How To Start Selling a COLORING BOOK on Amazon KDP in 2025 (Beginner Tutorial)

Okay, girl. So, if you watched my last video here, you know that Chat GPT just got a brand new update. And not only am I going to tell you all about it, but I'm going to be walking you step by step through how to use it to start selling coloring books on KDP as a beginner in 2025. By the end of this video, you'll be able to know exactly what to do to have your book submitted to publish on KDP. Now, if you like this type of content, go ahead and drop me a comment that says, "This is my year." So that I know to keep putting out more content like this. I'm going to be laying it all out for you for free. And if you appreciate that, then also go ahead and hit that like button. So, let's get into it. First, what is Amazon KDP? So, if you look up Amazon KDP, you'll find this page, which explains that KDP stands for Kindle Direct Publishing. And Kindle is specifically for books. So, as you scroll down, you'll see that KDP essentially allows you to create and sell books on Amazon. And these can be any types of books ranging from lowc content books like journals to high content books like ebooks. But today, like I said, we're going to be focused on mediumcontent books, which is a coloring book. These are all books that you can create with KDP on Amazon. As you can see, this is a journal, so this has line pages. And with low content books, most of the pages are simply repetitive all throughout the book. But my personal favorite are coloring books. And the inside of these pages are all different, which makes them different from low content books. But the thing about creating coloring books is that you need to know how to create the images. And that's exactly what we're going to be doing today using artificial intelligence, also known as AI with chat GPT. I do want to let you know that because other people are also doing this, you want to be sure that you're finding voids or creative things that may be missing from other books that are already selling. So once you have your idea, you upload the cover, which is the front and the back, onto Amazon. And you also go ahead and upload what's going to be on the inside of the book. And then this creates a listing on Amazon where someone can find and purchase your book. And then once they purchase your book, Amazon is the one who prints and ships the book out to the customer and handles the customer service. So someone is getting a physical copy of your book, but you as the KDP seller are just uploading your files to Amazon. And to be honest, that's one of the biggest things I love about the Amazon KDP business model. And you can literally sign up today from anywhere in the world. All right. So, and one more thing that I do want to mention to you because we will be using Chat GPT's artificial intelligence to create this coloring book. Amazon does require that you disclose that when you are uploading the book. So, when we get to the publishing process in step four, you would just need to click the box that says we used AI to create this book. All right. And the last thing I want to say before we get into this tutorial is that if I was someone learning this business right now, one of the things that I wish I knew when starting on Amazon KDP is to create a book that people are already searching for. And I do have a full tutorial showing you exactly how to go through that process that I will link in the description. Because even though I want you to publish your book because it's your year, sis, you already dropped it in the comments, right? I also want you to make money from your book. All right, so let's go ahead and get started. So the first thing we need to decide is going to be our book details. The dimensions are going to be 8.5 by 8.5 and 54 pages even though I only have 24 images in the book. We also count the blank pages that are behind each page to prevent bleed through. The book is also going to be paperback. And this is going to be very important information when we get ready to start working on our book cover. But this is also going to help us set the outline for the book. So the next step we're going to create our interior. And like I mentioned, we'll be using Chat GPT to do this. Now, ChatGpt does have a free plan, but it is limited. I use the plus plan, which is a $20 a month plan to generate the interior images that are going to go inside of your coloring book. And so, if you are new to ChatGpt, basically, you can prompt it with questions or describe the type of coloring page you are wanting to create and then chat GPT will create that image for you. And so for this particular coloring book, I decided that I wanted to make this a spring related coloring book. So I asked ChatGpt to give me more prompts, but make them with cute thick bunny drawings, Easter egg drawings, butterflies, rain boots, umbrellas, and potted plants. So then chat GPT actually listed out the prompts for me by me giving it that one prompt. So, I'm challenging the first 20 people that if you want to create a similar style coloring book using a rendition of these prompts, I do have a prompt list that you can grab by clicking on my link in the description. Again, I only want to do this for the first 20 people because I don't want it to become too saturated. So, if this is something you're interested in, then go ahead and click on that link in the description so that you can use some of the prompts to get started creating your coloring book. And so, as an example, when I use the prompt, a black and white coloring page of a joyful African-Amean girl with two afro puffs holding an open fan in one hand and a small Easter basket in the other. This is the image that it gave me. Isn't she super cute? I even asked ChatGpt to generate me the same image without her holding the fan and this is what I got for that. And so because I didn't want all of them to have characters in them, some of them I just wanted to be plain spring related things. So for example, for this image, I said a bold and easy coloring page of a birdhouse with a little birdie hanging out. And this cute little image is what I got. And then I also said a coloring page of cupcakes with bunnies on them. And this adorable page is what I got. So once we generate all of our images, we'll head over to Canva to put the book together. Canva also has a free and a paid plan as well. The free plan works absolutely fine to put your book together. I do use the pro plan because I like to do background remover and things like that. But you can also ask ChatGpt to remove your background. For example, in this image, I said remove the background and this is what it gave me. So if you're already paying for a plan using chat GPT, then you can use that as a background remover. But if you want to try out Canva Pro, when you click on my link that I will leave in the description, you can try Canva Pro out for 30 days for absolutely free so that you can see if it's a tool that you like and you want to keep. So once we're in Canva, go ahead and click here where it says customize size. And then we're going to switch this to inches because we're going to go ahead and put in our book interior inches. So, I'll come here and I'll do a search for KDP bleed so that we can get here where it says set trim size, bleed, and margins for Kindle Direct Publishing. And so, this is going to help us know if we need to add any extra space because I'll be using Amazon.com. I'm going to click on the drop down here. We're going to go ahead and keep scrolling down until we get to this portion here. This is showing you two different options that KDP offers, and that is bleed versus noble bleed. So bleed just simply means that the image of your coloring page is going to go to the edges of the book. And then with no bleed, it means that it's going to stop and have some white space around it. Now for my coloring books, I do generally choose no bleed. So because we're choosing no bleed for our book, we're going to click on the examples of page size with and without bleed for Amazon.com. And so because our book is going to be 8 1/2 by 8 and 1/2. And then remember I said this is going to be without bleed. So this just tells us that we don't need to add any extra space around the book. It's going to be 8.5 by 8.5. But if you were doing your book with bleed, then yours would need to be 8.625 by 8.75. And so for our book, we're going to do 8.5 by 8.5. And then go ahead and click on create new design. And so the first page can be your this book belongs to page. We'll just go ahead and add a text box here. and we can say this book belongs to. And then I'm going to go ahead and change the fonts. I usually like to choose bold fonts. Now, when you see the little crown by the font, that does mean that this comes with the pro plan. So, like I was saying, if you wanted to try the pro plan out, this is one of the fonts you will be able to use with that. If you're going to use the free plan, then you can choose any of the other fonts that you like as well. And then what I usually do is go to effects and I will hollow it out so we can make it colorable. And then I'll go ahead and center it. Make it a little bit bigger. And then I'll also come to elements and I'll go ahead and search for a line. And if the line is a little too thick, you can always change the weight. I'll bring it down to maybe like two. And then just spread it out. And then I will make sure everything is centered by just highlighting both and then moving them until we get the purple lines. All right. So everything is centered for that part. So the next page can be your copyright page. And so you can either use your real name or a pen name. I'm going to use a pen name. Avery Latif. And I like this font, but I think I wanted to give it um let's try this font too. Yeah, I like that font a little bit better. So, we'll change this to the wedges font. All right. And the third page, we're going to go ahead and start uploading our images. And then we'll go ahead and add another page. We're going to leave this page blank because after each page, we're just going to have a blank page behind. This is really to prevent bleed through when you're coloring. And then you can go ahead and start adding all of your pages to start putting your um book together. Let's say you wanted to distinguish your coloring book and for some of the images like this Easter basket, maybe you wanted to have the words Easter basket on the image. With ChatGpt's new update, one of the things I love about it is the fact that you can actually ask ChatGpt to put the words on the image for you. So for this I had generated one page of an Easter basket. Then I said can you add the words Easter basket in colorable letters and it gave me this but it put it on the bottom and I actually wanted it on top. So I said put the words at the top of the basket like a meme and then it generated this page for me. So that's just a way that you can distinguish your pages if you want it to have some text inside of your coloring books. Another way that you can generate this same style text right inside of Canva is just by coming back to text and then click on add a heading and then from there you can just type in Easter basket and then we can come over here to effects and just like I did for the this book belongs to page you can come here and click on hollow and it will generate that same style so that it's colorable and then you can just change the thickness to make it like you want. So that's two different ways that you can add text. So once you have all of your images, you can go ahead and give the book a title. So let's say this is going to be called spring queen. Also, if you wanted to add a border to your pages, you could come to elements and then search for a square and then you can just bring the square around the image and then you could click on the color and then make the color transparent and then up the border weight. And so that's how you can create a border around your image. Oh, and one more thing. If you wanted to upscale your images to get the highest quality, you can use tools like upscale.org or any other tools that um work well with upscaling the image for you. Once you have all of your image, you'll go ahead and download this as a PDF print file. Flatten it. I usually choose CMK for professional printing, but this is part of the pro plan. If you have the free plan, RGB works perfectly fine. So you can go ahead and download it. Next, we'll create your cover. So to get the dimensions for our cover, we're going to go to KDP cover calculator. And then um we're just going to go ahead and enter in the binding type, which is going to be paperback, black and white, white paper. Reading direction is left to right. And then it's going to be inches. And then for the trim size, we're doing 8 and 1/2 by 8 and 1/2. And for the page count, generally my books are 54 pages. So, we'll just enter that in for the purposes of this video. But you'll enter in your exact number of pages and then click on calculate dimensions. This will give you the full cover dimensions that we need to put inside of Canva. So, once we have the full cover dimensions, I'll go ahead and download the cover template. And then we'll go ahead and plug these numbers into Canva. So, we'll come back here to custom size, switch this to inches, and 17.372. And then for the height, we're doing 8.75 in. Then we're going to go ahead and click on create new design. And then this is going to give us our full cover template that we'll use to start designing our cover. We can go ahead and give this a name. And I think we said we're naming this uh spring queens. So this will be the cover. The template that I saved, I usually choose the PNG file. And then I'll just drag and drop that and go ahead and bring it into my template. So I'll pull it and make sure the corners click. This is just basically giving us our base. So you don't want any important information like your text or any important images to go outside of the pink area. This is the margin area. So you want to keep everything in the safe area, which is the white area. You also don't want anything covering up your barcode section. So, I'll go ahead and usually just bring the transparency down on this a little bit just so that I can still see what I'm doing. And then I'll go ahead and bring it down so that I can go ahead and start working on the background. Then I'm going to head back over to chat GPT so that we can start generating coverage image ideas. So, prior to the new update in chat GPT, it was hard to have a coloring page match your cover. So now you can generate the colored image to use for your cover using one of the coloring page images that you have on the inside of your book. Most of the time for this, I'll usually go to Amazon and get inspiration from some of the other cover images that are already selling. Or if I have a favorite coloring page, then I'll just ask GPT to generate this coloring page and add colors to it. So, for example, for this spring queen's coloring page, I said, "A bold, colorful cartoon style drawing of a spring scene featuring a cute pastel Easter basket filled with decorated eggs and tulips, a sleeping buddy with glasses, gardening gloves with flower prints, a birdhouse with a pink bird and a black girl with Easter boots, bright colors, thick outline, spring background with floating flowers, and pastel gradient sky in blue, pink, and mint coloring book cover style. It took me from this to this. And so this is how I was able to get the cover. So if you already have your black and white line coloring page and you're trying to make your book cover, you could just enter in the colors that you want to use and say add these colors to make it a coloring book cover. So you could really use this cover as is, but I think I want to redesign a few of the elements. So, I'm just going to head on back to Canva so that I can start working on that. And so, I already have it uploaded inside of Canva. So, now I'm just going to go ahead and start working on the cover. So, after I um choose my background color, then I am going to go ahead and go to magic grab and I'm just going to grab some of the elements individually so that I can just kind of rearrange them the way that I want to uh rearrange them. So, when you're doing magic grab, you just have to click on each specific object that you want to group together and then um you can separate each one that way. And one of the reasons that I suggest redesigning if you can is because you don't want your coloring book to look like someone else's. So, if you're using similar prompts that someone else may be using, some of the pages may look similar. So, this is just one way that you can edit your design to make yours stand out and make it customized to what you want it to look like. But again, don't be too hard on yourself. If you're not good with designing yourself, then you can just use the cover that you get from chat GPT as well. Now, I think I actually like this background color better than my original color that I had used with the gradient. So, I think I'm going to go ahead and figure out a way to keep that background color. So, I'm going to go to Canvas magic eraser tool and just go ahead and remove the rest of the stuff that's on the background. Now, I'm going to go ahead and pull this down a little bit and remove that other background from behind so that I can go ahead and start putting my elements together the way I want them. Now, the right side of the book is going to be the front cover and then the left half of the book is going to be the back cover. So, I'm working on the front cover of the book now. Now, if you're enjoying this video, drop down in the comments and say, "Girl, I needed this." And also don't forget if you do want the prompts that I use for this coloring book, then I will link that in the description so you can go ahead and grab yours. I am limiting it to 20 people. So make sure if this is something that you want, you go ahead and grab it because once it's sold out, it's gone, sis. All right. So I don't know. Should I resize her? Make this bigger? I'm going to bring that in so that I can put a coloring book on the cover cuz you want to make sure that everyone that's looking at the book knows that it is a coloring book. And then I will um go ahead and start working on the back side now. So, I'm going to pull in some frames. And then I'm just going to go ahead and drag in four of the coloring pages that I like and fill those four frames. So, just check your template one more time. Make sure nothing is outside of the margins. If everything's good, you can go ahead and remove that template. And then you have your full cover. And then just like with your interior, go ahead and save this as a PDF print and um flatten it. You can use RGB if you have the free plan or C YMK if you have the paid plan. Now that we have our cover together, we're going to go ahead and upload our book so that we can publish it using KDP. Now, I do have a free stepbystep tutorial of exactly how you would walk through the steps to publish on Amazon KDP, but essentially you would go to kdp.amazon.com. You would land on this page. If you already have a KDP account, you would simply sign into that account. If you do not, then you would go ahead and sign up for a KDP account. And so once you're logged in, you'll click on the big yellow create button and then go ahead and click on create paperback. Then you'll see three sections. We're going to be starting with paperback details. Go ahead and enter in your book title. I think we said this was Spring Queens. Enter in your book's subtitle as well. These are very important because this is one of the best ways that Amazon KDP can index your book. So, you do want to make sure that you are researching to use keywords in your title and your subtitle. And for this part, you can even gain inspiration from books that are already selling and look at some of the keywords that they may be using. So, we're going to go ahead and enter in a simple and easy coloring book. Let's go ahead and add for adults with flowers, animals, and Easter eggs. And we actually could have said kids or teens for this particular coloring book. I'm just so used to saying adults because I create coloring books for adults. But just make sure you're putting it to whatever type of book you're publishing. Then go ahead and fill out your author information. We're using a pen name. I think I said Avery Letis. And then we'll skip contributors, but if you had an illustrator that you hired from like Fiverr or someone that you may have found on Instagram or something like that, you can list them as a contributor there. Now, for the description, you can simply go back to chat GPT and ask ChatGpt to give you a example description that you can use for this style coloring book. For example, you can say something like, create me a book description for this book. And then never use the description word for word, but you can use it as a template or a model so that you can get inspiration for what you may want to include in your description. So after you go ahead and add your description and your bullet points, then you'll say, "I own the copyright as long as you hold the necessary publishing rights." So if you're using any other AI generated tool, then you want to make sure you're reading over their terms and conditions. We'll check no here. Primary marketplace is Amazon.com. Next, you'll want to choose your categories. You can choose up to three. For the coloring book categories, I always stick with the coloring book categories. So, for example, crafts, hobbies, and home and then um coloring books for grown-ups. And then from there, you can choose the placement category. Once you have your categories, just click on save categories. And then that will bring us to the next section. And that is the keyword section. Oh, and by the way, this is not a low content book. So for the keywords, you'll just go to Amazon search bar, start typing in similar style coloring books. So for example, spring coloring book. And then as you're typing, you'll see keywords that start popping up here. So if these keywords are relevant to your coloring book, you can use some of those like spring coloring book, spring coloring book for kids, cozy spring coloring, spring coloring pages. So, after you enter in your um keywords, you get up to seven keyword slots. So, make sure you're filling them up. You would just go ahead and scroll down to the next section. We're going to keep that first box checked that says publication date and release date are the same and then um release my book for sale now and then save and continue to go ahead to the next section. So, KDP does give you the option to get a free ISBN number. This is like the social security number for your book. So if you want their free one, you can just click on assign ISBN number and it will automatically assign that for you. So next under print options, black and white interior paper. And then for the trim size is 8.5x 8.5. So we'll go ahead and select that. And then no bleed. And um we're going to select glossy cover, but you can choose either glossy or matte. um that's up to your discretion or who you think your customer would be and what they would like. And then from there, you will go ahead and upload your manuscript. Next, you'll go ahead and upload the book cover file that you save. Now, we're going to click on upload a file that we already have because we created it in Canva. And then we're going to go ahead and acknowledge the AI generated content section that I told you about in the beginning. And so, for text, we're going to put none. We used images to generate AI content. So, under the image section, we're going to go ahead and put in many AI images generated with minimal or no editing. Then, we're going to go ahead and launch our book previewer. This is just going to make sure that all of our images are within the margins and everything looks right on the quality check. So, for this, I just like to look at the front and back cover. Make sure everything is lined up. Make sure there's no red print anywhere because a red print would just signify that there's an error somewhere that we need to update. And then go ahead and flip through the pages just to make sure everything else looks correct and that it is in the margins. Once it looks correct, you can go ahead and click on the approved button. And so then under the third and final section, you'll just come and set the royalty distribution that you want your book to sell for. So when you list the price, you can see what the royalty will be. For example, if you were to list the price at $7.99, the royalty that you would make per book sold on this book would be $1.95. But if you were to change the listing price to let's say $8.99, then you would see the royalty rate would increase and the new rate that you would get per book would be $255 for this book. Once you determine your price, it will automatically populate for the other countries or the other Amazon marketplaces. And then you would just want to read over the terms and conditions. I do suggest also requesting a proof copy of your book. And then you would go ahead and publish your book. And usually within 72 hours, you'll receive an update letting you know your book has been published. And congratulations, you are a published author. So once you've published your books, then you're going to master the craft and create better and better books. There is no limit to how many highquality books you can publish on Amazon KDP. Now, as a reminder, I do have free videos on my page that will also help you with selling your book because publishing is just the first step. And I'll put those videos in the description and in the pinned comments. If you have any questions, leave a comment below and I'll try to respond to as many as I can. But I'm going to tell you right now, I'm not about to be sitting on the computer all day cuz your girl got stuff to do. All right, guys. I hope you enjoyed this video. And if you want to learn how to create a coloring book using Canva, watch this video next. And until next time, bye-bye.