How to Successfully Create and Sell Your Self-Published Books on Amazon - Part I
I love reading books. Always have. I admire anyone who's published a book; short, or long, full of drawings and illustrations, or packed with detailed descriptions. I always thought it's something I could never do.
However, I've learned that today you could do so many things you couldn't so easily do in the past. Publishing your own book is one of those things. Amazon's Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP) makes it very easy to publish your work and expose it to millions around the globe with simple access to the Internet.
After dedicating numerous hours to learn how it's done, and what would work best for me, I'm happy to share with you in this post the process, the learnings, the challenges, so it will be much faster and easier for you when you decide to embark on this adventure. Dedicae a few minutes and you will also know how to Successfully Create and Sell Your Self-Published Books on Amazon.
As there are several steps to follow, I'll be dedicating a few posts for this process to make it simpler and easier to process. In this post I will focus on the creation of the images for the book itself. Additional posts will focus on:
Creating my Book using Canva
Creating a KDP account and creating your first book
How to promote and sell your KDP book
Creating your first KDP book
Step #1 - Define the Topic of your Book
At first I was trying to decide what book I should write, what should be the best topic I will dive into, that will be of interest to many people. Different ideas came to mind; Event Marketing for example. It's something I'm good at, with years of experience. or focus on Adult coloring book as another example. Less of writing, but how to create the images?
After several hours of debating and weighing the pros and cons, I went to my old (young) friend; ChatGPT and wrote a simple prompt: "Provide topics for books I could write and publish on KDP". I was given a list of 5 categories with specific book topic suggestions. The category that fascinated me the most was the Healthy Living and Wellness one which focused on Mindfulness, Yoga and Meditation. One of the suggestions there was mindfulness through Adult coloring. Bingo. Exactly what I needed to kickoff this idea of publishing my own book. Before diving into research and writing, I decided this was the better idea to learn the process, to face the learning curve, to understand if this makes any sense. I also knew adult coloring books have surged in popularity, offering a meditative escape from the digital noise
So Mindfulness Coloring Book for Adults it was.
Step #2 - Creating the Illustrations
Now it was the time to go back to the question: 'but how to create the images?'
As I wanted to learn more about Midjourney and how to create images and pictures, I decided to dive into the art of Midjourney prompts. After much trial and error, I came up with different variations of prompts that generated beautiful illustrations allowing the pleasure of coloring in them.
Remember when using Midjourney, you need to add /imagine and press Enter before adding the prompts below or any other prompts you'll be using on Midjourney.
Midjourney Prompt for creating a Mandala:
Minimalistic coloring page for adults, of a mandala, black and white, line art, high detail, full length view --c 40 --v 5.2 (pay attention to the spaces - it makes a difference!).
To upscale the images I clicked the upscaling options (U1-U4) bel to better explore the different images. I was surprised with the results. I really liked all options. It doesn't happen a lot in the trial-and-error adventure of Midjourney. To check it was something I would like to color-in, I printed the images and tested it. I did it with all the imagery I generated using Midjourney before adding it to my adult coloring book. Quality isn't something you should ignore and the proofing process is quite simple as I've mentioned.
To make it more interesting I would add animals to the mix:
Midjourney Prompt for creating a Giraffe Mandala:
Minimalistic coloring page for adults, of a mandala Giraffe, black and white, line art, high detail, full length view --c 40 --v 5.2
Midjourney Prompt for creating a Lion Mandala:
Minimalistic coloring page for adults, of a mandala Lion, black and white, line art, high detail, full length view --c 40 --v 5.2
our Lion Mandalas created by MIdjourney using the above prompt
You can also create more elaborate prompts. I've been testing this too and found that at times the shorter, simpler ones are better. Unfortunately, I can't tell you there's always consistency; sometimes the longer prompts yield the better images and vis-a-versa. You just need to give it a try.
You can use this longer prompt for your exploration:
Craft a black and white mandala image tailored for an adult coloring book, thin lines, high detail, minimalistic, simple, line art, full length view, emphasizing mindfulness and present-moment awareness. The composition should showcase intricate mandala patterns woven together from geometric forms, captivating mandalas, and harmonious repetitive motifs. The artwork should be set against a pristine white background, highlighting the delicacy of the thin black outlines and insides which remain unfilled–s 750 –v 5.1
One of the nice things I like about Midjourney is that it provides you FOUR different options which you could upscale or create variations of. There are many times the first result isn't exactly what you needed. So you try again. Don't ever give up. The options are limitless on Midjourney.
In this way you can gradually create different illustrations. Create as many as you can. Once you start with Step #3 - Creating my Book using Canva, you will have different illustrations to choose from. Better spend more time creating numerous images, before moving to the next step. Trust me.
Organization - I can't stress this enough. When creating and sourcing imagery, you have to organize it all in different folders, with file names that will make it clear to you what the file is about without the need to open them. Do the same thing with folder names. I know it can feel cumbersome but it's so worth it: when you go back to those files a few days later, you won't spend time opening each of them. You will just know by reading the name. simple, always keep it simple.
To learn about the next steps for creating your first KDP book, follow the below posts:
Promoting and selling your KDP book
As always, if you have any questions or comments, don't hesitate to send me a note using the box below.
MY KDP BOOKS - How I Successfully Create and Sell Self-Published Books on Amazon
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