How to make and publish a coloring book on KDP

1. Choose a niche and an audience

Decide who will color the book before you decide what is in it. A book for a five-year-old and a book for an adult who colors to unwind are different products, even on the same theme.

• Kids (about 3–8): big shapes, thick outlines, one clear subject per page, very little background.
• Older kids and teens: more detail, characters in scenes, patterns that reward patience.
• Adults: fine lines, many small closed areas, mandalas, botanicals, cozy interiors or detailed scenes.

Narrow themes are easier to describe and to find: “cozy cats in cafés” tells a buyer more than “animals”. Search Amazon for your idea and look at what is already there, the price range and what reviewers praise or complain about.

2. Pick trim size, paper and page count

Most coloring books use 8.5 × 11 in, the size of a US letter page. It gives room for detail and is what buyers expect. 8 × 10 in and 8.5 × 8.5 in are also common for children's books.

Use black ink on white paper. It is KDP's cheapest print option and line art looks crisp on it. Color ink adds cost and buys nothing for pages people will color in themselves.

KDP requires at least 24 pages. At 8.5 × 11 in on white paper the maximum is 590. With one design per sheet, each design takes two pages, so 12 designs plus a title page is about the minimum, and 30 to 50 designs is a typical full book.

Every trim wider than 6.12 in or taller than 9 in counts as a large trim for KDP's printing cost, so all three sizes cost the same to print.

3. Make line art that prints well

KDP prints exactly what is in your PDF, so problems in the artwork show up in every copy.

• Solid black lines on a white background, with no gray haze or soft edges.
• Closed shapes, so colors have a clear edge to stop at.
• Lines at least 0.75 pt thick, which is KDP's minimum for printed lines. Thicker for young children.
• Images at 300 DPI or more at their printed size.
• Important detail kept away from the page edges, inside the margins.
• Variety across the book: different subjects and compositions, not near-duplicates.

4. Lay out the interior

KDP prints on both sides of every sheet. To make a coloring book single-sided, put each design on a right-hand page and leave the page behind it blank. Markers and gel pens can soak through standard paper, and a blank back means a heavily colored page never spoils the next design.

Blank backs are a normal, intended layout for coloring books. KDP does list “excessive blank pages” among common reasons files fail review, so avoid extra blank pages beyond the backs, and keep the layout consistent.

A simple structure that works:

1. Title page, with the title and your author or brand name.
2. Copyright page, plus an optional “this book belongs to” page.
3. Designs, one per sheet, with blank backs.
4. An optional closing page inviting a review or pointing to your other books.

If the art stops short of the page edge, you don't need bleed and your outside margins only have to be 0.25 in. If any art runs to the edge, set up the PDF with bleed and keep margins of at least 0.375 in. The trim, bleed and margins guide has the full numbers.

5. Build the full-wrap cover

A KDP paperback cover is one PDF: back cover, spine and front cover side by side, with 0.125 in of bleed around the outside. Its width depends on your page count, because the spine does.

For a 102-page coloring book at 8.5 × 11 in on white paper, the spine is 102 × 0.002252 = about 0.230 in, and the full cover is 17.480 × 11.250 in. Books of 79 pages or fewer can't have spine text. Leave the lower right of the back cover clear for the barcode KDP adds.

Show the art style on the front: buyers judge a coloring book by whether the cover looks like the pages inside. Work out your exact size with the cover size calculator.

6. Price it

On Amazon.com your royalty is your rate times the list price, minus the printing cost. The rate is 60% at $9.99 and above and 50% below. Black-ink books of up to 110 pages at a large trim cost a flat $2.84 to print, so most coloring books cost the same to print whatever their page count.

Notice the jump at $9.99: the same book earns noticeably more at $9.99 than at $9.98. Try your own numbers in the royalty calculator.

7. Fill in the KDP listing

• Title and subtitle: say who it's for and what's inside, such as “Cozy Cats: An Adult Coloring Book of Cafés, Bookshops and Sunny Windowsills”. Don't stuff keywords.
• Description: the theme, the number of designs, the single-sided pages and the audience.
• Keywords: up to seven words or short phrases, in the order people search. Avoid repeating words already in the title.
• ISBN: KDP does not generally treat coloring books as low-content, so you can use the free KDP ISBN or your own. See low-content vs. regular books.
• Expanded Distribution: coloring books are on the distributors' list of content they don't currently accept, so leave it off.
• AI disclosure: if any images or text were generated by AI, say so when KDP asks. See the AI disclosure guide.

8. Preview, proof and publish

Before you press publish, open the files in KDP's online previewer and look at every page: nothing important near the edges, no missing pages, the title on the front cover. Then order a proof copy. Holding the printed book is the only way to judge line weight, paper show-through and how the cover colors print.

After you publish, KDP reviews the book, which usually takes up to 72 hours. Keep your source files so you can fix anything a reviewer or a buyer points out.

Frequently asked questions