Publish a Children's book : General Guidelines

Here are some general guidelines on organizing your material to publish your your children's book. Save your digital photos to a disk or send in your prints or illustrations. Illustrations can be made on any type of paper with paints, crayons, markers, colored pencils, etc... The paper should be smaller than 9 x 14 (normal paper size is 8.5 x 11) but if there are a few larger pieces we will work with them.

ALL OF YOUR ORIGINAL MATERIALS WILL BE RETURNED TO YOU WITH YOUR ORDER!

Publish a Children's Book : Organizing your photos / illustrations

Give your photos a number representing the order you want them to appear in the book. You can do this with post-its on the back or using a ballpoint pen lightly on the back of the photo. For digital photos rename the files for the page number they represent (page 1, page 2...) and save them to a cd. If you would like more than one photo on a page give the photo the same page number and a different letter (1a, 1b,...). If you are unable to rename your files you can print out a reference sheet for us to follow.

Mark the photo(s) / illustration(s) you would like for the cover with "C" as well as the number if is also to appear in the book. For a digital photo, just include "C" along with the letter you have assigned in the file name.

Don't forget to include an about the author photo and biography for the back cover and dust jacket flap!

Publish a Children's Book : Organizing your text

Whenever possible please type your text and save it to a disk. We have a large library of fonts so let us know on the order form the type of font you are looking for and we will do our best to find it or something similar. Let us know with the same number system you used for your photos / illustrations where your text belongs.

Putting it all together

Print out an order form from this site and send it in with the materials you have assembled. Your children's book will be in your hands in 2-3 weeks! All of your original material will be sent back with your book and we will keep your book on file for a year should you want to order additional copies.

Before you get your book

For all of our books you get to see a proof via e-mail (pdf) of what your book will look like before we print. That way you can make any changes you need to to get it just right!

For the computer savvy

If you are doing your own page layouts in a program like photoshop set your page size to 8.5 x 11 or 8 x 8 depending on the size of your book. You can do your design as a double page spread (17 x 11 or 16 x 8) but price wise your files will count as 2 photos/files.

Don't put any important information such as text or faces too close to the edge of your page or to the inside margin. We usually set up guides before we start a quarter inch from each of the edges of my page and a half of an inch from the inside edge (bind).

The color space we use is Adobe RGB (1998) and print in CMYK U.S. web coated SWOP.

Regardless of the application you are using you should be able to save your pages as jpegs (jpg.) If you are using photoshop and want to save your files as .psd files feel free but please flatten your layers!

If you insist on doing your cover design (which I completely understand), go ahead and make it as a normal double page spread (17 x 11 or 16 x 8 depending on the size of your book) or break it up into a front cover (normal page size) and a back cover (normal page size) and I will enlarge the file as needed. The text should be nowhere near any of the edges of your layout. Giving exact dimensions is not possible because they are dependant on the size of the spine. If you can stand relinquishing control, just save the files you wanted to use on the cover and let us do the assembly. You always get to see a proof so you are not really risking anything!

We are always available to answer your questions so contact us if you need help. We are always happy to hear from you.

Thank you for your interest in publishing a children's book and we look forward to receiving your order!

Download and Print a Children's Book Order Form

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