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Tech & Innovation

The explosive rise of adult coloring books, charted

There’s no two ways about it: Grown-ups are cuckoo for coloring books. Adult coloring books are sweeping the world, with tremendous sales in the last year.

By Thu-Huong Ha·1 min read·Updated July 21, 2022
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There’s no two ways about it: Grown-ups are cuckoo for coloring books. Adult coloring books are sweeping the world, with tremendous sales in the last year.

Data released in January from Nielsen BookScan, which covers approximately 85% of the US print book market, shows the coloring craze has grown massively. US sales have shot up from 1 million to 12 million books in the past year.

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For the moment at least, adults seem to find something comforting in the small gestures of the screen-less activity.

This year we can expect publishers to add more novelty themes to the growing collection of titles, which currently includes gainfully employed dinosaurs and Donald Trump as Michael Jackson.

Image by Mikel Seijas Alonso on Flickr, licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0.