7 Best Book Bolt Alternatives For Amazon KDP 2023 [Free & Paid]

Recently updated on September 7th, 2023 at 10:02 am

Looking for the best low-content publishing tool, and you feel that Book Bolt isn’t right?

In this article, we are going to discuss the best free and paid Book Bolt alternatives that offer better keyword research, better competition analysis, and better book design features.

We are also going to look at the platforms that offer more done-for-you KDP interiors, which you can edit and use as your own to save time in the low content book creation process.

But before we get into the list of the best Book Bolt alternatives, let’s briefly discuss why you should look for alternative options in the first place.

Why You Should Look For Book Bolt Alternatives?

Book Bolt is a comprehensive tool created to help people succeed with low-content publishing on Amazon. But as an all-in-one tool, Book Bolt cannot perform perfectly in all aspects, so people turn to better options.

Here are the 4 main reasons why:

  • The subscription payments
  • Limited design editor
  • Limited keyword research features
  • Not enough interior templates

After all, Book Bolt is a great platform that many publishers rely on. It has basically all that you need to get started, and even though it offers a subscription service, it is still quite affordable with the pricing starting from $9.99 a month.

But if you need a tool that is specifically focused on a certain field, for example, keyword research, or book design, then a good idea would be to look for alternative options.

7 Best Book Bolt Alternatives:

Without further ado, let’s get into the best free and paid alternatives of Book Bolt:

1. Creative Fabrica

Best for: Ready-made KDP interiors

creative fabrica fonts

One of the reasons why publishers use Book Bolt is because of its pre-made KDP interiors. Book Bolt offers nearly 200 free and premium interior templates, but imagine how many people have already used them…

If you really want to create a high-value book for KDP, you want to make sure that your book is unique. That does not mean you shouldn’t use ready-made interiors, but it’s better if you get them from sources with more options.

Probably the best website to find ready-made interior pages is Creative Fabrica, which is home to commercial-use artwork, and it has a whole section dedicated to KDP interiors. Creative Fabrica is an open marketplace where creators sell their artwork, and there are currently over 92,000 interiors in many styles and niches.

The great thing about this website is that the prices here are very low, and you can often get a package of interiors for as little as 1$. Alternatively, you can subscribe to Creative Fabrica’s membership for only $19 a month and download as many interiors as you want.

Besides the interior pages, Creative Fabrica offers all sorts of commercial-use graphics, including illustrations, backgrounds, patterns, and fonts.

Check out Creative Fabrica


2. Self-Publishing Titans

Best for: Keyword research and competition analysis

self publishing titans

Self Publishing Titans is a comprehensive Amazon KDP platform, which can be a better free Book Bolt alternative in many aspects.

The platform is best known for its free Google Chrome extensions, which can provide you with some useful data when trying to find profitable book keywords for low-content books.

Besides that, the website also packs a lot of helpful KDP tools and resources that can enhance your low-content book creation even further.

Let’s talk about the keyword research features first.

You can start by installing the extensions on your browser. One is called Huge Amazon Search Suggestion Expander and the other is KDP / Amazon BSR & Keyword Research SEO Tool.

By default, Amazon’s suggestion bar will only give 10 keyword suggestions based on what people are looking for, and the Suggestion expander tool will expand that number to over a hundred suggestions, so you get more keyword ideas.

The other keyword research tool will extract some important information from the search results, such as:

  • Number of results
  • Best seller rank
  • Number of reviews
  • Price

It will also calculate the keyword niche score, which is an overall score of all the metrics together. According to Self Publishing Titans, the keyword niche score should be 50 or above.

self publishing titans amazon

Apart from keyword research functions, Self Publishing Titans offer a handful of other free KDP tools and resources, including:

  • Amazon KDP Niche Finder
  • BSR Sales Calculator
  • Royalty Calculator
  • Pen Name Generator
  • QR Code Generator
  • Book Category Finder
  • and more…

In addition, the platform also offers over 100 free done-for-you KDP interior packs for all kinds of books. Those you can easily edit and use for your book creation.

Check out Self Publishing Titans


3. Canva

Best for: Book cover and interior design

canva

Every low content book creator is familiar with the best online design tool – Canva.

While Canva does not have any Amazon keyword research features, it is definitely a number one alternative to Book Bolt when it comes to design capabilities.

Canva allows you to easily design any type of artwork, including logos, posters, flyers, business cards, and of course – low-content books.

The platform offers a great user interface, which is undoubtedly superior to Book Bolt’s in many ways. It also has thousands of fonts, shapes, clipart, photos, and other design elements, which you can freely use to design covers and interiors.

canva etsy digital products

The reason why Canva is so good is that you never have to design things from scratch here. The platform offers hundreds of pre-made templates in many styles, so you only need to modify them – that’s easier than starting out from scratch.

The only downside of this platform is that Canva does not have templates specifically dedicated to low-content books. However, you can easily get a template in your specific size online, and then upload it to Canva with minimal effort.

Talking about the pricing, Canva is completely free to use, while it still has a PRO version. The free version will give you access to a bunch of free fonts, design elements, and templates, and if you want to access premium stuff for your designs, then you can subscribe to the PRO version for just $12.99 a month.

Try Canva for free


4. Book Bird

Best for: Ready-made KDP interiors, tools & courses

book bird templates

Book Bird is another great Book Bolt alternative for pre-made interiors and other KDP tools. The platform offers packages of both free and paid interior templates for low content, no content, and coloring books in highly profitable niches.

The templates come with a commercial-use license, and plenty of customizable source files, such as Illustrator, Photoshop, and others, so you can easily edit and turn them into unique ones.

As for free templates, Book Bird has over 30 editable coloring book and low-content book pages, as well as over 10 cover designs.

Talking about beautifully designed premium templates, they come in packages, and you can access them with a one-time payment.

Here are the premium KDP interior packages and their pricing:

  • LOW CONTENT BOOK INTERIORS: 120+ Templates for $44.99
  • COLORING BOOK INTERIORS: 700+ Coloring Book Templates; 70+ Cover Design Elements for $44.99
  • NO CONTENT BOOK INTERIORS: 77+ No Content Book Templates for $19.95 
  • PLATINUM BUNDLE: +650 Coloring Book Templates; +65 Cover Design Elements; +120 Low Content Book Templates; +77 No Content Book Templates  for $69.99

Besides interior templates, Book Bird is also known for its comprehensive course – LCB Masterclass. The course is created by professional publishers and it teaches you everything from A to Z on how to succeed with low-content books on Amazon.

Book Bird also offers some free helpful KDP tools, such as the sales calculator, royalty calculator, book category finder, keyword organizer, and Niche Hunter. The Niche Hunter allows you to discover over 850 profitable niches, analyze the demand with competition, and track the book-selling progress.

Check out Book Bird’s Templates and Free Tools


5. Publisher Rocket

Best for: Keyword research and competition analysis

publisher rocket

Publisher Rocket is an advanced keyword research tool dedicated to getting your low-content books in front of the right customers on Amazon. One of the biggest reasons why people turn to Publisher Rocker is that it comes with a one-time fee, but there’s more than that.

Compared to Book Bolt, Publisher Rocker does not have a book design tool, however, it offers more advanced keyword research and competition analysis features. The platform seems to provide more relevant keywords, and it also helps to effectively create Amazon ad campaigns.

The user-friendly interface of Publisher Rocker accurately displays important data, such as average monthly earnings, the number of competitors, average Google search and Amazon volume, as well as the competitiveness score for each keyword.

publisher rocket keyword research

As you probably know, ranking number one in a certain category helps you get the best sellers badge, and Publisher Rocket has more suggestions on categories than a Book Bolt does. Besides that, Publisher Rocket will also help you to spot low-content book trends, and optimize your KDP listings for the best results.

As mentioned Publisher Rocket comes with a one-time payment, which eliminates the stress for many publishers and allows them to use this tool forever. The price is $97 followed by a 30-day money-back guarantee.

Check out Publisher Rocket


6. Tangent Templates

Best for: KDP interior templates

tangent templates

Tangent Templates is another great alternative to Book Bolt, which offers more features for interior templates, and some useful KDP tools.

The main reason why many people in need of KDP interiors choose Tangent Templates over Book Bolt is that it offers a one-off payment, so you don’t have to stick to recurring subscriptions.

Tangent Templates has some basic and more advanced low-content book interiors ranging from blank pages and knitting papers to checklists and trackers. There are also templates dedicated to education, mindfulness, and paper games, as well as planners, and prompt pages.

The platform has a feature to dynamically generate prompt and planner pages for any date range, any trim size, and in seven languages.

Must also mention that all templates are fully customizable as they come with InDesign and Illustrator files.

tangent interior templates

If you don’t want to use pre-made interior templates, then you can use the Interior Designer to design your own ones. The convenient design interface allows you to add pages, fonts, lines, shapes, and other elements to the page.

Besides interior templates, and design editor Tangent Templates also has some handy KDP tools to offer, such as:

  • Tangent Builder – allows you to combine different templates into one PDF file
  • KDP Helper – gives you cover and interior dimensions and perfectly sized cover templates, so you can use them in your favorite design tools, like Canva, Adobe, etc.
  • Listing Helper – the Chrome extension that allows you to quickly and safely list your low-content books
  • Pricing Calculator – helps to find a reasonable price for your books
  • PDF Inspector – checks for any formatting issues in the interiors
  • Category Browser – helps to easily find a category for your book
  • 3D Mock-Up – creates a 3D image of your book so you can present it in marketing materials

Tangent Templates does not offer anything for free, and everything we have covered can be accessed for a one-time payment of $59.

Check out Tangent Templates


7. Kindle Ranker

Best for: Keyword research and competition analysis

kindle ranker

Kindle Ranker can be a better Book Bolt alternative for authors who want to effectively optimize their book listings on Amazon without breaking the bank

One of the most notable features of Kindle Ranker is its ability to provide up-to-date keyword research, which seems to be more accurate than Book Bolt’s.

With Kindle Ranker, you can quickly and easily find the most relevant and profitable keywords for your books while using real-time data.

In addition to keyword research, Kindle Ranker also offers a range of other useful features, such as the ability to track keyword rankings and analyze (spy) competitors’ book listings. With this information, you can gain valuable insights into how to improve your book listings and stay ahead of the competition.

Another great feature of Kindle Ranker is email notifications. This enables you to get informed about all changing marketing metrics related to your books.

One of the biggest advantages of Kindle Ranker over Book Bolt is its pricing. Kindle Ranker offers a range of pricing plans to suit different needs and budgets, starting at just $7.99 per month.

The platform offers 4 pricing plans, which all enabling unlimited category queries, Kindle keywords queries, Amazon authors queries, and unlimited book monitoring alarms (email notifications).

The only difference between plans is the pricing structure and the number of books you can spy on.

Here’re all pricing plans:

  • RANKING PRO: $7.99/month (Spy on 3 books)
  • KINDLE MASTER: $12.99/month (Spy on 3 books)
  • KINDLE WIZARD: $11.99 for 1 month (Spy on 25 books)
  • SERIAL BEST SELLER: $29.99 for 3 months (Spy on 3 books)

Check out Kindle Ranker


Final Words:

Overall, Book Bolt is a great tool for low-content publishing on Amazon, however, being an all-in-one platform it struggles to fulfill all of its features.  It also operates on a recurring subscription basis, and you may prefer a tool with a one-time payment.

– If you looking for the best keyword research for Amazon KDP then you should definitely try Publisher Rocket (one-time payment).

– If you are looking for the best book design tool, Canva (free version/subscription) is undoubtedly the winner.

– And if you are looking for some pre-made KDP Interiors, then you should definitely check out Creative Fabrica (pay-as-you-go/subscription) or Book Bird (one-time payment).

Frequently Asked Questions:

Self Publishing Titans is the best free alternative to Book Bolt. The platform features two useful Chrome extensions: Amazon Search Suggestion Expander and KDP Keyword Research. The first one expands Amazon's keyword suggestions, while the other one provides metrics, such as average best seller rank, reviews, pricing, and more.

Book Bolt is not free. Its pricing ranges from $9.99 to $19.99 a month. Both plans offer Keyword/Product Research and Cover/Interior Designer features. The higher-priced plan includes access to puzzle creation software. There's also a 3-day trial available for new users.

As for low-content books, the best alternative is Etsy. And for high-content books, platforms like IngramSpark, Lulu, and BookBaby, among others. These platforms also offer self-publishing services but may have different pricing and distribution options.

Yes, you can make money with Book Bolt by creating and selling low-content books, especially if you focus on niche markets and use the platform's features to optimize your listings.

Yes, you can conduct keyword research and design the interior of your book using Book Bolt. For your book's cover design, you can use Canva to create a compelling and attractive layout. This way, you're making the most of both platforms' specialized features.