The Creepy Creatures Coloring Book:
From conception to the bookstore- the journey of my first self-published coloring book.
What started out as a small limited run of handmade books, developed and grew over several years into the latest printed incarnation.
I remember laboring over that first set of books- accordion-style with hand-painted corrugated cardboard covers each cut, spray painted and assembled by hand. A long, folded piece of interior paper that held the illustrations was cut to size, painted, and glued to the covers.
I photocopied each drawing and attached them to the interiors using a noxious smelling photo glue to avoid any lumpy surfaces under the drawings. It was truly a labor of love. I sold some copies to friends and family who appreciated the effort and enjoyed the art. After that, it sort of sat dormant for a few years and I moved on to other projects.
Fast forward to around 2019 when I started my journey in self-publishing books. I had been contacted by a publisher regarding a photo project but after I received their contract, it was clear I was going to be lucky to be making 1$ per book in a niche market and would be signing over my rights for quite a long time. Not to mention, I would have no creative control over the interior design, layout, or cover art, and that crushed my soul. The biggest soul crush, however, came after I politely declined to work with them. They stole my title and found somebody else to do the project on the topic I had pitched to them which had not been on their radar before our interaction. Needless to say, this left a foul taste in my mouth after this first interaction with a ‘professional’ publisher.
After that, I spent hours upon hours researching my publishing options and decided that self-publishing was the way for me. I ended up self-publishing the book with full creative control and zero compromises on content.
I understand that it’s not for everyone since it is a TON of work, but I prefer it to feeling that knot in my stomach when I know a project I’m passionate about is being taken apart and re-packaged to fit somebody else’s narrative.
I self-published a couple more photo books and decided to re-do my coloring book in a more accessible format now that I was starting to get the hang of the process. I spent a few more months working off-and-on polishing the 8 original illustrations and drawing 13 more. I drew them in pencil, inked them, scanned them in, converted them to vectors, and laid out the book. One of the drawings was then digitally colored in for the cover. I thought I’d add a cute detail by creating patterned backing pages for each coloring page featuring different little monster heads.
It was finally done and I hit ‘publish’, but now what? It seemed like after all that, only half of the work was done. As somebody for whom marketing does not come easily or naturally, getting the book out there into the world seemed like a daunting task. I’m not a marketing whizz, but I’m an illustrator and photographer so I just did what I do best. I started posting details of the coloring pages on social media and filmed little video clips of colored-in pages.
I gave a few books away to friends one of which spoke to another friend who happens to run an awesome independent book shop here in Berlin called Paul + Paula. It was a wonderful organic development and I was super excited to have my book available in a real bookshop.
It turns out that she was also part of another collective and book shop- the b_books 2 located at the Haus der Kulturen der Welt (House of World Cultures). The HKW is a large event, concert, and exhibition space located in central Berlin right along the Spree river.
This has served as a nice motivational boost to keep the ball rolling and I’ve since gotten in touch with a couple more venues to host the Creepy Creatures gang in the flesh. So, that is my journey so far with my very first self-published coloring book.
I guess the moral of the story is, the more ripples you make, the higher the chances of reaching uncharted shores :).
Thanks so much for reading this far xox! If you’d like your own copy to color-in and enjoy please check it out below:D!
