Coloring Books for Everyone

Experiment: Could I make and sell something on Amazon?

Parameters: Using ideas from my brain, copious claude tokens, and my Gemini API key for nano banana endpoint calls (prepaid tier), I created a series of all-ages paperback coloring books called Coloring Books for Everyone. Each book in the series is based around a different theme. The first one, Fantastic Bakes, was published on 9/28 and Greetings From… launched on October 4. At time of writing, Gothic Halloween and Kawaii Halloween are still in review. More titles are in the works, mainly because there is a limit to how many titles KDP lets you publish per week per format (paperback, hardback, kindle, etc.).

I added two hardback books: Shakespeare Scenes (two illustrations depicting scenes from 37 plays organized by category) and Jane Austen (10 illustrations of pivotal scenes for each of her 6 complete novels) to get them “out there.” Paperback versions will be published week of October 12. For a coloring book, hardback is probably not the ideal format!

The Process: First, pick a theme and get prompting. Ask claude to create around 60 illustrations designed for a paperback coloring book using nano banana. Being very detailed helps as each image requires a separate API call, so do-overs are costly. This will generate jpg files. I chose to manually create the PDF manuscript and cover PDF - mostly because I wanted to feel as though I’d had a little more creative input, especially when it came to the cover art and arrangement. Some of the images will require more API calls to tweak while others can be manually edited and cleaned up in photoshop.

Once the manuscript is ready, creating a title with Kindle Direct Publishing is the next step. KDP will review the manuscript and, once they sign off, it’ll go live.

For the Greetings From… book, I created a claude skill to generate the images and associated city info an “fun fact” that goes on the back of each illustration. That way, I can add more pages - or additional volumes - and keep the tone and style consistent across sessions.

(I’m using a pseudonym for this project.)

The Appeal: I chose Halloween because it’s Halloween season, with gothic and kawaii variants to try to cover different aesthetic tastes, and I chose baked goods because the new season of Great British Bake Off just dropped and it felt simultaneously timely and timeless. The Greetings From… book is a series of postcard-like images of cities, which include recognizable landmarks and themes.

The audience is people who like to color, 71% of whom, according to my research, are women. The largest age bracket is 18 to 29 and the key motivators are stress relief & relaxation, nostalgia, and escapism.

The intention is that people who color for fun or relaxation will scoop these titles up to add to their rainy day activity drawer. Similarly, grandparents looking to stock up for when the kids come over can put this in their cart with very little friction. These titles, and their context, are soothing and innocuous. The illustration style is has a nostalgic vibe.

The tricky part: There are hundreds of coloring books available on Amazon. How will I get mine seen if I’m not planning on any promotional spend? While I don’t expect to spin this into a coloring book empire - I don’t even care about ROI on the API calls - it would be nice to sell a few! Questions to consider:

• Have I made the right call with my themes? More market research into key audience preferences would help here.

• Will the Halloween books be published in time? And are themes with potentially sensitive content that requires additional review a no-go for future titles?

• Accurate categorization and keywords. This is imperative. It goes back to the earliest of early days of the internet when SEO could make or break you. I will iterate on my keywords and categorization to see what works best but at a minimum I’ve placed the books in the adult coloring book and kids coloring book categories, except for the Gothic Halloween book, which is only in the adult coloring book category due to its spookier themes.

• Reviews. This is something of a chicken/egg, but if I can garner some favorable reviews from actual buyers this will be a huge unlock.

• What does KDP offer self-publishers that I can tap into..? This needs further investigation.

Limitations

KDP only allows two titles in the same format per week. The first two titles, Gothic Halloween (still in review due to its spooky content!) and Fantastic Bakes were launched the week of September 28. Books 3, Greetings From… launched on October 4 (mere moments after I submitted it) and Kawaii Halloween is in review as of October 5. My assumption is that KDP uses agentic AI to review content and flags anything potentially inappropriate. Halloween themes - ghosts, horror, skeletons - would definitely be flagged. This is a great example of how to incorporate agentic AI safely: have an agent flag titles that need more oversight and focus human effort there, and let the rest go through automatically, without any fuss.

Costs

The publishing costs for the Gothic Halloween and Fantastic Bakes titles put the list price at a minimum of $7.99, so plan to list them for ~$8.99. The minimum set by Amazon includes the physical cost of manufacturing plus Amazon’s 60% share of the profits. Greetings From…, with 130 illustrations, has a much higher print cost so the list price will be $11.99. (I will make about $1 per book.) Given how easy the process has been and the fact that there are no minimum quantities or, really, any barriers to entry, a profit sharing model like this is entirely appropriate.