“Hey there Frankie what’s your game? Frankfurter is a silly name.” The refrain returns on spread after spread, because this book began life as a song. David Markee wrote Hey There Frankie for his children and grandchildren, and Folly’s End Books has turned it into a small square hardback about a sausage dog with very little legs and a great deal of mischief.
Hannah Bodell-Lee’s watercolours do the rest. On the cover, Frankie sits inside a bright pink ring above a meadow and a slow green river, black and tan, collar glinting. Inside, each verse faces a loose painted vignette on white: Frankie leaping through long grass, Frankie measured up with a ruler line at “30cm tall” and “60cm nose to tail”, Frankie caught red pawed digging up Grandad’s lawn. Generous white space around each picture keeps the washes airy.
Finding the right square for a smaller sibling
This is the third title Jessica, CEO of Folly’s End Trust, has printed with us, after two earlier picture books starring Spikey and Nippy. Her request was clear: the same square shape, hard front cover, paper type and weight as the other two, only much smaller, “Probably around the size of a Mr Men book.”
We quoted a 140mm square case bound book with the familiar recipe: a printed 170gsm silk cover wrapped round greyboard and matt laminated, 170gsm uncoated endpapers and 170gsm silk inside, with cover and endpaper dimensions for the designer. Then came the useful wobble. Daniel, the trust’s designer, had built the pages at 148mm. Jessica found another book at a size she liked, stood it beside the other two, and asked for 150mm instead, and we sent the new measurements the same day, cover spread and all.
It is a decision worth copying. If your book belongs to a family of titles, judge the size beside its siblings on a real shelf, not on screen. A few millimetres can be the difference between a set and a stray. Our page on printing small square hardbacks with a board cover shows the options.
Two file fixes and a page to spare
Our preflight check caught two things before anything was booked in. The inside pages were set at 148mm square while the cover was set for 140mm, so the two files had to agree on one size. And the cover PDF arrived without its fonts embedded, which would have stopped it in our pre-press. Daniel resized everything to 150mm and outlined the cover type, and fresh files were with us the same afternoon.
One smaller detail shows the care in the build. The endpapers were left unprinted, and an extra blank page went in at the start, bringing the book up to the minimum of 28 inside pages. If your story runs a page or two short, a quiet opening page reads as a pause rather than a gap. For case bound covers, spines and endpapers, our hardback artwork checklist with cover measurements sets out every panel.
One copy first, then the full order
Jessica wanted to see Frankie in her hands before committing to a run. “I don’t trust myself to do a big order without checking it first,” she wrote, so we printed and bound a single copy and sent it to her. Once it was approved, the main order followed alongside fresh runs of Nippy and Spikey, and Frankie left our bindery in November with readers already waiting. “I’ve got some pre orders so keen to get them out”, Jessica told us.
For a first hardback, or a new size within a series, a single proof copy is money well spent. You check the colour, the feel of the board and the size against your shelf, then order with confidence. When your own idea is ready, price a small square hardback in seconds and start there.
PaperbacksA5, 44 pages, perfect bound£246for 100
