Self-published authors don’t need a light-bulb idea for a novel — or even to write their own books. Chris Rawson and Angelina Stanzione, both 28, searched for popular topics on Amazon’s Kindle Direct Publishing and used ghostwriters — and later AI— to draft their nonfiction books.
The couple has published 29 nonfiction works on Amazon KDP — 17 of which are also available as audiobooks on Audible — in four years.
When they decided to try out Amazon KDP in 2019, Rawson was looking to leave his job as a physiotherapist, and Stanzione was reluctant to start a nine-to-five job while she was completing a master’s degree.
Stanzione told Insider they wanted more time to travel between the US, where her family lives, and the UK, where the couple lives. “We wanted to be able to travel more, work our own hours, and potentially earn more than we could in nine-to-fives,” she said.
Choosing nonfiction helped them target their books to readers
The couple used Amazon KDP to search for keywords and topics that were popular with readers but focused on those that had fewer books available on those topics.
They chose nonfiction over fiction because it was easier to target readers, Stanzione said. A romance novel, for example, is hard to target because the search term is vague, and there are more results to compete with.
“With nonfiction, customers are usually searching for ‘how-to’ or DIY books. If a customer wants to learn how to build a log cabin, they’ll type ‘how to build a log cabin’ on Amazon,” she told Insider.
In their first attempt, they settled on publishing a book about mushroom growing. Rawson said that while they weren’t experts on the topic, their research showed that it could sell well. They spent three months researching it.
When they felt they had a thorough understanding, they produced an outline for the book for a ghostwriter they found on Upwork, who finished the book in five weeks.
Each book costs about $900 to make
They paid the ghostwriter $600 and spent $150 on book formatting and $150 for the cover. Once they’d published it on KDP as an e-book and a paperback, they started to get sales within weeks.
Rawson and Stanzione published another two nonfiction books and made $5,000 in KDP royalties in their first four months on the platform.
Paying for cost-per-click ads on Amazon helps build their readership
Stanzione and Rawson pay for ads on Amazon KDP but don’t advertise externally. They said they spend between 25% and 30% of their budget on advertising within KDP, where they pay for their content to be sponsored, and therefore appear higher in search results.
Instead of paying for ads upfront, Rawson and Stanzione pay Amazon each time a prospective reader clicks on the ad.
“The percentage that you’re spending on advertising will relatively decrease the more established your book gets and the more reviews you get. That’s what we found,” Rawson said.
Amazon can print and ship books
The couple said paperbacks account for about 90% of sales. But they have to factor in printing costs, which are 20% to 30% of the cost of a book, depending on the length, said Rawson.
But printing and shipping books through Amazon means they don’t have to hold stock and a book only gets printed when a customer orders it.
Longer books mean higher printing costs, so the couple aims to balance a book’s length and the information it contains.
Their “sweet spot” is usually between 30,000 and 35,000 words, Rawson said.
KDP wasn’t an overnight success
When they first started, Stanzione worked on the business during the day while studying for her master’s degree, and Rawson spent a few hours on it after work.
Rawson quit his job six months into their publishing venture. Though they had more time to focus on the business, they said they wished they’d waited until they were earning more from KDP.
After four months of working full tilt, they were able to step back and travel to the US.
They started using Chat-GPT — but it has its downsides
For three years, they continued using ghostwriters they found through websites like Urban Writers and HotGhostWriter. When ChatGPT launched in November, they initially regarded it as a threat, but after realizing that generative AI would only improve, they decided “we may as well learn to adapt and use it — but use it wisely,” Stanzione said.
They use the chatbot to write an outline based on the topics they’ve chosen. The couple will edit the outline themselves based on their own research and then input it back into ChatGPT, section by section, using it to write the book based on the outline.
They work to make the AI-generated text sound more “human” and check its facts. They edit themselves and use another AI tool, called SEO.AI, to improve SEO.
Stanzione said these steps are important as the couple has seen other books that are “just so obviously written by AI and all the reviews are terrible.”
Still, replacing ghostwriters with the chatbot has proved lucrative. “In the last six or so months, our costs have come down a lot just because of that,” Stazione said.
Now their KDP business income is almost passive
The couple has made $34,500 from KDP and $5,000 from audiobook royalties in three months. They spend about two to three hours a day on KDP.
They’ve used Audible, which is owned by Amazon, to turn 17 of their popular books into audiobooks. They spend between $300 and $350 to hire a narrator for the books they’ve uploaded to the platform, where it’s checked for audio quality and pushed live for listeners to download.
Rawson estimated the couple put about 20% to 30% of their royalties back into the business for publishing new books.
In late August, Rawson told Insider they’d just returned to the UK after working remotely for a month in Spain and were headed to the US in September.
Stanzione said they’re happy to spend a little time working while they travel. “It’s nice to be able to have that freedom and not have to worry about checking in with a boss or missing out on pay because we want to take that time off, ” she said.
