2015 was a big year for adult colouring. Three out of five of the year's bestselling non-fiction books were adult colouring books, drink n' colour nights are still a huge hit at places like Toronto's Gladstone Hotel, and they are such a big deal that we even caused a global pencil crayon shortage. But who are the consumers buying adult colouring books, and are they the same people using them? Covering sales trends and consumer demographics, colouring techniques for mindfulness, and those who were colouring before it was cool, BookNet's Zalina Alvi compiles the data and explores the so-called "Peter Pan" generation to discern if this trend will continue to climb or if we've finally oversaturated the market with mandalas and Bill Murray activity books.
(Scroll down for a transcript of the conversation.)
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Transcript
Zalina Alvi: In March 2013, a colouring book filled with intricate, whimsical drawings called the Secret Garden was published in the U.K. by a Scottish illustrator named, Johanna Basford, and her publisher, Laurence King. The unusual thing about this particular colouring book was that it wasn't made for children. It was designed for adults. And to considerable surprise, it was a massive success. Two years later in the spring of 2015, this colouring book and others like it took off in Canada, selling tens of thousands of copies and igniting a trend that has come to dominate display tables and stores across the country. According to the 2015 edition of our annual Canadian Book Market report, which looks at sales trends in the national print trade market, 3 of the top 5 best-selling nonfiction books in Canada last year were adult colouring books. In fact, the games subject where most of these books are categorized saw a 310% increase over the previous year, and they accounted for more than 3% of all units sold in Canada. Today, you can find lots of think pieces and YouTube brands about the craze. There was a global pencil crayon shortage not too long ago, and there are even adult colouring nights at places like Toronto's Gladstone Hotel. Here's their marketing director, Tara McCallum.
Tara McCallum: It's usually fall every Thursday, and people come, and it's more of a, like, relaxing...they'll have a few pints or a glass of wine, and just, like, zone out and colour. It's awesome. We have a few regulars. We actually have one guy who came so frequently and did such an amazing job with his colouring, like shading and amazing stuff. So he's actually our colourer in resident, so people can go to him and get tips on, you know, how to make their colouring one step further.
Zalina: So you mentioned tips for colouring, is that like green would look good here or go lighter in this section? Like, what is a tip for colouring like?
Tara: It's mostly about shading and, like, adding some dimension, instead of just doing like a flat colour everywhere. You should see what people come out with. Luckily, we're on Queen Street West, we're surrounded by artists. Give an artist some pencil crayons, and you'll be very impressed with what they can pull off.
Zalina: While colouring nights like this are popular, the data indicates that most colouring isn't actually being done in a social setting. According to a survey we ran with Canadian consumers in April 2016, where 200 people show the way they buy and use colouring books, 83% of those who bought a colouring book for personal use said they prefer to colour alone. Women between the ages of 25 and 34 are most likely to colour socially, but even then, it's only 1 out of 4.
On the subject of data, let's talk demographics for a second. The data shows that the average adult colourer is female between the ages of 25 and 34, without children, educated with a 4-year degree, employed full time, and most likely married. Women are also more likely than men to buy a colouring book for personal use rather than as a gift. And when looking at those gift-givers, women are more likely to give a colouring book as a gift to another adult than to a child. But in terms of buying preferences, both women and men seem to prefer buying their colouring books in major retailers like Costco or Walmart, followed closely by bookstores like Indigo, with online retailers coming in a somewhat distant third. But enough data. Let's ask some actual Canadians why they enjoy colouring.
Gemma Foster: My name is Gemma Foster. I'm originally from Ireland but I live in Toronto now, and I'm a digital marketing specialist with a travel company now. I've tended to go for...they have kind of comedic style colouring books, like one of them is called The Passive-Aggressive Adult Colouring Book, and it's just got, like, ridiculous stuff in it, like, you know, my life on Instagram, my life in real life, just kind of fun stuff that makes you laugh while you get to be artistic with it. And I do have a number of embarrassingly nerdy colouring books that include Harry Potter and Game of Thrones.
Zalina: Oh. So those are our huge bestsellers. You are not alone.
Gemma: Yeah, I know. They're very entertaining.
Alex: So I'm Alex. I'm a graduate student at Western University in the library and information science program. And I colour quite a bit. I started, I think, in October, and part of it is to deal with stress and anxiety. It sort of comes with the territory when you're in grad school. Before it became a thing, not to sound super hipster but, like, I have a young cousin who have colouring books, and I was always thinking I want one for myself and I would...was even considering just buying a kids' colouring book to colour because I remembered how much I loved to do it. And I'm not particularly artistic. I can't really draw, at least not for, like, my own standards, so it's less stressful and it's a good creative outlet because you can't really mess it up.
Zalina: It's often said about colouring that it's a great way for people who don't feel particularly artistic to be creative without the pressure of a blank page. On the flip side of that, though, most artists aren't necessarily huge fans of colouring. But for Ryan Buckson, a stereo compiling artist from Durham Region who makes 3D movies, colouring presents its own creative challenges and opportunities, even for artistic people.
Ryan Buckson: It's something that's not...there's no pressure to perform. Like, I don't have to please a client with it. I do prefer to draw, you know, if suddenly it strikes me, but it is nice to sort of change pace because you don't have to create the image from scratch or anything like that. Primarily for me, it's messing with the actual colour space itself and just trying to say, "Hey, you know what? I wonder if I can do a realistic copper colour without using any metallics at all, just using browns, and oranges, and reds to, you know, give the viewer the impression that there's copper on the page without actually using a copper colour or anything, or any metallic colours at all.
Zalina: And as a dad of two, it also gives him a new way to bond with his kids.
Ryan: We do a lot of activities together. And that's something that...you know, it's not, you know, high impact, obviously so it's something... And it's funny, because when it's a bonding activity like that, sometimes they'll just tell me about, you know, how rotten something happened at school was or, you know, how much they enjoyed the, you know, activity that they learned in science or something like that.
Zalina: But the number one reason for colouring, it's not creativity. According to our survey, and countless anecdotes, it's relaxation. And it's no secret that colouring books are being used this way. Lots of these books actually include words like stress relief and therapy right on the cover.
Sherry: I colour when I'm feeling anxious or frustrated because I find it's really relaxing. It helps my brain go offline for a while and gives me something to do with my hands when I'm keyed up.
Zalina: That was Sherry, a self-professed colouring enthusiast. The meditative and calming effects of colouring have even been corroborated by professionals. Zeba Luxmore, a counsellor at George Brown College, and a registered psychotherapist, says she's been suggesting colouring as a method of self-care to her students for years.
Zeba Luxmore: You know, self-care is something that is...it's a really, really important thing, something that perhaps many of us, it can be really, really helpful to have in our lives, especially sort of in these days of high stress and just sort of being on the go all the time. And so with students, they're often really, really high...a lot of high stress with regards to school and things like that and so self-care, it's often something that we discuss. And so we usually wanna frame it, it's usually in a way of, let's do what works for you. But I've found specifically this year that more and more...I've been suggesting colouring as one way because I find colouring is an easy-to-pitch idea. It's really approachable, it's really accessible for students. So, you know, you can just go print off an adult colouring sheet off the internet. We sell adult colouring books in the college bookstore, where they buy their textbooks from. There's a peer group on campus that once a week, they actually set up a table with colouring pencils, and paints, and colouring pages. So, in that sense, it's really accessible. It's something that when I say, you know, like, "Well, have you ever tried colouring?" to them, it's, yeah, they have coloured, perhaps not recently, but at least as a child so they can draw upon that experience, they know what to expect. Whereas if I say, "Have you tried a mindfulness session or mindfulness meditation?" that sometimes can be a bit more daunting and a bit more overwhelming, because they might say that, you know, might be a new experience for them and something that they've not tried before. So, I like suggesting colouring because it is more accessible, and I find students are more open to trying it. Definitely, in the last year or two, I have been suggesting it a lot more.
However, before that, you know, in the therapy world, there's sort of mindfulness, like, area. There's, you know, something called mandalas that I've often had printouts of, and encourage students to colour as well. So that was, I'd say...like, for the last, I don't know, seven, eight years, I've had handouts of those mandalas in my office that I would occasionally give out to students but it wasn't...I don't know, I just never gave them out as often as now that...since colouring has become more of a mainstream thing, it just sort of feels like it's easier to sort of explain and to get across to students.
Zalina: So, okay, you've established that adult colouring books are a big deal but how much longer are they gonna stick around? Last fall, Daniel Rotsztain turned his illustrations of every library branch in Toronto into a colouring book called "All the Libraries Toronto" with Dundurn Press. At the time, it seemed like serendipity. Daniel had all these amazing black and white illustrations already created when the colouring craze took off.
Daniel Rotsztain: "All the Libraries Toronto" started out as a blog. It was an illustration project where I visited every branch of the Toronto Public Library and drew their exteriors. And I did so in kind of a simple pen and ink style. And I wanted to create a record of all of the buildings in a similar style, so people could compare them all and see how different each branch was and how different each part of the city was in kind of a cohesive way. When I first released the drawings, when people saw them, they asked me, "When's the colouring book coming out?" because the drawings kind of really lend themselves to that, and the adult colouring craze was just beginning to start. So, I released drawings and I wanted to create a book of the drawings with descriptions. And I kind of shopped it around, and Dundurn was really receptive to the idea. And they said, "Do you mind if we market it as a colouring book?" And that sounded fantastic to me because the idea was transforming into that anyway. Some people are saying, "Is this a fad?" And I don't think it is because I think adults were colouring for a long time. It's just now they've kind of come out about it.
Zalina: Also unconcerned? Carrie Gleason, the editorial director of Dundurn.
Carrie Gleason: Definitely it's been a good thing for the book industry. Our sales and our colouring books don't show any signs of slowing down. It's still selling strong. We're not seeing nearly the same kind of returns that we would with another book that's not a colouring book, possibly because the book is selling into different markets, so, you know, gift shops as opposed to you know, Indigo or...so in those stores...or Midoco, say, stores like that, so those stores are less likely to return. So, we're definitely seeing strong sales where we've...we're almost through our first printing of the book. We'll probably reprint just to capitalize on the, you know, tourist season coming up and stuff like that. So, I don't think it's gonna...I mean, it's a trend, so all trends eventually fade away or whatever, but I don't think this one is going anywhere fast. I think what will happen is that we'll just over-saturate the market with too many, too many colouring books, too many options.
Zalina: So, not all adult colouring books fall into this category, most of them do. So let's look at sales trends in the games subject for insight. If we look at the games market share in Canada for the last year... And by the way, a market share is a percentage of units sold in this category, relative to all units sold in Canada, keeping in mind that we're only looking at print books. We can see that the games category rose steadily starting last summer, hitting 1% in June, then 2.5% in August, and then an all-time high of about 3.5% over the holidays. Since then, it's dropped down to just over 2%, which is about where it was in July. So, make of that what you will. It's too soon to call but if the trend is on the decline, that would definitely be good news to its many detractors. Maybe you've heard this particular rant from actor and YouTuber, Russell Brand.
Russell Brand: The best-selling books in the world are no longer Bibles, Korans, or interesting scientific introspectives on the workings of anatomy and the universe, they're colouring books. What has turned us into terrified divs that want to live in childish stupors?
I suppose you can't argue with the fact that people are buying these books and obviously it is fulfilling a need. But what is this need? What is this disconnect? What have we lost? The answer to us seems to be, "Look, I'm just gonna do some colouring and please leave me alone." You can't just retreat into childhood and hope that the adult problems of the world will disappear. I mean, this is an apocalyptic end of days that adults are so terrified, so mentally ill and frustrated that they're gonna regress to a second childhood rather than face up to the very adult problems we have of approaching Armageddon...
Zalina: So, is it infantilizing? Much has been written about the Peter Pan market where adults read YA books, go to summer camps or playhouses, and now colour. Are we regressing as a society?
Zeba: It's a bit unfair. I think it's being a bit harsh on it. I think there is a nice sort of safety and security to colouring, right? When I suggest to a student, "Hey, you, you know, maybe go draw," if I give you a blank sheet of paper and what to draw, that, like, brings on a whole other level of, like, overwhelm and dauntingness, whereas with the colouring, yeah, sure, you know, there already is a picture that you have to colour, so there is some security and parameters in terms of, like, your colouring within those lines and...you know, I just don't see it as infantilizing our aggressive behaviour. We do a lot of things that children do, and I think just because we're grown-ups doesn't mean we can't enjoy some of the same kinds of things, right? I mean, grown-ups and adults play in their own way. We read books, we write...you know, there's just all kinds of similar...it's just sort of a silly...I think that's a really silly criticism of...
Gemma: You pick up a colouring book for a different reason that you'd pick up a book to read. I don't think they're a direct...in a direct competition with each other. I think that people who enjoy colouring or crafts or anything like that, like, this is another thing that they do in addition to reading. I don't think it's a competition at all.
Alex: I'm not sure if it's gonna be around forever, but I can speak for myself and say that I'll probably continue doing it.
Zalina: There certainly doesn't seem to be any shortage of ideas for adult colouring books. There are, of course, lots of pop culture options like the current Game of Thrones, Doctor Who, and Harry Potter books, but there are also wackier ones like the one all about Bill Murray called Thrill Murray, Colour Me Drunk, a drinking and drawing activity book, and Dinosaurs With Jobs. So, on that note, let's ask our panel of colourers and experts if they can identify the real adult colouring book that was actually published in 2015 from this lineup. Is it A, Colour Me Bad, We Wanna Colour You Up, B, The Sweary Colouring Book for Adults, C, the life-changing magic of colouring Outside the Lines, or D, the official Fifty Shades of Grey colouring book, Find Your Red Room of Pain?
Tara: The third one.
Gemma: My guess is B.
Ryan: Is it B, The Sweary?
Alex: Is it the first one, the Colour Me Bad one?
Zalina: The answer, it's B, The Sweary Colouring Book for Adults. Go figure.
Gemma: Oh my, I wanna get that now.
Carrie: There you go. It's a good recommendation for you.
Alex: It's an awesome recommendation. I'm glad the Fifty Shades one wasn't real. That would be disturbing.
Zalina: According to our survey, 40% of those who bought an adult colouring book last year gave it as a gift. And it's interesting to note that more than half of gift-givers gave the book to a child under 11. So I suppose you can take the craze with a grain of salt. But at the end of the day, a whopping 86% of book buyers also said they plan to buy the same number or more colouring books in 2016. So, we probably haven't seen the last adult colouring book hitting shelves just yet. I'd like to offer a big thank you to Tara, Ryan, Daniel, Gemma, Carrie, Alex, Sherry, And Zeba for taking the time to talk with me this month. And an extra thank you to BookNet's Lauren Stewart for coming up with that colouring book trivia question. If we haven't sated your appetite for data on adult colouring yet, we'll also be sharing even more of our survey results on our blog in the coming weeks. So you can look for that at booknetcanada.ca, where you can also learn more about what we do. We gratefully acknowledge the financial support of the Government of Canada through the Canada Book Fund. And of course, thanks to you for listening.
