I Had A Great Idea For A Colouring Book. So Did Somebody Else…

Fear won this time

This is story no.20 from my 31 Stories, 31 Days Challenge

There are a lot of YouTube videos and a lot of great Medium stories about creating low and medium content books on Amazon KDP as a good side hustle even now in 2024.

Keen to try my own hand at this, I created a 2024 Weekly Planner and submitted it to KDP. When it went live, I was very happy that I could call myself a published author.

As of 22 January, here are my total sales and earnings. Prepare yourself, because it is a big, fat number:

I genuinely do not mind as this was really a proof-of-concept, to learn the system and to see if I could actually do it.

So now I moved to my next project: a colouring book.

Inspired by my eldest daughter’s favourite animals, I had a plan to create a Big Cats Mandalas Colouring Book for adults.

• I signed up for Book Bolt and used it a little
• I did some research on Amazon
• I used Midjourney and created around 20 images, with correct shading
• I used a combination of Canva and Midjourney to create a cover
• I read up on some top KDP gurus here on Medium such as DannyOnDemand and Royalty Wizard

I was excited to get going.

I had everything ready.

Before sitting down to pull the whole project together, I logged into Medium and saw the first story on my main page: a step-by-step guide to creating colouring books on KDP.

Using feline mandalas.

I was gutted.

Can you imagine the bad luck I thought I had?

I don’t believe in fate but if I did I’d be taking this as a sign.

This time I did take it as a sign, and stopped the project. I lost confidence in the project, and myself.

The way I see it? I made two big mistakes.

Mistake #1: Not Enough Research

I did not do enough research.

I did some, but for Amazon KDP you need to do a lot.

I had tried to watch all the YouTube videos, I’d read stories on Medium from the real gurus like DannyOnDemand and Royalty Wizard, but I hadn’t really studied the content. Worse than this I had a tool like Book Bolt and didn’t use it effectively

If I had, I would have realised how competitive that niche was, and this should have prompted me to either consider a different topic or a different angle.

Mistake #2: Lack Of Self Belief

Quite simply, I lacked courage.

Someone else had the same idea as me?

So what?

There are hundreds if not thousands of colouring books now, and if every author who wanted to release a book gave up in a tough market then…the market wouldn’t be so tough!

There’s also so many ways my book could have been different:

• A better cover
• Better pricing
• A better ad strategy

I shouldn’t have given up.

I’ve only given up on that project, I will give Amazon KDP another go. Since this all happened I have done masses of more research, and will be sharing what I’ve learned with my readers.

I’ll then aim to use that research to create another project and hopefully find some success in this side hustle.

I’d love to read about your experiences with Amazon KDP — wins, losses, and learns.