Children's Book Printing

The trade standard is 32 pages. It suits the rhythm of a read-aloud story and the economics of printing, and 24 and 40 are the common variants. What your page count has to satisfy depends on how the book is bound: a thread-sewn book is built from folded sheets, so the count must be a multiple of 4, and a sewn hardback starts at 36 pages. A glued book is a stack of leaves, so it only has to be even, and a glued case-bound hardback goes down to 24. So a 32-page hardback is a glued one; at 36 pages you can have it sewn and lying flat. Paperbacks start at 24 pages either way. 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 150 or 170gsm coated paper in a sewn hardback with laminated covers, genuinely durable for ages 2 to 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.

Thread-sewn binding stitches folded sections together, helping the book open more easily and supporting repeated use. It is not a completely lay-flat book. The opening depends on the paper, page count and construction, so keep important text, faces and fine image details clear of the gutter. Glued binding is a lower-cost option.

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.

The main factors are the number of colour pages, paper weight, finished size, binding and quantity. A paperback storybook and a sewn hardback picture book will have different costs, even with the same illustrations. Use the calculator above for your exact specification, or compare UK book printing prices.

From 10 copies (25 for hardbacks), with no upper limit. Family books typically run 10 to 25; self-published authors selling at fairs, schools and online usually start at 100 to 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 digital proof 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, add a printed proof to check the printing and paper. For hardback orders, the printed proof is a plain-cover paperback with a separate sample of your cover.