Zero Content Books that Sell Well (2019)

About this video

Dale defines no-content (which he also calls zero-content) books as products with no real written content from page to page — journals, diaries, notebooks, planners and graph paper that customers use to store information or write in. His central warning is against the volume approach: taking one interior and putting 50 different covers on it. Instead he advises publishing one at a time, slow, identifying a winner that sells about a sale per day or every other day, and only then scaling that proven concept by one or two more titles and waiting 30, 60 or even 90 days to judge results. He then lists five types that sell well: daily planners (easy to adapt once you have a good interior, but putting a year on one gives it an expiration date), holiday-themed books (giftable items that can sell again the next year), name-specific books (any interior, with a personalized name on the cover, popular as gifts around November to December), art sketchbooks (which need not be completely blank), and adult humor (gag gifts and inside jokes, with a warning to review Amazon’s terms and avoid hate speech or cover content that could get a KDP account shut down).

Key takeaways

• Do not scale by putting the same interior out with 50 different cover iterations; publish one book at a time and find a proven winner first
• Only scale a proven concept, and even then add one or two titles and wait 30, 60 or 90 days to evaluate before expanding further
• Daily planners are an easy entry point, but dating them with a year puts an expiration date on the product
• Holiday-themed and name-specific books work well as gifts and holiday titles can sell again year after year
• For adult humor, check Amazon’s policies and avoid hate speech or distasteful covers that risk KDP account termination

Episode details: published March 18, 2019 · 11:32 long. Summary written by Self Growth Videos from the episode itself. Business results and any income figures mentioned are Dale L. Roberts’s own claims, shared for education — they are not typical or guaranteed.

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