How I Created and Published My First Coloring Book on Amazon KDP

If you want to see the actual book I published before reading further, here it is: Anime Manga Coloring Books for Teens on Amazon.

I have always looked for ways to earn some extra income online. I tried a few things over the years. Some failed. Some I just lost interest in halfway. That is the honest version.

Then I came across Amazon KDP, specifically the coloring book side of it.

The market is crowded, but there is still room

The market is definitely more competitive now. Every day, new coloring books get published on Amazon. If you search for broad terms, you can feel how packed it already is.

But I do not think the opportunity is completely gone. I think it depends much more on research now. A book can look fine and still go nowhere if the niche, title, and competition were not thought through properly before publishing.

I will write a separate post on how I approach niche research, competition analysis, and title selection. In this post, I just want to share my real experience of going from idea to a published coloring book on Amazon KDP.

Step 1: Choosing the niche

For my first book, I picked an anime and manga theme for teens. I felt there was real interest in that space, and when I looked at what was already selling on Amazon, it gave me more confidence. The books looked strong, the audience was clear, and the pricing made sense.

I also think it helps when you actually understand the audience. Knowing who you are making it for makes decisions about style, complexity, and cover feel much more obvious.

Step 2: Finding a tool that handles the publishing side

This is where I think a lot of people waste time.

Making coloring pages is not the hard part anymore. Making a file that is properly ready for KDP is the real problem. Trim size, bleed margins, image resolution, cover dimensions, spine width. Get any of it wrong and KDP will reject your upload or print it badly.

For this book I used InkChamps, and it handled the parts I did not want to manually fight with.

It helped with:

• Interior page generation
• Correct trim size and bleed
• Image quality for print
• Cover photo generation with the right spine width
• A final publish-ready PDF

I did not want to generate pages in one tool, fix sizing in another, build the cover somewhere else, and then still be unsure if the final file would pass. InkChamps kept it in one place.

Step 3: Publishing to KDP

This was the part I was most nervous about.

I had read plenty of stories about KDP rejections. Cover issues, margin problems, low quality images, wrong dimensions. So I genuinely expected something to go wrong on my first attempt.

But the book was approved on the first try. No rejections. No issues with image quality. No cover complaints. No trim size problem.

That honestly surprised me. And it was a relief.

The free tools that also helped

InkChamps has a few free tools I used during the process and they were actually useful:

• Cover Validator
• Spine Width Calculator
• Profit Calculator

The profit calculator helped me figure out a realistic price. I had a number in mind that felt right, but once I ran the actual printing cost and royalty calculation, I changed it. Would have been earning almost nothing at my original price.

Where I want to do better next time

The creation side went smoothly. What I want to spend more time on next is the research phase, going deeper on niche selection, competition, keywords, and understanding what is actually selling before I commit to a topic.

That is the part that decides whether a book gets found or just sits there.

Where I am now

This is my first book published on KDP. I am not sure yet whether it will sell. I have just started this journey and I really do not know how it will go.

What I do know is that for the next book, I will spend more time on research. The creation part I can completely offload to InkChamps. That is already figured out. The part I need to get better at is picking the right niche and understanding the market before I start.

If you are figuring out how to sell coloring books on Amazon KDP, my honest take is this: focus your energy on research and niche selection, and let a tool like InkChamps handle the production side so you are not spending weeks just getting a file ready.