The quickest way to make a coloring book EVER - a how-to guide using AI 

100%. For example if you design a character, you could upload it to midjourney as a base and then ask it to combine into different styles, different backgrounds, etc. Unlike other channels, I'm more of a lean in to AI rather than use AI to create absolutely everything!

Creative Fabrica Spark is worth checking out. Can be used free, yho there are reasons to pay the $9/month.

Thank you :)

Thank you so much!

Thanks dude, followed your channel and look forward to the video.

Glad it was helpful!

Thanks Brian, I'm glad you liked it and I'll be sure to do some more AI videos as people seemed very interested.

Thanks Mariel. Completely agreed on making them look like they've been illustrated. Good luck when you do have a go :)

Thanks for checking it out :)

The trick with AI is to mix certain parts of a prompt to get out a crafted and more individual style so it becomes less of a generic output, for instance instead of just asking for a coloring page of a frog on a lillipad, ask for a coloring page of a frog on a lillipad, Pointillism, Japanese Garden, Pond, Orchids, Sunrise, Clouds, Coloring page for adults::10, Hand draw, pencil sketch, Black and white, Line art, Printable outlined art, Thin lines, Intricate details, In the style of....... add an artist [Name] or add a few artists to get a mix, This way the output is going to be more individualistic, there is a process to prompting once you get into it so your outputs are not going to match what others are producing.

Thanks a ton!

Glad you liked it!

Haha I know, right!! I've got another video coming up today/tomorrow about ways to use ChatGPT as well :)

Great stuff :).

Renovarse o morir!

Thanks Liz :)

Thanks Eduardo, good luck with your pasive income creations!

Ah, thanks!!

You are so kind

Thanks turtle. IMO hand-made will ALWAYS outdo machine made, but not many of us are talented enough to illustrate. If you want a review of one of your books in the future, I could do a comparison with an AI book :)

It is scary that AI is replacing us now, I got affected too as a translator, now ppl do a large amount of soul-less translations through AI

@@MrsChybowska does companies do not use human translator anymore to verify the accuracy of the AI translated scripts?

🙌🙌

Thanks!

You're welcome!

Thank you!

Good idea yamit :) thanks!

I just export the image from MidJourney, sometimes with a light rescale to increase the pixels :)

Yep - you can only use AI generated images through MidJourney if you're on the $10 p/m tier or above. Always check the Terms :)

@@selfpublishingempire I just checked out the Midjourney site and it states that any of the paid options allow commercial usage. What you said about only being able to use images if you are on $30 and above worried me as I am on the basic tariff currently and have just published a book, but it states on the comparison chart that 'If you have subscribed at any point, you are free to use your images in just about any way you want.' However if you are on a lower tariff and your images can be seen by anyone, they can take them and use them for themselves.

@@pinktweedy3325 Ah thank you Pink Tweedy!! I'll be sure to mention any paid packages moving forward, thank you for clarifying that!!

great idea!!

Nice to have you here Rupert. I vary, but most are 8x8 inch through to 8.5x8.5 inch. That seems to be the largest possible for the MidJourney images to be good quality. And I use Amazon ISBNs currently, which limits me to selling through Amazon.

Haha yes sometimes you get coloring pens in there unfortunately. I'd ignore those if I were you rather than trying to modify them. You should only get those very occasionally, if you're getting them quite a lot then you probably want to look at altering your prompts :)

For 8x8 inch books with a bounding box it was JUST good enough without upscaling. It's definitely limiting me a little though in terms of style, and fingers crossed moving forward the quality increases.

100% agreed. If i could afford to pay an illustrator I would and hopefully as I grow I will be able to do so. I wouldn't have ever used an illustrator for coloring pages, so this for me is basically instead of downloading pre-mades on Creative Fabrica and altering them.

@@selfpublishingempire Do you find it easy to alter Creative Fabrica images? How do you do that exactly? I bought an editor yesterday, and I was just frustrated trying to alter Creative Fabrica coloring pages.

It was a command on MidJourney that included color prompts, and then I used photoshop.

It's a slightly different prompt - use similar commands, but add colour words in the prompts :)

That's a shame. I would try not to be put off, and suggest trying again and making sure the proof copy is exactly how you'd like before publishing.

Did you check your files to see if anything was on the original corrupting the print ?

Book Bolt is a good tool, but i use Publisher Rocket. Essentially it's making sure there's enough search volume to terms, but not 1'000s of search results.

Thanks! Isolate is a prompt that helps to remove anything in the background. A lot of trial and error with prompts, and re-doing commands is needed to remove shading :)

Thanks :). You can you use ChatGPT to give you Wordsearch and Crossword questions and answers, but i don't think currently you can do puzzle type prompts on sites like MidJourney. I wouldn't be surprised if there were prompts moving forward for things like dot to dot though.

Mastering the pen tool is such a great skill to have in the coloring book niche.

It depends on the subject for the books. Some more detailed ones like insects i include a higher detail with some shading, whereas with more straight forward designs I include no shading :)

@@selfpublishingempire have you found a way using midjourney to eliminate that shading? I've been trying to generate an image of an African American or Latina woman and every single time the hair and skin is pre shaded no matter what I type in. I suppose thats when photoshop skills would come in handy. Thank you for the video! It was so helpful. I am practicing creating coloring books for fun first - making some for friends and then will be attempting to upload to sell hopefully. It is so amazing what is possible.

@@abbyhollyn5691 No unfortunately not, a lot of the images do have some shading. However v3 to v4 was a HUGE improvement, so I'm hoping when v5 comes out it will be even better.

Hi Sebiano, I'll do a video on coloring book prompts soon!

MidJourney (with premium tier) gives you shared copyright to sell however you wish. I'd just make sure not to include any imagery that could be considered copyrighted, for example I wouldn't do coloring pages of micky mouse!

Haha thanks for putting it over the edge! Good luck with KDP, I'll make a video in the near future walking you through the process step-by-step. Canva also has a new text-to-AI feature which might be a bit more user friendly!

I'm trying to not go too in-depth with prompts and instead sprinkle them throughout the video, but I'll have a think about it for a next video :)

@@selfpublishingempire Thanks man.

Interesting to hear. I currently use InDesign, but I can see how Slides would be nice and easy :). Quality wise it seems ok?

Thanks Niaz! Unfortunately at the moment the upscaling for coloring pages always makes the lines different and not ideal. So I use the 1024x1024 images. Most are good to use, but yes it is definitely pushing the limits. Fingers crossed soon MJ will allow us to change the initial output quality.

@@selfpublishingempire wouldn't it be possible to image trace these in illustrator and then scale up to any size you want?

@@selfpublishingempire Do you mean that when you upscale using a third party tool the lines look different? Please explain more. I have been upscaling all of my coloring book images using a third party website.

@@ZJones760 This comment was a year ago, the upscale tools work well now :)

@@selfpublishingempire so you do use a third party upscaling tool or do you just use the images that download from midjourney?

You can upscaled within MidJourney but currently it doesn't work well for my purposes, so my next trial is going to be with Gigapixel

@@selfpublishingempire Thanks for your response but I'm not even on midjourney but use other applications. Talking about gigapixels hope it won't affect the quality of the enlarged results

Thanks - via Amazon KDP print on demand.

Sure thing!

You are allowed to use AI images as long as you have usage rights and you declare them :)

I’d look into what the best sellers in your intended niche are doing and do the same/similar. I have a 0.5inch margin on all sides personally for a 8x11inch book

If you have a MidJourney higher tier subscription ($30 p/m), it includes commercial use.

You shouldn't need to copyright the book, I don't think many in self publishing do.

As many as you can ;-) I do 40-50

the AI's are changing consistently so I'm sure it will be possible, but as I've not used either of those I think you'll need to test some prompts and see!

There are lots of options. I use Midjourney, which is my go to.

You can try using a stock photo of that pub as a base command, perhaps turning on /remix mode as well. But no, currently if it's not a well known landmark/area/etc, the result may differ quite wildly.

I only started making them in November/December, but yes a few of them are selling. My best selling coloring book has sold 115 units in the past 90 days

@@selfpublishingempire Very cool!!

@@selfpublishingempire And was the 115 unit book that sold done with AI? or were the images created another way?

@@ZJones760 AI

In US - 40 pages, print cost is $2.15, I sell it for $7.99-8.99 (and amazon take 40% of profit)

@@selfpublishingempire thanks for reply

you have to pay for the most expensive package to keep your photos off the community site. in my opinion, it won't matter much as most will use your prompt and get similar images but not the same ones. that's why midjourney gives you commercial rights.

@@tyed94 As Ty says there's an option to pay for a private mode if you're worried about people taking your content. I don't really see the value for anyone taking random coloring pages I've made though, so haven't done that yet.

You can create a discord server then put the Midjourney bot in it

@@mohamed_deshaune people can still see your images on your profile and Midjourney feed

Right under that.... Your Rights Subject to the above license, you own all Assets you create with the Services. So in essence, both you and MidJourney own the rights.

I was incorrect in thinking it was only the $30 package. The $10 package is also fine to use on Amazon KDP :)

@@selfpublishingempire Thanks.

As far as I know, Chat GPT is free (it's on trial).

Yes currently chatgpt is free. A paid subscription is needed for midjourney if you want to use the images commercially :)

Check out my other video - how to publish a book on Amazon :)

you are not allowed to use images from the free version for use on KDP/to sell

Yep, I tend to have images on the odd pages, and nothing on the even. Hoppe that helps!

There are currently no restrictions on Amazon about using AI created content. It is original content for all intensive purposes.

Yes very good shout, that's something i've not done yet but am going to look into. Agreed on childrens coloring books. I find it depends on the topic, but it takes a LOT more playing with prompts and many more attempts.

Are you referring to Midjourney upscale or other AI to upscale the image that MidJourney gets you? I was searching for an AI that does that!

@@VitorAbreu1001 First midjourney upscale and then some other AI upscaler online. Most of them are freemium though - with limitations on the free version

@@vladimir.zlokazov have you found any other upscalers that work well for free? Do you think we really need to upscale more than what the midjourney upscaler does for us?

In theory it could work, but maybe not quite at the moment. I find that if you do that, the character changes a bit too much.

@@selfpublishingempire thanks. maybe i can find a way. i was hoping to illustrate my children's book that way.

You could try uploading it to midjourney, using the url as a prompt, and then using remix mode to make alterations

I wouyld advise watching some RU-vid videos on how to use MidJourney as you shouldn't need to scroll past other people's images - you message the MidJourney bot and then it's just your images in there :)

Right click the MidJourney Bot when your in the MidJourney channel and you can add the BOT to one of your own channels, you then do not have every other user and his dogs Art popping up as you have your own channel.

@@celtshaun1427 Thanks!

My books tend to be between 15-50mb for an 81 page coloring book with 40 designs. I use adobe InDesign to export the PDFs, so dont have any experience with scribus unfortunately. Id check the file size of the designs you're using to make sure they're not abnormally big.

@@selfpublishingempire is it OK to compress the PDF?? Bcoz I use PNG very high quality format 600dpi. Don't comfortable with the quality of JPEG.

No unfortunately that's not possible at the moment. There might be AI options that can do this in the future though!

Id avoid services like pubby like the plague. Organic reviews will come

If printing relatively small books, then it is fine. If you want to go bigger then you'll need to upscale further :)

@@selfpublishingempire okay thank you. I just want to make sure I'm understanding. If we are doing 8.5 by 8.5 then the midjourney by itself will be enough right? I like the way your book turned out. You only did the midjourney upscale on yours correct?

@@Pub_Oasis4 Thanks! Yes, that's the largest I'd go (no bleed, and the coloring page within a bounding box) with no further upscaling. Else you can find AI upscalers on Google that upscale better than Midjourney does.

@@wendyfarrowartist Thanks Wendy. Authenticity is one part of it. But to be honest, you miss out on a whole lot of the process by getting a robot to produce other peoples art or writing. The end product is only one detail, it's the whole process that counts, both for the author or artist and for those who buy the final product.

I've made comments elsewhere on the ethical side of things, but it's a VERY hot topic understandably... I'll make a video today/tomrorow about some of the biggest questions raised :)

@selfpublishingempire do you have information as to whether the art created by AI is actually available for use? I read that some platforms are helping themselves to art without permission from the artist. As an artist, that worries me