVNice breakdown of the facts. Cheers.
thanks for your honesty!
Thank you so much for this video. I follow a lot of KDP publishing channels and I believe yours has got to be one of my favorites. I also work a full-time job. I'm a truck driver so finding time at the end of my driving day in my truck to make my coloring book has been a arduous process. I just got my first book finally published a couple weeks ago. I was disappointed to have met zero sales so far. I will admit that I started this journey looking at those channels that claim you're going to make millions of dollars or maybe thousands. My head is obviously much more put together because I figured it was going to be a percentage of that honestly though I didn't realize it was such a small percentage. Still my first book was fun although it took a long time and I know if I keep chipping at the old block I'll get several more books done. I look forward to having more of your content and I commend you for keeping everything realistic.
Those channels are good for inspiration, but dangerous because they set false and unrealistic expectations. KDP is a slog, but it can be fruitful, and when you find a book that starts to sell it feels amazing. Keep chipping away, that's how I started!
Thanks for sharing 😌 is amazing content!
Definitely a learning curve. But good luck on the rest of your endeavors. Thanks so much for your honesty. Most content creators don't tell you the truth.
Thank you, good luck on your journey too and I'll have a video coming out soon showing the SUCCESS of a coloring book :)
Thank you for such a realistic and honest video
Glad it was useful!
Brilliant thanks 🙏 for sharing your experience 👍💪
I have been giving coloring books quite some thoughts. So seriously thank you for your honest and frank video.
You don't even take into consideration the amount of time you spent on creating the images and then the books. Even the lowest paid job would have gotten you more. So I do hope you will benefit from your effort in the long run!
I really enjoy making the books though, it's a creative outlet. Some books will just completely make zero money, whilst I've found some can make sales (in this example it was the dinosaurs in space one)... so it's all about learning about what works well, replicating that and improving upon it, and then the results will hopefully come!
Thank you for posting this realistic video :)
You’re welcome, thanks for stopping by!
Fantastic video - thanks for your honest view (even if its little deflating!]. Good luck 🇬🇧
I've had some books perform better with one evening making £2k in a single month in a seasonal niche - so it is possible, but this is definitely a more realistic view :)
Honesty earns my subscription
Thanks for the honest review, so unusual.
Thanks! Subscribed! Cheers from Nova Scotia!
Sorry to hear about your weather lately (as an Ontarian)
@@goilo888 Thank you so much! The fires are out and now we are flooding. We need lots of good wishes :)
I´m trying to start in this job, I appreciate you sharing the true
Great content. You are the only person has been 100% honest. Thank you.
I appreciate that! Thank you :)
Finally someone keeping it real. Way too many just do this and make $1,000 a day videos/ideas this is appreciated not as a discouragement but so that people are realistic before they jump in thinking that it's super easy to create a few prompts, upload and they can retire
Now that’s an honest video, I like this
Hey thanks for your honesty
God bless you sir ❤❤❤ thanks for information 😊😊
Great Thumbnail and the video was valuable. I’ve been thinking about creating colouring books but after seeing how much spending in ads and taxes, less your time and then I can see you are actually in deficit not profit. However, I will be very curious how well they do this holiday. Excellent job experimenting and being curious. Love it. Thank you for sharing.
Thanks Corinne. Yeah, it's a bit of a slog, but if you have an idea for even just one coloring book, and you do your competitor research, make sure it seems there's search traffic, and put in some money to get it ranking via keyword ads... it is possible to get a book going. It's just difficult as there's SO much competition.
thanks for making the video - very informative. I also appreciate the full transparency and the lack of hyperbole. You provided a very reasonable justification and a great presentation.
As a follow-up, you might want to show the creation of a single book from GPT to outline to Midjourney to editing to publishing/advertising. I think it would be really interesting.
Thank you and great idea!
You helped me a lot.
keep growing ❤
I have just published my first colouring book and I found this video perfect for me. I will have very low expectations now and will not ge disappointed if I do not get any sales. I love my colouring book though and enjoyed making it. Thanks for you video.
That's great to hear, I'm so glad this was useful and what I can say is that my next 10 coloring books following these are doing better! I think people tend to get better and better with their products, keywords, advertising, etc as they keep going. So my advice... keep going :)
I just published my first colouring book yesterday. Let’s hope for the best
@@palermodpr Good luck! Let me know how you get on.
@@selfpublishingempire I have other two books published within the last week and got no sales yet. I think I'll have to use ads on them. Can you talk about when do you normally decide to go for ads?
@@palermodpr Sure - check out my video on ads which is a great starting point and should help! For me normally what I try to do is 4 weeks straight away after going live - set a budget for the book and spend that. And then dial them back to almost nothing.