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Book Bolt Review
Are you wondering if Book Bolt worth it? I’ve been using it for months as a paid member, and here is my definitive, long term Book Bolt review. Let’s get right into it…
Introduction
Book Bolt is pretty much the ONLY piece of software -at the time of writing- that is DESIGNED for low content book publishers. Publishers that publish physical books like notebooks and planners on Kindle. This is where many companies would low ball their customers and give them a crappy software that barely works. But not Book Bolt, it packs a lot of features that are indispensable if you are in KDP (Kindle Direct Publishing) Low content.
Busy? Here’s the cliffnotes review
If you are in low content publishing or think of getting into it, you NEED Book Bolt. It’s built from the ground up for low content book publishers and if you are just starting, all you need to make money is a KDP account and bookbolt. It’s 5 tools rolled into one (Keyword research, interiors, exteriors, design and uploader) and each one are worth the price ALONE. So getting all five makes getting book bolt a no brainer. You can also get it at 20% off with the book bolt coupon code “nicheperfect“. Get it here.
In short: It’s a must-have swiss army knife for low content book publishers, even if you just use one of the blades.
That’s it for the short version of it, here’s the in depth review:
Book Bolt Review: A low content swiss army knife
The closest thing that can describe Book Bolt is a swiss army knife. It’s not just one piece of software, it’s 5 rolled into one. That is why all you need to make money with low content books is pretty much an Amazon KDP account and Book Bolt, it covers all the bases a low content book publisher would ever want. That’s what makes it so great, and that is also what makes it possibly overwhelming at first glance. When you log in, you are greeted with this page:
So…yeah, there’s a lot to it. But as you can see, the software authors made tutorials for every step of the way. The tabs on the left selects the “app” and you can go into the keyword research module, tutorials module, and more. Right off the bat, there is a usability problem. Where’s the interior generator? Where’s the book cover generator? Why isn’t it on the left? Hence I’ll start the review with…
The only downside: The usability needs work
Using Book Bolt WORKS. Everything does. It’s just that the usability needs a bit more polishing. To be fair, it IS in beta, but here are a few frustrations:
- Things like “Book Bolt designer” are no easely accessible on the right. You have to click on your account and select it from the dropdown.
- You need to install 2 chrome extentions for keyword research and uploading.
- Searching for keywords triggers a 60 second countdown
- Many features feel “added on”. New window opens, or you need to login again
This is pretty much the only issue with Book Bolt, it is a swiss army knife but many features feel like they’ve been added with little to no regard of how things work together.
Is it a deal breaker? Hell naw. Like I said, this is beta and the little usability issues do not compare to the amount of software you get. Before getting into the features, let’s get into…
How Book Bolt helps making money in low content
There is a formula to making it in low content book publishing. It’s keyword research + Product + Description. If you want to add fuel to the fire, you add Speed to the mix.
So it’s all about finding niches that you can compete in, creating low content books (and price it correctly) and writing compelling descriptions. Here’s how Book Bolt helps:
- It has keyword research features (+ a chrome extention if you want to do it direct on Amazon)
- It has low content book interiors it can generate
- It has a cover designer
- It has price history
- It has spy tools to know what’s selling (and you can the descriptions)
- And to add fuel to the fire there’s mass cover creator
- And also quick uploading features (this makes it worth it ALONE)
Now you know why I said it’s a swiss army knife, right? In short…
It’s the ONLY software you need to make it in low content
Unless you plan to make all the low content books interiors yourself and you have graphics software already, chances are, you will have to invest some cash to do low content publishing. You’ll need to invest in interiors, possibly graphics software, research tools and more. If you are a normal person without the graphics software or the knowledge of how to create interiors, all you need is Book Bolt. With a few clicks it generates the interiors, makes it easy to make exteriors and you have a product ready to sell.
Because of the nature of the beast, you probably won’t end up using ALL of the features of Book Bolt, but only a few. I’m a graphic designer and I use professional graphics suite, so I don’t use the exterior designer. But interiors saves me hundreds of hours creating this stuff. Let’s look at the features of Book Bolt one by one…
Book Bolt lister: Worth the asking price alone
Book Bolt comes with a Chrome plugin that helps you upload to KDP quickly. You save your description and select the categories and keywords and call it back when it’s time to upload with a keyboard shortcut (like ctrl+alt+1). This allows you to upload 30+ notebooks in a hour, and there is absolutely no other way to do this besides lister.
This is way different then something like “Text expander” or “Phrase express”. If you tried to replicate lister with these, it would take like 10 shortcuts, and you would still need to select each field and then input the shortcut. Plus you would have to manually input the categories.
Pro tip: Just use one shortcut. I started to run out of space in my keyboard, and I simply use one shortcut and simply select “is active” to select the batch I want. It’s simple math that the more books you have up, the more money you make, and lister helps upload things FAST.
Easy Research: KDP Spy
Also included with Book Bolt is KDP Spy. Simply search Amazon and click on the KDP Spy icon. It will search the listings and tell you what the estimated sales are and how much they are making. That red notebook for example is making an estimated $5595. Nice! You can sort the data by number of sales, etc.
One word of warning however, sometimes it picks up other Amazon products, like here I searched for “Notebook” and in the results there were Samsung laptops listed too. Not a big deal, just make a mental note that not all of the results are 100% KDP, sometimes 3% of the results are other products.
I much prefer this then going on the Book Bolt website, it makes research very practical.
Competitive and varied interiors
As a graphic designer, making interiors for different sizes is a pain in the butt. Book Bolt can generate interiors for different sizes in a snap. Even better is the amount of interiors available. Just looking at the amount of interiors make your brain kick into overdrive of what you can do.
Anyone can add a few dashes in Word to create a lined notebook, but the interiors offered by Book Bolt take it to another level. You are probably looking at $1000 worth of interiors with many added from time to time. From the last time I used the interior designer to taking a screenshot, there’s been 10 more added. All of these interiors (about 150 from the time of writing) are business opportunities than can exploited.
All of these, once generated output a well prepared PDF with lots of space in the middle in order to have enough space for the crease in the physical book product. Interior designer makes it easy to create a product. Select the interior, the maount of pages and size and export, that’s it! But that’s not all, there’s also..
Interior designer Pro for custom interiors
A new feature that was added recently (see a pattern here?) is Interior designer pro. The regular interior designer exports all the pages and they all are the same, this pro module allows to mix and match the interiors and also upload you own, for those who want to have more control over their interiors but don’t have Indesign or Affinity publisher.
Built in design suite
Book Bolt also comes with it’s built-in design suite. What I like most about it is it takes into account the spine size. Nothing is more frustrating than designing a cover, only to have it rejected automatically because the size was wrong. I don’t know how they do it but the design suite knows exactly how thick the cover should be.
As a graphic designer, this is surprisingly powerful. You can add the basics like text and graphics, but there’s some stuff that impresses even me who’s been doing this stuff for 10 years. There’s built-in Pixabay integration (Free images you can use commercially)
But that’s not all, there’s also layers, masking and effects. Effects that make the cover grungy, etc. The complete design suite is really a nice point to consider if you don’t have a design suite. I have uploaded thousands of books and never had a problem with the cover size the Book Bolt designer gave me.
On a more “advanced” note. The design app recognizes transparency direct from Pixabay, and pushing a graphic up and down layers is pretty easy:
To be continued…
By now, you get it, there’s MANY features, so much so that this review is getting tiring. I’m reserving it for another time. Get bookbolt now! The price is absolute peanuts.