Photo caption: DJ Freezy J’s doodle-style drawings provided the raw materials for this MAI adult coloring pages set. Photo courtesy of the Milan Art Institute.
To become an influential artist, you have to get creative with your marketing. It can even be worth the time and effort to expand into new products that lead people to your art.
In 2013, a coloring book artist by the name of Johanna Basford published an adult coloring book called Secret Garden, and in the process set off a trend that satisfied the home colorist’s relentless desire for unfettered creativity. This worked hugely to her advantage.
In the years since then, the adult coloring market has become an established genre on sites like Amazon, and has sparked a marketing swag revolution.
According to the Advertising Speciality Institute (ASI), industries, like:
have all used coloring books as marketing tools to build engagement, to reinforce their brand images and to keep their products and services on the minds of their customers. In fact, even the Smithsonian has used coloring books to promote its programs.
So, here’s a question for you. Have you considered using coloring books as an art marketing tool for your professional art business? Given that coloring books promote engagement, they’re logical tools for the modern professional artist to use. Few tools give you the power to share your art brand message, your passion and your personal vision, like these cool art marketing tools.
They not only allow you to leave your mark, so to speak, but they allow your collectors to collaborate with you, allowing them to leave their mark, too. That’s really powerful from a customer loyalty perspective.
From an art marketing standpoint, coloring books and coloring pages have a number of promotional uses. These include but are not limited to:
Nowadays, you don’t need to have your book picked up by a big publisher. Platforms, like Amazon, IngramSpark and Etsy, make it possible for you to publish books, like adult coloring books, coloring pages and journals.
In this case, you take charge of your art publishing career by becoming an independent publisher. You design coloring books based on your art and upload the digital files of the books or coloring pages to these sites. Collectors can buy them from there.
It’s also worth noting that while many coloring books involve line art, not all of them do. Many adult coloring book publishers publish grayscale coloring books. Colored pencils from brands like Prismacolor have a transparent quality. This allows the coloring book colorist to add color to the images while still allowing the shades from the grayscale image to come through.
Grayscale coloring books allow you to make black and white versions of your art so that people can color it. Often this is done in programs like Adobe Photoshop. The tutorial below will teach you how to do this.
Video caption: Learn Something: How to Turn Any Photo Into a Coloring Page
How to Create a Coloring Book From Scratch
How To Make $ With Your Art: Amazon / KDP Coloring Books
How to Self-Publish a Coloring Book
How To Self-Publish An Adult Coloring Book With Meg Cowley
Learn More About Grayscale Coloring Books
While it may feel a bit intimidating to become an indie publisher - and require some research - it’s possibly one of the best things you can do to level up your career. Becoming a professional artist in the 21st century requires you to approach your career with decisiveness and relentless perseverance.
Such a decision puts you solidly in the driver’s seat of your career, which always takes boldness and bravery, but in the end, you gain a lot of personal power by taking risks like this. In short, you become the hero of your art career!
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