Creating My First Coloring Book

Hi friend, 

I have never blogged before and so forgive me if this is too long for you to read. I'll be honest, I decided to write a blog to promote the stuff I sell online which are all on print-on-demand websites. I will also share with you my experiences going through this and I guess other stuff as well, hoping that you will pick a thing or two from my experiences.

So how's your 2020 so far? A lot of things happened already since 2020 entered- war, wildfires, earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, the sudden death of Kobe to name some and now we are all facing the sickest of all, the Coronavirus pandemic. This virus made the world slow down- businesses are shutting down and people are losing their job. People who still have jobs are working from home, and most people's salaries are getting deducted. I think the bright side of this global pandemic is that people are learning how to value their time, people are also showing kindness towards others like some landlords are not charging their tenants for a month rent, and pollution becomes less because most people are just staying at home. 

I'm part of the people who lost their job but in my case, it wasn't because of the COVID-19. I was working in an e-commerce company and the owner decided to move the whole business to her home country early this year. I was planning to take a vacation to my home country then will look for a new job after coming back but lockdowns happened. I've been jobless for two months now and I got a couple of interviews before the restrictions came but no callbacks, salaries are low from what I was receiving. Aside from showering my resume on job sites, I'm also searching for extra income online. I'm into print-on-demand for some time now- I'm in RedBubble, Displate and just a month ago I joined Society6 as well. If you have no idea what is print-on-demand, it simply means that the items you purchase are only being done if you order them. If there's no order, it will not be made. Print-on-demand is a good way to earn passive income. I think I will write about my experiences on those websites later on- I don't want to bore you with this long writing (and I'm sorry if you already are).

One of the things I always wanted to do is to publish a book- it's even in my bucket list. So what I did was to search on how to self-publish a book. I read and watched a lot of YouTube videos. I decided to do an adult coloring book simply because I love to color and I also like to doodle a lot.

I thought the one I doodled was too detailed and might be complicated for others to color in so I made it much simpler by using just the basic shapes- circle, square, rectangle, and triangle. I just added some zigzag and curvy lines to add embellishment. I worked on the 30 abstract designs in Adobe Illustrator for two weeks. At the same time, I was also researching about how to get in Amazon KDP and I run into selling digital products and searched about it as well- even though there are a lot of coloring sheets you can download for free, I thought of why not sell a printable version of the coloring book right? Who knows someone might like what I did and buy it so I'm giving it a try, got nothing to lose anyway 😉 And so I discover Gumroad. I'm still learning about this site but I created a seller account anyway after I read a few articles and watched some YouTube videos about it. Gumroad is also an e-commerce platform but unlike Shopify or Wix or other platforms, this is much easier to use. You don't need a domain and you can create your storefront in just minutes. However, you cannot fully customize Gumroad like Shopify and the others. It was so easy and they even allow you to open more than one store and use the same PayPal or bank account to receive your earnings. I've learned that before, Gumroad was mainly a platform for selling digital goods or services but they opened their doors for print-on-demand too (I will be trying this soon!).  I uploaded my coloring sheets (check it here) in PDF format, created some sample image mock-ups, add the product description and keywords, and set the price and that's it. You just have to share the link to the world, and so the reason why I began blogging. Here is the mock-up:

I also tried printing it out but our printer sucks, the lines are printing in double- one gray and one black. Other word files are also printing like that. I guessed probably because the printer hasn't been used in 2 years I think, we only bought the ink since my relatives started working from home and they need the printer to print paper works but now they are not using it either because of how it prints out. But I don't want to wast paper so I still colored them anyway.

Like Gumroad, I created an account in Amazon KDP after doing a little research about it. I already prepared the description for the coloring book before signing up so I just completed the necessary steps until it's done. The process is not simple as Gumroad, aside from entering the book description, you need to enter keywords, categorize your book- they only allow two categories so you might as well think about where to categorize your book, I looked into similar books like mine. As for the files, the manuscript (these are the inside pages) and cover (front and back) you upload the two files in PDF separately.

For the cover, Amazon KDP also has a cover creator- I didn't try this one. I prefer to have full control of the book cover design so I did it in Photoshop and Illustrator. To do the same, you can go to Google and search the Amazon KDP template cover size, you need to identify how many inside pages you will have (pages you want to be multiplied by 2 since its back to back) and the size you want your book to be.

You will get a pdf and a png file, and open one of those files in Photoshop and you can start doing your design. After uploading both files, a preview will be available for you to proofread and approve if all is okay. I made a mistake on this part, the size that I prepared on the manuscript didn't fit exactly right. I have a small text at the backside of every page and it's not aligning center on the proof page preview. I was feeling tired already and told myself that it will probably be okay, since its only the back part of the pages anyway, not the coloring area. Then after finishing the complete process I realized I should have just downloaded the proof pdf and fix from there the alignment- why didn't I thought of it earlier 😫 I actually hope that it wouldn't get approved so I can fix that mistake but in less than 24hrs I received an email saying it's now available in Amazon store!

I got super excited! but still felt bad for not being able to fix that alignment. Still, I couldn't wait to get my hands on the hard copy so I started ordering copies for myself based on author copies price it only came around $10 for 5 books BUT (of course) aside from the printer drawback, another curb came in and this time the hard copies cannot be delivered in UAE 😩 After few days, my auntie thought of trying to buy it from Amazon.ae and she can!- Why didn't I think of that earlier?? IDK! So we ordered 1 copy of the book according to its selling price in dirhams (it's a bit expensive considering the shipping cost!) and it will be arriving on the 18th (hopefully).

Now I decided not to promote that much the book yet until I get my hands on the paperback copy from Amazon but someone from the Facebook groups I joined told me she purchased the book and hers will be arriving earlier than ours. Geez I really hope its okay😬🤞🏻 I really want to check if the paper quality and other stuff are okay before we promote it all out with our friends but I'm promoting more the one on Gumroad since its printable sheets only. I already sold 3 of those so far.

I'm sharing with you the links anyway (I doubt anyone is reading this haha), the hardcopy coloring book in Amazon, it's $7.99. If you're buying it please please let me know how it turned out. The printable version again is here in Gumroad which is $4.99 only. I can give 12 coloring sheets for free just message or comment on the below. Also, please let me know your feedback if you purchased either the printable sheets or the hard copy.

I still have tons of things to do- upload artworks for RedBubble and Society6. I will try my best to keep writing to you about my progress. 

Keep safe, friend. XO

Kath

P.S

Read. Watch to Learn. Be Patient. Work Hard. Play. Pray 

Edited: 18 June 2020