Coloring books are one of the simplest books to publish on KDP, and one of the easiest to get wrong: wrong paper, designs back to back, lines too thin to color. Here is what a KDP-ready coloring book needs.
Size and paper
The standard is 8.5 × 11 in, black-and-white interior on white paper. White paper gives the cleanest contrast for line art and takes colored pencils well. KDP accepts 24–590 pages at this size in black and white. Square 8.5 × 8.5 in or 8.25 × 8.25 in trims work for mandalas and for younger children.
Coloring pages are black and white, so you don’t need a color interior: the cover sells the book, and it is printed in color whatever the interior.
One design per sheet
Put each design on a right-hand page and leave the back blank. It doubles the page count, but markers won’t bleed into the next picture, and the page can be cut out. KDP allows blank backs between designs; its limit on blank pages only concerns long runs of consecutive blanks.
Line art that prints well
- Pure black and white: no grey shading, no gradients. KDP needs grey fills of at least 10%, and colorists want white areas anyway.
- Line weight at least 0.75 pt (KDP’s minimum). For kids, much thicker: bold outlines around big, closed shapes.
- Resolution: 300 DPI at print size, or vector art. An 8.5 × 11 in page is 2550 × 3300 pixels.
- Safe margins: without bleed, keep every line at least 0.25 in from the edges plus the gutter for your page count. Most coloring books don’t use bleed.
AI image generators often produce grey tones, broken outlines or tiny details. kdpbook cleans every coloring page to pure black and white and closes gaps before placing it inside the safe area.
Page count and cost
A typical coloring book has about 50 designs, so around 100 pages with the blank backs and front matter. On Amazon.com, black-and-white paperbacks up to 108 pages pay a flat printing cost: $2.84 for a 104-page 8.5 × 11 in book, with a minimum list price of $5.68.
Pricing just under $10 is tempting, but check the rate: at $8.99 you earn $1.66 (50%), at $9.99 you earn $3.15 (60%). Try other prices in the royalty calculator.
ISBN: not a low-content book
KDP’s low-content category covers notebooks, journals, planners and logbooks, and explicitly excludes coloring books. Don’t tick the low-content box: publish with an ISBN (KDP’s free one is fine), which also gives you Look Inside. More in low-content vs medium-content books.
Note that Expanded Distribution doesn’t accept coloring books, so plan on Amazon sales only.
Print only, no Kindle
KDP’s Kindle content-quality rules list books meant to be colored in as unsuited to Kindle. Publish coloring books as paperbacks (or hardcovers from 75 pages on a hardcover trim).
Listing and AI disclosure
- Pick a specific theme and audience (“bold and easy farm animals for seniors”) rather than a generic “adult coloring book”.
- Declare AI-generated images, including the cover, in the Content tab. See the AI disclosure guide.
- Show a few interior designs in your A+ Content or description so buyers know the line style.
The AI coloring book generator sets all of this up for you: 8.5 × 11 in, white paper, single-sided designs and a KDP-sized cover.