Why I Started a Creative Publishing Business on Amazon KDP
One Facebook Post Changed Everything
One random Facebook post changed my life.
I don’t remember what the caption said, exactly. I just remember seeing it, something clicking, and then spending the next several hours falling down a rabbit hole I never climbed out of.
The post was about publishing simple notebooks on Amazon KDP. The idea that you could design a simple notebook, upload it, and have it listed on Amazon - the actual Amazon, where real people buy real things - within days. No inventory. No shipping. No storefront. Just a couple of files and a publish button.
I took a course.
I started learning by doing.
And then I published my first book.
It was a blank-lined notebook. Nothing fancy. Nothing clever. Just lines on pages, a simple cover, and my pen name attached to it as the author.
I hit publish and thought: you mean I could have something on Amazon just like that??
I uploaded a lot of books pretty quickly.
What blew my mind was how FAST they could sell without me doing any promotion. I’m talking, within 48 hours, a book would sell.
I told anyone who would listen. I still do - eight years later.
I should back up, because the “why” behind all of this isn’t really about notebooks or planners or Amazon royalties. It goes deeper than that.
I’ve been doing something online since 1999. {Just a BABY!🤭} Niche sites, blogs, content, digital products - I’ve worn a lot of hats over the years. But there was always a thread running through all of it, even when I couldn’t name it.
Freedom.
Not the vague motivational-poster kind. The specific, practical, daily kind.
The freedom to be home when my kids needed me. To homeschool. To manage my house on my own schedule. To travel if I wanted. To wake up and decide what I was working on that day without anyone telling me otherwise.
I gotta say…I’m a horrible employee. I’m great at DOING the job - but being told what to do, when to do it, and how to do it? I cannot. It’s just not in me.
Freedom isn’t just something I want. It’s a core value. It’s non-negotiable.
Creative publishing gave me that. All of it.
This part makes people laugh when I tell them…I’m a hot mess when it comes to planning and organization. My mom type is “hot mess express.” I get overwhelmed easily. I forget appointments. I’ve missed things that mattered because I wasn’t keeping a basic calendar.
And yet, I publish planners! 😆
The thing is, planners are really just calendars. They’re simpler to design than people think, especially when you start with good templates and make them your own.
The hard part isn’t the design, the hard part is getting past your own excuses and making the time to actually do the work and PUBLISH.
What I know after eight years of doing this is that the people who need your product are out there searching for it right now. They don’t care that you’re not a professional designer. They don’t care that you use hyphens instead of em dashes. They care that what you made works for them.
That’s how the best products get made, by the way. Not from market research spreadsheets. From lived experience. From the thing YOU needed and couldn’t find - and decided to make yourself.
I’ve watched the online business world shift dramatically over the years. Trends come and go. Platforms rise and fall. What worked in 2018 looks different in 2026.
But creative publishing? It just keeps going.
I still publish on KDP. I still create digital products like printables. I still sell print-on-demand products.
The formats have evolved and the market has matured - but the core of what I do hasn’t changed, because the core of what I do is create things people want.
That doesn’t go out of style.
The person I’m making all of this for - the content, the guides, the courses, the books themselves - she wants what I have.
Not the income number. Not the follower count. The life. The passive creative publishing business that works around her schedule, not the other way around. The creative outlet that doesn’t require dancing on camera or chasing algorithms or pretending to be someone she’s not. The thing that is genuinely not that difficult once you know how it works.
She’s probably struggling with what I struggle with - consistent growth, consistent audience, consistent income. The ebbs and flows that make you question whether it’s working even when it is.
But the basics? Once you know them, you know them. And knowing them changes everything.
That’s why I’m still here - doing some version of this same thing.
Freedom. Creativity. Something that’s mine.
That’s why I do this.
If this resonates with you and you're ready to learn how it works, Low-Content Publishing 101 is exactly where I'd tell you to start. It's everything you need to go from idea to published - simple, easy, step-by-step!