How to publish an adult coloring book (and why you should)

A few weeks ago I got obsessed with adult coloring books, after realizing that about half of the top bestsellers on Amazon fall into this category, and that even the boring ones are doing pretty well (top 1000 or so, any are in the top 100).

In contrast, my fiction is closer to 10,000, which means I’m selling about 10 copies a day. But fiction is hard work and takes a long time – adult coloring books should be much faster and easier to make, and potential will sell much better. If I can get into the top 100, that’s about a thousand sales a day. At $2 profit, that’s $60K a month.

Holy shit, right?

So this month I’m going to focus on making some of my own. I’ve hired some artists to help, and will also be pulling copyright free images from out of print books. That will let me produce much faster, most just using photoshop to make collages of artwork.

If you think these are fun ideas, please share the covers on Pinterest or social media. I plan to have these and others up on Amazon within a month.

I also made a video talking about adult coloring books, formatting and production, and my publishing plans.

Best adult coloring books

There’s been a whole bunch of new adult coloring books in the last few years but here’s a list of favorites: best adult coloring books.

How to make and publish a coloring book

I’m also planning on finally finishing a few of the fun ideas I had years ago when I wrote this post, thanks to AI art I can update my photoshopped artwork and spin out variations. I’ll be posting more about how to make and publish a coloring book soon and add a tutorial and a package of book templates you can edit and use yourself, so check back in or subscribe for book marketing and self-publishing tips.

Update: Unfortunately, I never actually finished most of these projects, though I did do a few – the adult coloring book phase has also died down quite a bit. I do have some articles on publishing short stories; I also plan to add some book formatting templates and tutorials for coloring books and children’s books in the DIY book design bundle.

Also – the trick to long term book sales is building an audience and learning how to position your books; no matter what kind of book you’re writing, my guide to publishing will help!

The 3 secrets to book marketing, and a haunted castle tour. Totally free. Get it here.

Derek Murphy

I’m a philosophy dropout with a PhD in Literature. I covet a cabin full of cats, where I can write fantasy novels to pay for my cake addiction. Sometimes I live in castles.