The CORRECT Way To Self-Publish Coloring Books on Amazon
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Coloring books are a huge niche on Amazon and many self-publishers are making tons of money with them.
This inspires many newbie publishers to create and sell coloring books as well.
But the problem is most of them fail to make a reasonable income with their coloring books.
The reason is most of them don’t know the right steps to follow to create and sell coloring books.
In this blog post, I will walk you through the correct way of creating and self-publishing a coloring book on Amazon that can potentially make you a passive income.
Are Coloring Books Profitable?
It depends on many factors. The type and quality of your coloring matter a lot.
If you are publishing coloring books in a very saturated niche like coloring books for adults then the chances of making money would be very slim.
Why? There are tens of thousands of coloring books for adults ranking on Amazon with a ton of reviews. So, competing with those monsters would be a lost battle.
What can you do? You can spend some time niching down and identifying some sub-niches with less number of competitors.
Step 1 — Finding a Low Competition Coloring Book Niche
There are a lot of kdp tools that can help you with finding low-competition coloring book niches.
A recent and most robust one is Titans Pro.
It can quickly show you a ton of sub-niche ideas with useful research metrics like;
- Estimated search volume (the demand)
- Estimated search results (the competition)
- Opportunity Score (the probability of your success with a niche)
I wrote a detailed guide about Titans Pro, what it is, and how it works. You can read on my blog.
Once you find a good niche idea for your coloring book, you can click on it and further analyze this for certain factors including;
- The quality of covers of already published books
- The number of reviews they have
- The list price
- Average BSR of top 5 to 10 books
You can do this manually or use a Chrome extension like Titans Quick View to speed up things.
This extension gives you an overview of the valuable metrics to quickly access a given niche idea.
Have a look at the screenshot below, I found a low-competition coloring book niche while writing this blog post for you.
This niche is “do markers coloring book”. It has a niche score of 76 which is exceptional (anything above 60 is considered a great niche score).
The other useful metric include;
- Number of results: 1,668 (Indicate a low competition)
- Average BSR: 141,681 (Not bad, there is demand for this book)
- Average Reviews: 686 (Ideally should be less than 2K)
- Average Price: $8.80 (Great, can profitable ads)
Based on this data this kdp coloring book idea seems worth trying.
However, you need to keep in mind that these numbers alone can’t make your book a success. You need to create a book worth buying and promote it to generate sales.
Step 2 — Creating a High-Quality Coloring Book From Scratch
Before creating your coloring book, do a thorough search on Amazon and look at the covers, interior pages (in terms of quality and volume), and reviews of best-selling books in your niche.
In this way, you will have a clear idea about what type of coloring pages you need, and how many pages your book should include.
Pro Tip: Offer more pages than your competitors
When it comes to creating a coloring book, you have the following options;
1. Create a coloring book yourself (If you have design skills)
This is perhaps the best option to make and publish a coloring book on Amazon. This gives you full control over the quality of your book.
But the problem with this approach is that not many people are designers or illustrators (I’m not a designer as well).
If you are not a designer/illustrator, you can either learn this skill (will take you a lot of time) or you can move on to the next option.
2. Hire a designer or illustrator on Upwork/Fiverr
If you can’t create the coloring books yourself, you can hire an illustrator on Upwork who will create it for you.
I did this twice. I paid $1/coloring page and hired two freelancers to create two coloring books that I published on Amazon KDP.
You can create a simple job on Upwork mentioning that you want someone to create 40 or 50 coloring pages (for kids, adults, or seniors).
Don’t forget to mention your budget. Write clearly how much you are willing to pay for this job.
I usually write “The budget is $1/coloring page, please don’t apply if you charge more”.
3. Use pre-made coloring pages
If you are tight on budget and can’t hire a freelancer on Upwork. You can use pre-made coloring pages from various online sites.
There are many sites that offer high-quality coloring pages a few are listed below;
- Create Fabrica: Will cost you $3.99/mo with annual subscription
- Book Bird: Coloring Collection — Over +700 Coloring Book Interior Templates for Amazon KDP
- Vecteezy: Costs you $9/mo
However, the problem with this approach is the coloring pages are available to a lot of people.
You can potentially end up publishing the same book on Amazon that others are publishing.
To avoid this problem, always use pages from different sellers or platforms, then mix and match them to create unique coloring books.
Also, you can look for pages that come with editable resource files (SVG, PSD) that you make changes to before publishing your book.
4. Use Coloring Coloring Book Maker Tool
This is what I used last time to make a toddler coloring book. My book is up and live on Amazon and it is making sales as well.
The coloring book maker tool comes with over 9,000 coloring pages and elements and gives a lot of options to create unique pages for your coloring book.
This is a web-based tool and works like Canva.
You can search and drop coloring elements on the canvas. Then you can add text, shapes, and images to make unique coloring pages.
For details, you can watch my video tutorial below.
Step 3 — Outsource An Eye-Catching Book Cover
Your book cover is the first thing a potential buyer sees and interacts with. Therefore having an eye-catching cover is crucial to boost book sales.
When it comes to cloning book covers, you better not do it yourself unless you are a graphic designer or illustrator.
Or at least you have been creating book covers for a long time.
So the best route is to outsource the cover of your coloring from Fiverr. You can get it done for as low as $10.
How to Format a Coloring Book The Right Way
There is a common practice with coloring books being published on Amazon.
They have coloring images/objects on alternate pages. In this way, a coloring book with 50 pages to color will have 100 pages in total.
This is because you should add a blank page after each coloring page to avoid colors bleeding through the page.
Your odd pages should have a coloring image and even pages should be white/blank. So, your coloring images will go on page number 1, 3, 5, 7, 9, and so on.
I recorded a detailed video tutorial about how to properly format a coloring book for Amazon KDP using PowerPoint. You can watch the video here;
How Many Pages Should A Coloring Book Have
If you want to publish a coloring book on Amazon via KDP (Kindle Direct Publishing, you should aim for 24 coloring pages at least.
This is because kdp only publishes books with 24 pages at least.
Remember, to provide value to the customer you should add more than 24 pages inside your coloring book.
Most of the coloring books on Amazon have 35 to 50 coloring pages. There are coloring books that offer 100 or more coloring pages as well.
However, you need to keep in mind that as the number of pages increases so does the printing cost.
As a result, you will earn less money with a coloring book that has 100 or more pages.
So, to strike the right balance between providing value to your customer and making money with your coloring book, you can go with 35 to 50 coloring pages per book.
Conclusion
In conclusion, creating and publishing a profitable coloring book on Amazon requires careful planning, niche selection, and high-quality content.
Targeting low-competition niches using tools like Titans Pro is crucial. Hiring designers or using pre-made pages can help bring your coloring book to life.
Outsource an eye-catching book cover to make a lasting impression. Properly format your coloring book with alternate coloring and blank pages to prevent color bleeding.
Aim for at least 35–50 coloring pages to meet Amazon KDP’s requirements and provide value to customers.
Striking the right balance between the number of pages and printing costs is essential for maximizing profits.
By following these steps and continuously refining your strategies, you can create a successful coloring book that generates passive income on Amazon.
💖Download 15 KDP Interior Templates For FREE: https://bit.ly/3TdL3Lh
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