7 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.

However, because Etsy and other sites may attract an international audience, you will also want to consider offering A4, A5 and half-page (6” x 9”) sizes. It’s a simple matter to resize these in Canva or PowerPoint.

Because printables are low-cost digital files, they typically do not offer refunds.

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.

Most print-on-demand products offer refunds unless the POD products are personalized. You’ll want to check with the POD company you use to find out if and how they handle refunds or whether you’ll need to have those shipped back to you.

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

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

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

1.  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:

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.

2.  Load up on Trackers

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

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

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:

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.

3.  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.

Discover 5 Easy Ways To Create Printables To Sell

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