How to create and publish your coloring book

 

Margins

Here lays one problem I had most difficult with. I know it’s simple but you’ll never know until you start.

So prepare this and decide upfront. Do you want your coloring page to have margins or not? This is very important if you want to create the coloring book for adults on CreateSpace.

It’s one of the options when creating but it will cost you time. I had to add margins for more than 30 pages and lost a day because of that.

Here is what create space says:

“

Margins & Bleed

 

Interior Reviewer will notify you of any text, images or line art that extends into the margins and any graphics which are intended to bleed but do not extend far enough beyond the trim line.

 

Margin Issues

 

When printing a book, margins are utilized to ensure that all information is visible and the reader?s view is not obstructed. A margin of 0.25″ is required on the three outside edges of each page. This ensures that the information will not be trimmed when the book is produced and that the reader can easily view the page. The side of each page where the book is bound is known as the “gutter margin,” and will vary based on the number of pages in the book. The more pages in the book, the wider the gutter margin is required to be in order for the text to be easily visible. The two methods described above, “Paste Into Template” and “Page Scaling,” will resolve most margin issues, but you will need to correct any remaining errors.

 

Bleed Errors

 

If you intend to have images or background artwork that extend to the very edge of the page, then your book should include “bleed.” Bleed is a slight extension of the page beyond the trim lines so that the graphics will not fall short of your desired trim edge when the book is trimmed or if any print variance occurs. If an image is intended to bleed, it must extend to 0.125″ beyond the trim line. If Interior Reviewer determines that the graphics do not extend far enough, it will notify you that there is a bleed error.“

Margin size also depends on the number of pages your coloring book will have so check this table first:

Helpful links:

Here is a link from CreateSpace that explains how to create margins in Microsoft Word: https://forums.createspace.com/en/community/docs/DOC-1482

And here are the options for margins: https://forums.createspace.com/en/community/docs/DOC-1323

 

Option 1.

Your coloring pages have a bleed through and you don’t have to worry that much of margins. But your coloring pages must be bigger 0.125″ than book size.

Option 2.

Your coloring pages have a margin. Here is a tutorial for photoshop:

https://youtube.com/watch?v=hmy38-qmA0Q

 

I would recommend to make a template and save it for the latter purpose. So make your original blank picture the size you want, add margins and put your coloring page inside.

Here is another good tutorial for photoshop: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fsV8plZlPko

For GIMP: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O5o4mdWvXyc

For Paint.net: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=80L12pabK4g

After you are done save the picture in the best quality. Createspace will not accept pictures under 300 DPI. If you have a look at your pictures and see grains, missing parts, too many dots you have to take care of that. Fine tune your picture. Maybe you will have to turn your picture into a vector type so you can edit it better but for now, let’s keep it as simple as possible.

These are the skills you will need if you want to create more and more coloring books.

 

Convert your pictures into PDF

After you are finished with creating coloring pages you will need to create a PDF version of your coloring book. I would recommend creating one blank page and copy it so it matches the numbers of your coloring book pages.

Ex. Page 1-picture

Page 1.1 – blank page

Why? Because of the quality of the paper. Imagine how it would be for your fans to buy your book and find out that they can’t color without color bleeding on the other pages. You can do as I did and mark a line where you can cut page with scissors.

 

Merge all pages into one PDF.

You can do it on these sites:

http://www.pdfmerge.com/

https://smallpdf.com/merge-pdf

http://pdfjoiner.com/

After merging the file size cannot be bigger than 200 MB since you cannot upload more on CreateSpace.