(Dale whistling)
- So I just got this package in the mail,
and this is actually from a person
that's been following this channel for quite a while,
and has built herself an excellent following,
and a huge community around, of all things, coloring books.
So if you want to learn how to create,
and sell coloring books,
make sure you stay tuned to this video,
and then find out what's inside this package.
Hey, it's Dale here, and we're going to be talking
all about coloring books today.
Now, unlike what probably a lot of people think
they think that I've probably published all walks of books,
but I've dabbled a little bit here, a little bit there,
and I dabbled in coloring books at one point
to really no real results.
But I know someone,
specifically her name's Anne Manera
that has absolutely slayed it in coloring books,
and she's built a huge community,
and huge following around it.
And if you've followed me at all, in any of my interviews,
you've heard me talk about Anne Manera.
She's actually the gal that actually has grown a following,
without ever having her face on camera, ever,
and we're not going to change that today.
But what's inside the box?
Well, I said to her, please,
send me your best coloring books.
I want to see the stuff that
really has your audience clamoring.
So let's open it up.
(knife cutting)
(box cracking)
Alrighty, she's got a little bit of packaging in here,
And she says, "Hi Dale,
"I'm so excited to be part of this
"video collaboration with you."
I'm glad you're part of this as well.
"This box contains five coloring books,
"which I feel represent a variety of my books overall.
"I've included a bit of each book in this box.
"I'm also including a page with all my links, and more info.
"I also set up a page on my website to offer
"one hour coaching for anyone that's interested
"in learning more about self publishing coloring books.
"Lastly, I'm including a painting for you as a gift,
"and a thank you for allowing me to take part
"in the self-publishing empire."
I'm absolutely tickled, and I'll leave some
of this information down inside
the description, down below here, folks.
The is actually really frigging cool.
I like this, and I know that this
is going to find a perfect place here on my wall.
So excellent work Anne, thank you so much.
Here are some of the coloring books that we have here.
Got Mood Lifters, very thick,
and you could tell that she's taking a lot of time
into creating each one of these pages.
A Bugs View Coloring Book for Everyone,
and Anne created all of this herself.
This is not something that she just went and bought online.
I like this one, this one's a little different.
She actually, instead of having glossy cover,
she did a matte finish over top of this, well done Anne.
Okay, and then Simple Objects.
Oh wow.
So this is like a gray scale coloring book,
which oddly enough, this tends to be very popular.
There are some people out there that like to do this.
It has the shading already done,
all they have to do is go in, and color the pictures.
So now that we've seen some of Anne's work,
it's now time to see exactly who Anne is.
And I actually had a few pertinent questions
I had asked her,
so take it away Anne.
- [Anne] Hey everyone, it's Anne Manera,
and today I'm coloring a page from my book, Mushroom Mania.
While I'm coloring, I'm going to be talking about
how I self publish coloring books,
and how I got started, and just types of things like that.
- [Dale] How do you create your coloring books?
- [Anne] Well, I create coloring books
in a few different ways.
Some of my coloring books are hand drawn like this one,
some other coloring books are drawn
with the aid of the computer, and by that,
I mean, I use either Adobe Illustrator to create them,
and use a lot of, which is a graphic design software,
but I use a lot of typography techniques, I guess,
for lack of a better word, to include them.
So a few of my books just have maybe words in them,
and the images, whether it's a mandala,
or it's a book with words, it would have,
it would be more about using Adobe Illustrator,
and using the computer.
So that's how I create that type of book,
or the hand-drawn one, like I said about this one.
I also have some other coloring books
that are considered gray scale illustration books,
and those books are drawn with charcoal,
or pastels, or even just graphite,
and then I convert them into a gray scale image,
meaning that I take the image,
and turn it into a black and white image.
And it ends up becoming a gray scale image,
where you color it just on top of the lights and the darks,
the grays and the whites, in the image.
Gray scale coloring is very popular.
I also have some other coloring books that I use,
different extensions for Adobe Illustrator,
but that's pretty much how I create them,
as far as the technical part of it.
The concept part of it always has come
extremely easy to me, I don't know why,
but I always just have a running list
of a lot of different ideas for coloring books.
- [Dale] How do you promote your coloring books?
- [Anne] I do a free Facebook Live video
every Monday morning at 10:00 AM,
and it's a coloring tutorial,
it's a free coloring tutorial,
and that is a huge way for me to promote them.
However, one of the things that happens
when I do that, is that I don't make it like a sales pitch.
When I first started doing coloring books,
there was all of these different groups,
and they were promoting through Facebook,
through live videos, or through prerecorded videos,
that were coloring tutorials,
and they were giving away free pages like crazy.
So I decided to stop giving away freebies like that,
and instead I created what I call the color along book,
and I use that for my weekly color alongs.
And if you want to color along with me,
you can purchase the book,
and you can get the page in the book,
or you can just watch for free,
and you can really just use any page you would like,
and apply the technique.
The color alongs are about techniques,
they're are about teaching people how to color.
And that is really kind of where
I kind of anchored how I promote coloring books,
is to teach the people how to color,
teach them that they can get better at what they're doing,
and then they will want to buy something.
So while I'm doing the live color along,
and really promoting a coloring book,
I'm promoting it in a,
I want to say, I want to say discrete,
but for lack of a better word, I guess I'll say discreet.
I'm not just kind of saying, "Buy this, buy this, buy this."
I am just getting them involved in it,
just kind of attracting it.
I want them to share it with their family and friends.
I want them to say,
"Hey, I had a really good time at that color along."
"I had a really good time at that live video,
"I'm looking forward to the next one."
I want them to, I want it to be all about the experience
and it's been a success.
- [Dale] How have you grown such a devoted following?
- [Anne] Well, first of all,
I'm truly humbled by that word devoted following,
because I am in awe of every single
sale that's made,
whether it's free, or, whether it's a free download.
I think that the free color alongs have helped
with the following.
The other thing that happened
is that I used to have an Etsy shop.
I used to sell my books in single pages,
like digital downloads on Etsy.
And then a few years ago,
I created a website for my coloring books,
and to sell books, sell PDFs, sell pages,
and a bunch of other stuff, I have memberships.
And I needed to know if the coloring,
if the website was actually working,
and people were downloading things,
and if it was successful.
So now, one of the things that I do is that
every time someone goes to my website,
and makes a purchase,
whether it is for one penny, $100, whatever it is,
even if it's free,
even if you go into my website, and download a free page,
I pick up the phone, you know, the old telephone,
not email, not text, not messaging, none of that.
I pick up the telephone, and I dial their phone number.
Because the website is set up so that I can take,
I can capture their name, their phone number,
their address, their email address.
And I call them on the phone.
And I would say 90% of the time, the person doesn't answer.
But for that little bit of a 10%,
those people that have answered the phone
have been so amazed that I've contacted them.
I'm contacting them for two reasons,
my biggest reason is to say,
thank you for visiting my website.
Thank you for taking an interest
in downloading a free page from my website.
Second, did it work?
Were you successfully able to get that free page?
And if not, how can I help you?
So I think that the personalization
between myself and my followers,
has kind of turned it into that kind of devoted following.
And I think that the other part of it
would be that I'm just consistent, I show up.
- [Dale] What is the best tip for anyone
new to publishing coloring books?
- [Anne] The key to it all is
is don't just publish one book, and walk away.
And sometimes people are,
they have this dream
that they're going to publish one book,
one coloring book,
and they're going to put it up on Amazon,
or however they're going to sell it,
whether they're going to sell it on Amazon,
or sell it as pages, or PDFs, on Etsy, or their own website.
And that it's just suddenly going to be a bestseller,
and you're going to sell hundreds, and hundreds,
and hundreds of books,
and there is a lot of competition.
So my best tip would be, is to just don't give up.
You just have to be consistent, and do it for you.
- [Dale] What is the worst advice you received
as a coloring book entrepreneur?
- [Anne] I had first started coloring books,
maybe I had been doing it for about, maybe six months.
I don't remember how many books I had at that point,
and I have a background in graphic design.
So I considered my book covers to be designed well,
I didn't consider them to be poorly designed,
I designed them myself.
I didn't use a template, and out of the blue,
I was just told by another coloring book artist,
without asking for his advice, or his opinion,
that all of my covers were just horrible,
is the word he used,
and that I should redesign every cover of all of my books,
and that my website was in pretty bad shape also.
And he just basically just gave it this huge critique
that everything was just awful.
I didn't ask for his opinion,
and he did it in a public forum,
in a group, so everyone could see it.
I was very upset about it, I almost walked away,
I almost quit,
and then I realized that,
how can I learn from this?
So when the question is posed
as what is the worst advice you received?
I don't really think that any advice
is the worst advice, or is bad advice,
I just think it's how you handle that advice,
or what you think about it,
and how you react to that advice.
So whatever advice you have received,
that you think is bad,
take a look, what can you learn from it?
And don't take it personally, so move on.
And too many people are criticized in the art world,
and it's not fair.
So I just think that I took that as the opportunity
to say, okay, well, what can I learn from this?
Do they need to get better?
Can I improve them?
Of course, there's always room for improvement,
or is this guy just being a jerk,
and I'm just not going to listen to him.
So that's probably the worst advice,
but I don't really think of it as the worst advice
because I just kind of think of it as
I just can continue to grow.
And I think that the more you do something,
whether it's something that you're,
whether you play a play a musical instrument, or you draw,
or you paint, or you even exercise,
the more you do something every single day,
the better you will become.
- Now that you've had a great overview
on how to create and sell coloring books,
why don't we talk about how to self publish
a children's book?
Believe it or not, I did an entire video series
and I'm going to go ahead, have you check,
take a look at it, it's right down below here.
click that very first video, and watch it through.
And you're going to find,
it's going to set you off on the right path.
And maybe some of the tips that you've used
for the coloring book can be applied there.
I'll see you then.