Bo Bennett Launches Third BookBud Site For Low Content Books

HOST: Bo, it's good to have you back, thirty-six episodes in. Last time we stood up BookBudKids, and you told me it had exactly zero subscribers at that moment because you were literally launching it live on air. And here we are again, because I'm looking at BookBudLC.com, which went live, what, yesterday? And you've now got three BookBud products in the world. But let's get into this one. So, this site says low-content publishing is a "volume game." But BookBud.ai was built around publishing *one* good book profitably. Those feel like different philosophies. Is low-content publishing the opposite of the "profitable book" thesis—or is it the same thesis at a different scale? GUEST: Well, BookBud was actually built for as many books as you want. Um, yes, you could focus on one book and get it done profitably, or you could use BookBud to produce hundreds of books, which many users have done. And hundreds of books being profitable is better than one book profitable. Um, but in terms of the low content, yes, it is a different game because when we're publishing full non-fiction books or fiction books with BookBud, these take time, even if they're, even if they're just one click away, they still take time to put together and, and list and make sure that, uh, they're, they're proved correctly. But, uh, low content is a different game because when you're publishing, let's say, a, a journal with nothing but lined pages, there's really no proofing involved. You have 120 pages of the same lined pages. So, it's a matter of getting it out there and getting it out there quickly. And that's what BookBud LC allows you to do. HOST: Quickly and reliably. You know, the site says every book is "varied by design" specifically to avoid the duplicate content traps that get KDP accounts flagged. That's a real risk most beginners don't know about. What does "varied by design" actually mean in the system, and how did you figure out that compliance was the hard problem? GUEST: Well, we've been working with Amazon for a long time and we are very familiar with their terms and conditions and we actually have AI go in regularly and read all the terms and conditions and make sure that we and our sites are in compliance and it'll change the way things work if it's not in compliance. So, uh varied by design essentially means that you cannot publish the same book. Let's say if if you're publishing a journal, it's got to be for a different audience, a different market. You can't just have like a generic journal and then another generic journal and then another one. It's got to be varied enough at least in the cover and the market even if the inside is all the same, which a journal is, let's face it. It's just a journal, it's just pages. HOST: So when you talk about "varied by design," you're really talking about the marketing aspect, the presentation and the targeting, not necessarily the interior content itself? GUEST: That's right. Because again with low content books, blank pages especially, or um lined pages, dotted pages, what whatever you have, they're all going to be the same. So there could be literally thousands of the same interiors out there for the different books. What really matters is the audience and the cover to make sure that it's it's different enough. HOST: Okay, so the system helps create distinct packages. Now, the BookBud family has BookBud.ai for narrative, BookBudKids for children's picture books, and now BookBudLC for low-content. Was this always a three-part plan, or did low-content demand come from your existing user base similar to how BookBudKids happened? GUEST: Book Buddy Low Content was actually an afterthought. Book Buddy Kids was always on the back burner and always something that we planned to do once we had the resources to do it. But Book Buddy Low Content was actually something that I was never really into, but I I just see that people are doing extremely well with low content books. And even though it's not technically or necessarily my cup of tea, not something that I actually do, it it's easy enough for us to create this as part of the family and allow the authors to create these low content books with our tools and do it better than they could do it anywhere else. That's the goal. HOST: Doing it better than anywhere else. The Studio tier unlocks AI coloring books with line art. Now, you've talked before about how character consistency across pages was the big breakthrough for BookBudKids. Does that same problem apply for coloring book line art, or is that a different challenge entirely? GUEST: No, that's not really applicable here because we're not carrying over the same characters. With a coloring book, it's just every page could be different. So, for example, you would do maybe a color book on nature or animals or clowns or something. So, you don't have to have the same clown or the same clown background or the same animal. In fact, you don't want it. You want it varied enough. You're not carrying a story from start to finish. It's just a a spattering of different images. And this works fine without character consistency. HOST: That makes sense. Now, BookBudLC's whole value proposition is that it keeps authors compliant with KDP rules. But in the past, you've noted that Amazon changes its policies constantly. How do you build a compliance guarantee into a product when the thing you're complying with keeps moving? GUEST: Well, there should be an understanding there that compliance is based on when you're generating the book. So, for example, if if a user generates the book now and then five years down the road, Amazon decides to do away with all low content books. Well, that's just Amazon. There's nothing we can do about that. Our mission and our goal and our guarantee is that we will help users create the books that will be compliant on day one. And what Amazon chooses to do down the road, well, unfortunately, we cannot control that. HOST: Got it, guaranteeing compliance at the moment of creation. Now, BookBudLC launched today—or close enough to it. You've launched a lot of things on this show. Six months from now, what's the metric that tells you this one worked, and what would make you pull back and rethink the product? GUEST: I don't think there's anything that would make us pull back or rethink. I think it's it's just a product that that people need, that people want, people are using elsewhere. And really, again, the the cost to have it out there and make it available to people is is very low. So, if we get one subscriber, it'll be worth keeping. HOST: One subscriber to make it worth keeping, an interesting metric given how you looked at BookBudKids launch day subscribers. Bo, great to have you back on the show—and I want to get into BookBudLC's companion programs next time! Before we go—for listeners who want to follow up on what we covered, where can they find you and the work you're doing? GUEST: They can find more about me and the work I'm doing at Artieboy.com and also check out this website that we're speaking about, bookbudlc.com. HOST: Bo, thank you for coming back on. I'm still thinking about that compliance-on-day-one guarantee for these low-content books. And thank you for spending part of your day with us. Let's get you back on soon—there's plenty more we can cover. That's a wrap.