How to make a coloring book for KDP

The usual mistakes are the wrong paper, designs printed back to back and lines too thin to color. This guide shows how to avoid each one, what the book costs to print, and where KDP lets you sell it.

What size and paper should a coloring book use?

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.

Is a coloring book a low-content book?

No. KDP’s low-content category covers notebooks, journals, planners and logbooks, and KDP says it doesn’t typically include coloring books, which its table lists as not generally low-content. 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.

Can a coloring book use Expanded Distribution?

No. Expanded Distribution offers paperbacks to bookstores and libraries through distributors, and coloring books are on KDP’s list of content those distributors don’t currently accept. Plan on Amazon sales only. The full list:

KDP’s Expanded Distribution page says its distributors “may not accept books according to their guidelines and policies”, and that content not currently accepted includes, but is not limited to:

• paperbacks with frequent lined or blank pages (journals, notebooks, planners, calendars, agendas, organizers)
• summaries of, or insight into, another published book without the original author’s permission
• interiors that need a high concentration of ink
• public domain content
• coloring books
• poorly translated content
• content rebranded or re-released with significant metadata changes
• content excessively reused, recycled or repeated within or across books

The same list continues with a table of topics: sport, cryptocurrency, cookbooks, travel guides, Bitcoin, keto, biographies, options trading, intermittent fasting, cryptography, Python, plant-based, guided exercise, NFTs, Mediterranean, word scramble, workbooks, dark psychology, motivational quotations, handwriting practice, manipulation, manifestation, scissor skills, mind control, mindfulness, activity books, hypnosis, fitness and dieting, drawing books, narcissism, ChatGPT, puzzle books, crafting books, word search, trivia books, Cricut, sudoku, how-to books, knitting, crossword, title count over 99, crocheting, maze, joke books, cross stitch. Hardcovers aren’t eligible at all. Source: KDP Help: Expanded Distribution, read on October 4, 2026. Per-type status: KDP Expanded Distribution.

Can a coloring book be a Kindle eBook?

No. KDP’s Kindle content-quality rules list coloring books among books not suited to Kindle, because readers color on the pages. 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. Start from the kids’ coloring book generator for bold outlines and big shapes, or the adult coloring book generator for bold & easy designs, mandalas or intricate art.

Adding puzzles for kids? The activity book type mixes maze, matching / draw a line, pre-writing lines, dot-to-dot, letter tracing, word search and tic-tac-toe & dots-and-boxes pages, picked for the child’s age, and our free maze maker and word search maker print sample pages from the same generators, with their solutions.

For a holiday coloring book, Christmas books for KDP covers KDP’s review times this season and ten ideas to start from.