You don't draw first and lay out later. Page count comes first, and it isn't yours to choose freely. Books fold in multiples of eight, which is why nearly every picture book is 32 pages. Take out front matter and you've got roughly 14 spreads to tell the story in. Get that wrong and it's not an edit, it's a redraw.
You don't draw first and lay out after. The structure comes first, and the structure is fixed by how books are physically printed.
Picture books come in multiples of 8, which is why almost all of them are 32 pages. That's not tradition, it's how sheets fold. Take off front matter and you're working with roughly 28 usable pages, which is about 14 spreads. Your story has to land in that shape.
Thumbnails first, then a full dummy of the book at size. That's where you find out the page turn falls in the wrong place or two spreads look the same. Fixing it at thumbnail stage is a pencil sketch. Fixing it after final art is a redraw.
Before any page is painted, the character gets drawn from several angles with fixed proportions and colours. Without that reference the child on page 4 and the child on page 20 stop being the same child, and young readers notice immediately.
Anything running to the edge needs bleed past the trim line. Anything important stays out of the gutter, because on a spread the middle disappears into the binding. Art composed without the gutter in mind loses a face to the fold.
Ownership and file quality are where illustration engagements go wrong.
Every month it sits in the drawer is a month nobody reads it. Tell us where the book is at and we'll give you a straight answer on what it needs.
Full commercial rights assigned, including reprints, translations and merchandise, plus layered source files and the character sheets on request. Illustration is where limited licences quietly cause trouble years later, so we don't use them.
You've probably heard that publishing services take your money, take your rights and go quiet. The industry earned that reputation. So here's how we work instead.
Your rights, your royalties, your files. Nothing we make gets licensed back to us.
Scope in writing first. No work starts on a handshake and a number that moves later.
Source files, print ready files, accounts and logins. All handed over, all in your name.
If your book doesn't need a service, we'll say so. That's cheaper for you and better for us.
Real books we've worked on. Covers, interiors and distribution, all of them out in the world.
Every month it sits in the drawer is a month nobody reads it. Tell us where the book is at and we'll give you a straight answer on what it needs.
Five stages, and you sign off at every one. Nothing moves to the next stage until you've said yes to the last.
Tell us where the book is and what you want it to do. We'll tell you what it actually needs.
Scope and price agreed in writing before anyone starts. You know the number up front.
Editing, layout, cover, whatever the scope says. You approve each stage as it lands.
Final proof on the typeset pages, plus a physical proof copy before anything gets printed at volume.
Retailer setup, metadata, categories and keywords. Then the files and logins come to you.
We don't publish testimonials on our own site anymore. Ours live on Trustpilot, where you can check them yourself.
Verified reviews
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