A studio service
A custom children's book, made to your brief.
Your story, your characters, your world — illustrated from scratch and laid out as a finished book. Not a template with your name dropped in. For authors with a manuscript and for families with a story worth keeping.
You bring the story. We build the book around it.
N° 01Custom or personalized
Two different things, often confused.
A custom book is built to your brief. You have a story — a manuscript, a premise, a family legend — and we make the book that story needs: characters designed from nothing, a world that doesn't exist yet, a cover that belongs to your title alone.
A personalized book is a different product. There, the story already works and the job is to put a specific child inside it — their face, their name, their bedroom. If that's what you're after, our personalized children's books page is the right place to start.
Most people searching for a custom children's book want the first one and end up on pages selling the second. So it's worth being explicit: nothing here is a template.
N° 02What gets made
Everything a book actually needs.
01
Character design first
A turnaround sheet for every character — front, three-quarter, side, expressions — signed off before a single spread is drawn. This is the thing that keeps page 4 and page 28 looking like the same book.
02
Storyboard before paint
The whole book thumbnailed as a page-turn sequence, so pacing problems get solved in pencil rather than in finished art.
03
Illustrated spreads
Full-bleed or framed, in the style you choose from our range. Every spread composed with the gutter and the page-turn in mind, not as a standalone picture.
04
Cover and case
Front, spine and back designed as one wrap, with the title lettering set to survive a thumbnail on a store listing.
05
Interior layout and type
Text set into the art rather than dropped on top of it, with reading-age-appropriate size and generous margins.
06
Print-ready files
Built to your printer's trim, bleed and spine maths — KDP, IngramSpark, or an offset printer's spec. Plus an ebook export.
N° 03How it runs
Signed off in stages, never all at once.
Nothing is generated before the plan exists. We read the whole manuscript first and write a visual plan — cast, setting, per-spread beat, camera, emotion — and you approve that before any drawing begins.
Then character sheets, then props and settings, then spreads in order, each one built against the approved sheets so the cast can't drift. You see and sign off each stage rather than receiving a finished book and hoping.
Two rounds of revision are included at every tier. Most books use one and a half.
N° 04Investment
Three ways to work together.
Short book
From $2,800
A 16-spread book on one focused idea.
- Cover illustration
- Up to 14 interior spreads
- Character sheets (2 main characters)
- Storyboard pass
- Print + ebook files
- 2 rounds of revisions
Full picture book
From $4,800
The standard 32-page custom picture book.
- Cover and full wrap
- Up to 28 interior spreads
- Full character + setting design
- Storyboard and pacing pass
- Interior layout and typography
- Print-ready to your printer's spec
- 2 rounds of revisions
- Full commercial rights
Series
From $11,500
Three or more titles that read as one shelf.
- 3+ titles
- Shared cast and visual DNA
- Series style guide
- Consistent covers and spines
- Full files per title
- Marketing assets per title
N° 05Questions
The answers we give most often.
- What's the difference between a custom book and a personalized one?
- A custom book is made to your brief — your story, your characters, built from nothing. A personalized book puts a specific child into an existing story. If you have a manuscript, you want custom. If you want your daughter as the hero, personalized is the better fit.
- Do I need a finished manuscript?
- No. A clear premise and a sense of the ending is enough to start. We've begun books from one paragraph and from fully edited manuscripts — the difference is how much shaping happens at the storyboard stage.
- Who owns the artwork?
- You do. Full commercial rights transfer on final payment — print, sell, license, publish under your own imprint. We keep only portfolio rights, and we'll drop those too if you'd rather the book stayed private.
- Can you match a style I've seen elsewhere?
- We can work in a comparable register — warmth, palette, line weight, detail level — but we won't copy a living illustrator's style. Send references and we'll tell you honestly which parts we can reach.
- How long does it take?
- Six to ten weeks for a full picture book, depending on spread count and revision rounds. The first two weeks are character design, signed off before any spread starts.
Start your book
Tell us about the book.
Send the manuscript or the premise, the age you're writing for, and roughly how many pages you have in mind. We'll reply within two working days with a proposal and a style recommendation.