What is an Adult Coloring Book?

We’ve written about Adult Coloring Books and the HUGE Market Opportunity they represent

1. Why are Adult Coloring Books so popular?
2. Are Adult Coloring Books a good market to get into?

We’ve gone as far as to suggest that every single author should try doing at least one Adult Coloring Book (preferably in an area of their expertise)

In this post, let’s look at what an Adult Coloring Book is

What is an Adult Coloring Book?

An adult coloring book is a coloring book for adults. A book which has a bunch of illustrations you can color in with a colored pencil or a crayon. Aimed at adults

1. It’s basically a book which has lots of illustrations drawn with line art
   1. Please Note: In general, there is very little text or story
   2. All the illustrations are usually grouped around one central theme (the theme of the Adult Coloring Book)
2. Adults can fill in these illustrations – add the color to the line art drawings
3. Coloring Books are supposed to have various therapeutic benefits (Please Note: There are no conclusive studies proving this)
   1. They are relaxing and help eliminate stress
   2. They engage your right brain. This is especially beneficial if you do mostly left brain work during your work day
   3. In older readers any type of mental activity is supposed to be a good way to keep the brain active
      1. In theory, Adult Coloring Books can fight against the slowing down of brain functioning with age
      2. Again, there are no conclusive studies proving this
   4. Adult Coloring Books help people who are rehabilitating from injuries
      1. Some medical professionals have claimed that they help overcome trauma and improve hand eye coordination
   5. They supposedly help people reminisce about their childhood
   6. They are supposedly good for developing your motor skills
   7. They are supposed to help develop better eyesight
   8. They are often considered a form of visual meditation, helping you to focus and eliminate anxiety and distraction
   9. They are a way to get away from technology
      1. And all the harmful effects of technology i.e.
      2. Screens being bad for your eyes
      3. Social Media making people unhappy (very strong evidence that this is indeed the case)
      4. Eliminating peer pressure
      5. Damage to your brains and common sense from reading nonsense spread on the Internet
   10. They can be a lot of fun if you like to color
4. Adult Coloring Books are offered both as paperbacks and as ebooks
5. There are even apps and websites where you can color in Adult Coloring Book Pages
6. There are websites that will let you download and print ‘coloring book pages’

You can read up more about Coloring Books at Wikipedia

What is the Purpose/Aim of an Adult Coloring Book?

In general, it’s hard to pinpoint a specific purpose

1. An Adult Coloring Book is just a coloring book (a set of illustrations of line art) that adults fill in with coloring pencils
   1. To give you an idea of how popular adult coloring books became, Faber Castell ran out of manufacturing capacity for coloring pencils in 2016
2. They became very popular because people found them to be very relaxing
   1. It was a great contrast from technology and from always being plugged in
3. In contrast to most things on the Internet, which are passive and dumb you down, filling in a coloring book is an active thing you are doing
   1. It also, supposedly, helps improve your brain function and your motor skills
   2. It also, supposedly, is very relaxing, with benefits similar to meditation (thought not to the same extent, and not proven via clinical studies)
   3. It also engages your right brain
4. In fact, just the act of getting away from all the social pressure of social media, and getting away from technology ‘screens’, is very therapeutic and relaxing to most people
5. In a busy world, where we hardly ‘switch off’, and where we carry our cellphones everywhere with us, an Adult Coloring Book allows us to take a break from it all

In some ways, the main purpose of an Adult Coloring Book is to not have any purpose, not have any pressure, not have any stress, and just take a mini vacation for your mind

Where can I learn more about Adult Coloring Books, and understand why they are so popular?

We discuss a lot of this in our post on Why are Adult Coloring Books so popular?