From idea to Amazon: make a puzzle book in one afternoon

Every book starts with three choices. A theme, an age group, and a mix of puzzles. Search Amazon the way a parent would and look at what comes up. Notice how the best titles name the theme and the age, and how the descriptions list what is inside. Our book: a zoo activity book for ages six to eight, with a mix of word puzzles and picture puzzles, at eight and a half by eleven inches, in black and white. Black and white keeps the printing cost low, which leaves room in your price. Write your three choices down. They guide every decision you make this afternoon, from the graphics to the keywords.

Download My Puzzle Book Generator from my puzzle book generator dot com. It runs on Windows and Mac. The app is free to download and free to use. You only need a licence at the very end, to export the finished PDF.

Picture puzzles need pictures. The marketplace has themed graphic sets made for this app: elements, colouring pages, dot to dot drawings and more. Many come with a colour version and a line art version, so the same set works for a colour book and a black and white book. Whole themes can be bought as one bundle. What you get appears in your media library in the app. Prefer your own artwork? You can import it into the media library yourself, and the app uses it in the same way. For this book we use the zoo set.

Click Guided new project. Step one is about the book. Type the title and choose the theme. Pick a template: it sets the heading, the background and the decorations every page is laid out with. Choose the trim size, the age group and the language. Under printing, leave Print this book in colour off for a black and white interior. Pictures then print as clean line drawings. You can change all of this later in Book settings. Nothing you choose in the wizard is final, so do not spend long on it. The fastest way to a good book is to generate it first and improve it after.

Step two decides what goes in. Type a page count, one hundred here, and click Fill puzzles. The app shares the pages out over the puzzle types, solutions included. Then adjust: more word searches, a few mazes, spot the difference, count and colour, join the dots. Children like variety, and a mix also reads well in your description. Tick the This book belongs to page and the solutions section at the back. Parents look for both. A name page makes the book feel personal, and solutions let a parent check the answers without solving every puzzle themselves.

Step three is the words. Word searches, criss crosses and cryptograms all need them, and one list keeps the whole book on theme. Let the AI write one. The app suggests how many words you need, so no word appears more than twice. Each word comes with a clue for the clue puzzles. The list is saved to your library, so your next zoo book costs nothing extra.

Step four shows a summary. Click Generate book. The app builds every puzzle with its own seed, with the solutions to match. A minute later you have a complete book of one hundred pages. And it is not even half past one. Every puzzle is solvable, every solution sits at the back, and the page numbers are already in place. That is the part that used to take weeks.

Now walk through the book. This is where it becomes yours. Do not like a puzzle? Click Shuffle for a new arrangement of the same content. Every puzzle has its own settings, like grid size, word count or difficulty. Pictures can be moved by hand. Book settings changes the look of every page at once: fonts, heading styles and the colour setting. Take your time here. Look at every page the way a child would. Is the maze too hard for a six year old? Make it smaller. Is a word search too crowded? Lower the word count. Does a page look empty? Add a picture from the media library. A clear, friendly book gets good reviews, and reviews sell books. Save as you go. The app also saves automatically. One more tip: look at the solutions section too. Children check their answers there, and parents notice when it is clear and complete.

Click Export. The app checks the book against KDP's interior rules: margins, the gutter for your page count, the minimum page count and an even number of pages. If something is wrong, you see it here, often with a button that fixes it. Choose print ready. Leave bleed off unless a background runs to the edge. For a black and white book, the export prints in greys. When the bar turns green, click Export PDF. This is the step that needs your licence. See the pricing page for the current price.

The cover is a separate PDF with the back, the spine and the front. The app does not design covers, so you make it in a design tool or with KDP's Cover Creator. The KDP cover calculator gives you the exact size from your trim size and page count. We made ours ahead of time. The video Make a KDP paperback cover that fits shows how. Keep the cover simple: the theme, the age group and the word activity book, big and readable. On Amazon the cover is a small picture between many others, so it has to work small.

Now to Amazon KDP. Create a new paperback. Fill in the title and a subtitle that names the puzzles and the age. Write a description that lists what is inside and says the solutions are included. Add seven keywords a parent would search for, and choose your categories. Think in phrases, like zoo puzzles for kids, animal activity book, or mazes for six year olds. Do not repeat words that are already in your title. On the content page, take the free ISBN and match the print options to your PDF: black and white on white paper, eight and a half by eleven inches, no bleed. Upload the interior and the cover. Open the previewer and check every spread. Approve it, set your price, and publish. KDP shows the printing cost and what you earn per sale, so check that your price makes sense next to similar books. Amazon reviews new books, which can take up to a few days, and emails you when the book is live. If you want to hold the book first, order a proof copy before you publish.

Look at the clock. One afternoon. And the next book is faster still. Save this book as a book template, and the guided new project starts the next one with the same size, mix and look. Change the theme or the age group, and you are building a series. Your word list and your graphics are already in the library, so the second book takes a fraction of the time. That is how one afternoon turns into a shelf of books.

Want ideas for your next one? My Puzzle Book Generator is free to use, and you only need a licence to export.