Jenny Hansen Lane

One of my favorite parts about publishing isn't making a sale today. It's waking up and realizing something I created years ago is still working. Some of the journals and planners I published over three years ago are still bringing in sales. Not because I got lucky. Because I built an asset. Most people spend years trading time for money. But every book you publish has the potential to keep showing up for buyers long after you've finished creating it. You do the work once. Amazon keeps making it available to millions of shoppers. If you've ever wanted to build something that could continue working after you click "Publish," I'd love to show you how I got started.

I almost missed this whole thing because my life already looked successful. I had the good job. The steady paycheck. Clients. A booked-out calendar. From the outside, it looked like everything was working. But three years ago, I was sitting at my desk at 2 PM on a Tuesday — doing work that wasn't mine, for a timeline that wasn't mine, toward a life with more freedom that felt impossible — and something in me just cracked. This can't be it. I'd heard about Amazon KDP. Passive income. Books. Honestly? I thought it sounded fake. I'm not a writer. I'm not a designer. I'm not super tech-savvy. So I did what most people do. I Googled it for weeks and never started. Then one night I saw a screenshot that stopped me cold. Someone had made money from a journal they uploaded on Amazon. Not a novel. Not a course. Not a huge business. A journal. Blank lined pages with a cover. “I didn’t even write anything,” they said. Amazon printed it. Shipped it. Deposited the royalties. I stared at my phone for a long time. That night, I opened a free Amazon KDP account. I had no clue what I was doing. Wrong dimensions. Rejected files. Upload errors. Starting over again and again. It took me 3 days to get my first book live. The first week? It sold 3 copies. I made $18.19. And somehow that $18 changed me more than later making thousands ever did. Because for the first time in my life, I got paid from something I created on my own. No boss. No meeting. No client approval. No asking permission. Just me, sitting in my basement with my kids nearby, watching Amazon send me royalties from a book I uploaded once. That was the beginning. I kept going. I learned the data. What people were already buying. What covers converted. What niches had demand. I got faster. Then I built systems. Within a year, I'd published over 300 books. Today I've published 627 different TYPES of books on Amazon and generated over $168,000 in royalties. And the craziest part? I almost ignored this entire opportunity because my life already looked successful. That's why I made the Self-Publish Starter Kit. Not for writers. Not for experts. For normal people who want another income stream and don't know where to start. It's $33 today. One-time payment. And honestly, I built it for the version of me who sat there thinking: “There’s no way this could work for someone like me.”