Children's book printing

The trade standard is 32 pages — it suits the rhythm of a read-aloud story and the economics of printing. 24 and 40 pages are the common variants. Page counts must be even (and multiples of 4 for saddle-stitched softcovers). If your story doesn't fit, we'll help you pad or trim sensibly at the file-check stage.

By age, roughly: square formats (210×210mm up to 300×300mm) and A4 landscape suit picture books, where the illustration leads; A5 suits story books and early readers; B-format suits chapter books, like an adult novel. Our book sizes guide shows every UK trim at honest relative scale.

Honestly: no. Board books (rigid card pages for babies and toddlers) are a specialist die-cut format we don't produce. What we offer instead for young readerships is heavy 150gsm+ coated paper in a sewn hardback with laminated covers — genuinely durable for ages 2–3 upward, just not chew-proof. If your book is squarely for under-2s, a board-book specialist is the right printer, and we'd rather tell you that than sell you the wrong thing.

Because picture books are read open, flat, with a child looking on — and the best illustrations run across the full spread. Thread-sewn binding stitches the pages into sections so the book opens flat and the artwork crosses the gutter cleanly. A glued spine fights back: it curls the spread and swallows the middle of the image. For a book that lives at bedtime, sewn also simply lasts longer.

Illustrations at 300 DPI at printed size, 3mm bleed wherever artwork meets the page edge, and CMYK colour if your illustrator can supply it (we convert RGB carefully if not). For spread-crossing artwork, keep faces and focal points away from the centre fold. Every order gets a free file check — we flag low-resolution images by page number and check every gutter crossing before printing.

Colour on heavy paper makes a picture book cost more per page than a novel — but page counts are short, so per-copy prices stay sensible and fall steeply with quantity. The table on this page shows live prices for typical specs; for your exact book, the instant calculator takes under a minute.

From 10 copies, with no upper limit. Family books typically run 10–25; self-published authors selling at fairs, schools and online usually start at 100–300 and reprint on demand. The per-copy price falls sharply between 10 and 250 copies, so it's worth pricing a couple of quantities.

Yes — supply the ISBN and we place a retail-grade barcode on the back cover at no charge. If you don't have one yet, our free ISBN barcode generator builds it, and the publishing guide explains when you actually need an ISBN at all (for a family book: you don't).

Twice over. Order a free sample pack to feel the papers and bindings first; then every order includes a free physical proof of your actual book — colour, lay-flat, cover finish — to approve before the run prints. With illustration-led work, judging colour on real stock rather than a screen is the step that matters most.