6 Low-Content Publishing Ideas for Authors and Publishers (With Templates)

Seeking passive and semi-passive income sources that don’t require a huge investment or a whole lot of inventory?

Consider authoring and/or publishing in-demand products such as low-content books, planners, journals, puzzles, trackers, and calendars.

As an author, you can be a course creator, developing training resources to be offered for sale and/or monetized via affiliate marketing.

As a publisher, you can produce printables and print-on-demand materials for sale on your own site, or on Etsy, Amazon, or other third-party platforms. Or use them as free opt-ins for list building.

Already an author and/or publisher? Whether you’re a newbie or a seasoned pro, you can always benefit from helpful resources designed to turbo-charge your success while making your life a lot easier.

I’ve assembled a collection of just such resources – including easy-to-use templates – many free of charge.

Printables vs. Print on Demand: What’s the Difference?

Printables are digital downloads, often available in PDF or other formats. They’re sold as downloadable files that your customer would then print on his/her own printer. In most cases, you’ll want to make sure the file can fit on standard 8.5″ x 11″ (letter-size) paper, since that’s what your customer will likely have on hand.

Print-on-demand items are sold online, and then the order is forwarded to the print-on-demand (POD) company, which creates the book/planner/journal/calendar and ships it to your customer. It’s a turnkey solution: The POD company handles everything from soup to nuts – design, content, production, binding, shipping, etc.

Just as with printables, you won’t have to maintain any physical inventory. Instead, the print-on-demand company will literally print and ship the product only when a customer orders it. The company will receive a percentage of each sale. You’ll receive the rest as your profit.

Both printables and print-on-demand are fast, simple forms of low-content publishing, with practically no overhead.

Let’s look at some popular printable and POD products you can sell easily and successfully.

Cash in on the Planner Craze

What’s hot right now? Planners – those classic to-do calendars that typically display each week (or day) on a handy two-page spread. You’ll find them literally everywhere – at Etsy, eBay, Amazon, and eCommerce sites galore – and they sell like the proverbial hotcakes.

You can take advantage of this popular phenomenon several ways:

Design your own custom planners and print them out on your printer.
Download a planner template, customize it (if desired), then print out copies on your printer.
Contract with a print-on-demand company to design your planners to your specifications, then print, bind, and ship them as orders come in.

If you have mad graphic-design skills, you can use sophisticated programs like Adobe InDesign or free design software available at sites like sketch.com to create your own planner templates. Or you can download and customize pre-created templates.

Load up on Trackers

Simple to create, a breeze to sell, daily, weekly, or other trackers are simple, low-content, printable pages people crave.

You can certainly create your own or outsource it and let someone else design it. OR… use tracker templates.

Choose from numerous free and paid templates available online. Most are tweakable, so you can customize them to your heart’s content. Check out:

Canva – Cannot sell on third-party sites as-is.
OnPlanners – Commercial license not mentioned.
Template.Net – Third-party sales available with Pro Plus license.
Adobe Spark – Requires Adobe Spark. Commercial license not mentioned.
TemplateLab – No commercial resale rights. Can use as list-builders/opt-ins.
Simply Couture – Commercial license included with each purchase. Save 15% with code KARON15.

At these sites you’ll find sophisticated templates for trackers, planners, and much more, geared toward popular niche markets such as meal planning, working at home, personal finance, and daily fitness.

But designing the tracker / planner layout is just the first step. Once you have your basic template, you’ll need to change the dates on every two-page spread for all 52 weeks in the year (or for all 365 days if you’re producing a daily planner).

That’s a time-consuming process. How can you streamline and simplify it? Check out the Weekly Planner Builder from Thrive Anywhere

All templates can be edited and customized, and all come with extended-use rights. Print them out to sell to your customers via online and/or brick-and-mortar stores. Offer them as downloadable files at Etsy or Amazon Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP). Give them as holiday gifts to clients and vendors. Use them as opt-in freebies. Your options go on and on.

Write an eBook – Or Have Someone Else Do It for You!

Do you have expertise in a particular area – dog training, keyword research, weightlifting, affiliate marketing, quilting, herb gardening, whatever? Would you like to offer your insights and guidance to paying customers? Consider authoring an eBook and offering it for sale at an online venue such as Amazon KDP, Etsy, or eBooks.com.

What If You’re Not a Writer?

If you balk at writing an entire eBook on your own, check out Private Label Rights (PLR) companies, which can create fully developed content customized expressly for you.

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I understand that I will also receive weekly articles & videos plus periodic discounts, product notices & more. I can unsubscribe at any time.

For a fee, you’ll receive the rights to publish the content just as if it were your own. Tweak it a bit, combine or delete different articles/chapters, and make it yours. You can add your logos and branding, change colors and design elements, and so on.

Top PLR providers include:

Prefer to write your own content? More power to you!

Coach Glue has a wonderful self-paced planner that will help you create your book in a weekend.

For tips and pointers, check out resources such as Scrivener.com and Strunk and White’s classic Elements of Style, which you’ll find online free.

Once you’ve created your content, you can have it produced as an eBook in Kindle format and/or as a print-on-demand paperback at Amazon KDP.

Plug-and-Play Journals

Have you noticed? Everyone, it seems, is into journaling these days. It’s easy to see why: Journals provide emotional catharsis; facilitate reflection and mindfulness; and furnish the perfect outlet for imagination and creativity.

Like planners, trackers, and eBooks, journals can be quite profitable. For one thing, they’re low-content books, which means you don’t have to write much of anything. And, thanks to modern technology, they can be produced quickly and easily.

How quickly? How easily? See for yourself. Check out the Plug & Play Journals software.

Developed by Amy Harrop, this groundbreaking program automates the production of journals, workbooks, etc., so you can create up to 10 journals / workbooks per hour. That’s amazingly fast!

What’s more, you can customize various elements – topic, content, borders, front and back covers, etc. You’ll even get to take advantage of a 3-session masterclass on automated journal creation.

Plus, you’ll have royalty rights to your plug-and-play journals, so you can ethically sell them anywhere – at Etsy, Amazon KDP, your own eCommerce site, etc.

Profit from Puzzle Books

From crosswords to word searches, puzzles are in huge demand these days. If you offer them as print-on-demand books at Amazon KDP, you can earn substantial passive income.

But creating your own puzzles is an arduous process. The answer? Automate with Instant Puzzle Generator, developed by Silicon Valley superstar BP Mishra.

Create Low-Content Calendars

Journals, planners, trackers, and puzzles are just a few of the most popular low-content books / printables you can make. Don’t forget about calendars. In all shapes and sizes, we are all in love with calendars because they keep us on schedule. D’vorah Lansky has some truly inspiring ideas about how to make calendars that sell.

Get D’vorah’s in-depth training course, Creative Ways to Create Calendars and Planners and save $10 with Code Karon20.

Fonts, Graphics & Crafts

Seeking easy, inexpensive ways to customize your printables and print-on-demand products? I highly recommend Creative Fabrica. Search through thousands of ready-made resources at very affordable prices. Check out Creative Fabrica today.

Finding Best-Selling Product Ideas

Researching top-selling products can be a chore. Unless you have software that can do it for you in a matter of seconds. Craft Inspector is just what you need. With a few clicks, Craft Inspector will hand deliver every vendor’s best-selling products, ranking secrets, and ranking sources. And, unlike most other software, Craft Inspector has a one-time fee, not a monthly payment.

Get Started with Low-Content Publishing Now

With all the templates and resources available online, you’ll have no problem finding quick, simple ways to create low-content books and other digital products designed to produce passive income. Jump in today and start profiting right away!