Some books exist because someone had something they could not say out loud. Small Poppy Syndrome is one of those. Amy Boyle wrote the poems, drew every illustration by hand, and brought the whole thing to us as an A5 paperback. We printed it perfect bound on uncoated stock throughout — a quiet, tactile format that suits poetry far better than anything glossy.
Amy is a poet from South-East London whose work sits in the space between dreams and nightmares — dissociation, survival, and the awkward, tender business of family and friendship. This collection is a deeply personal response to losing her best friend to suicide, and she says so plainly in her own introduction on page one. That honesty sets the tone for everything that follows, and it shaped how we thought about the print.
Each poem is paired with an original hand-drawn illustration: a lemon with a crumpled face, a goldfish nodding upside down in its bag, a tin man standing beside a blue poppy. Written word on one page, drawing on the other. It is a simple structure, and it makes for genuinely compelling double-page spreads. The audience is readers of contemporary confessional poetry, illustration fans, and the following Amy has built as @getfxckedcxntt. If you are planning something similar, our guide to self-publishing a poetry book is a good place to start.
Uncoated throughout was the decision that made this book. Amy originally specified a gloss cover and switched to a 300gsm uncoated board late in the process — the right call, and worth the last-minute change. The cover now has a dry, papery hand-feel that matches the drawings, while matt lamination on the outer face keeps the illustration safe from thumb marks and scuffing through a launch party, an art fair and a lot of handling.
Inside, we went to 120gsm uncoated rather than the lighter text stock most paperbacks use. There are two good reasons for that on an illustrated book. It stops the dense pencil and ink work showing through from the reverse of the sheet, and it gives each page some authority when the layout is mostly white space. At 62 pages that comes out at a 5mm spine — slim, but square and solid enough to carry a printed title. Everything is four colour CMYK, because the illustrations need it: those blue poppies, the yellow of the lemon, the warm orange of the fish.
The cover is the first thing that grabs you. Blue poppies drift across green grass, and the central bloom carries a small yellow face staring straight out at the reader. It is punchy and it fills the page edge to edge, which is exactly what a small format needs to hold its own on a table of books.
Then there is the restraint. Amy’s poems are short, so most spreads are more empty than full. Rather than padding the pages out, the layout lets that white space sit there and do its work — you read four lines, you stop, you turn. On uncoated stock, which absorbs a little ink and softens the type, that pacing feels calm rather than sparse.
The illustrations are the reason the paper choice matters so much. Fine ink linework, cross-hatched pencil shading and flat colour fills reproduce beautifully on an uncoated sheet, where the surface texture reads as part of the drawing. Print the same artwork on silk or gloss and it starts to look like a photograph of a drawing instead of the drawing itself. The book closes on a properly considered About the Author page, which is a detail plenty of first-time poets skip and shouldn’t.
Amy first came to us thinking A6. She sat with the quote, reflected, and asked for an A5 comparison instead — a good instinct, because A6 would have squeezed the illustrations into thumbnails. We sent the comparison the same day along with a free printed sample pack so she could feel the stocks before committing. That first pack vanished somewhere in the postal system. We sent a second and offered to hand-deliver one if that failed too, at which point it turned up wedged in her letterbox.
The artwork was built in Canva, because Amy’s MacBook could not run InDesign. She asked whether a Canva link would be acceptable and sent one over while the book was still half-finished, missing illustrations and mid-proofread. It was the first Canva link we had ever been sent. We opened it, had a look and told her what we could see: the cover was strong and filled the page, the inside pages had lovely illustrations and stacks of white space, and she needed 3mm of extra artwork on every edge for trimming. Early feedback like that is worth far more than a perfect file at the last minute.
We supplied a cover template with the 5mm spine and hairlines already in place, then reissued it as a PDF when InDesign proved impossible. Our preflight then caught a run of the usual suspects: the spine illustration had been built at 8.7mm against a 5mm spine, the ISBN and Amy’s name were sitting right on the trim line and needed 6mm of clearance, the file was in RGB and needed exporting as CMYK FOGRA39, the spine title was hard against the fold, and the inside pages came through without bleed. We flagged each one with a screenshot and a fix.
The deadline was real — a launch party, a release date, and a page count that had grown from 56 to 62 along the way. Amy asked whether we could make a single copy and send her a video of it before running the rest. That is not something we offer, so we said so, and put the alternative on the table instead: a flat sheet proof for £25, printed on the actual stock, in her hands within a couple of days. She decided the calendar was too tight for either and went with the digital proof. “I trust your opinion that they’ll look great anyway (you guys are the experts!)” Proof approved, printed, dispatched, delivered with days to spare.
A month later Amy was back. The launch had gone well, an art fair was coming up, and she needed a reprint. She had also credited us on her website and inside the book, which we did not expect and appreciated enormously. “So many people have commented on how beautiful and high-standard the printing is and I’ve recommended you a ton.”
This was a first book, designed in a tool nobody expected, on a tight schedule, by someone doing two jobs at once. What made it work was catching problems early and being straight about what we can and cannot do. We looked at unfinished artwork rather than waiting for a final PDF. We reissued templates in a format Amy could actually open. We preflighted every version free of charge and explained each fix in plain language rather than print jargon. And when she asked for something outside our production hub, we told her honestly and offered the nearest useful alternative.
If you are working through the same stage, our perfect binding set-up guide and this short explainer on setting 3mm bleed on artwork will save you a couple of rounds of amends.
1) Size up if the artwork earns it. A6 is charming and cheap, but illustrations need room. Moving to A5 cost very little here and changed how the drawings land on the page.
2) Uncoated is the natural home for hand-drawn work. Pencil, ink and coloured pencil sit into an uncoated sheet in a way they never quite do on a coated one.
3) Go heavier on the text stock than you think. 120gsm rather than 100gsm kills show-through on dense illustrations and makes a slim book feel considered.
4) The spine is where covers go wrong. Build it at the exact width we quote, centre the title, and leave yourself clearance on both sides. A point size down is cheaper than a reprint.
5) Export in CMYK, with bleed, every time. RGB files and missing bleed are the two things we flag most often. Both take minutes to fix at export and days to fix at proof stage.
6) Send us the messy version. Amy sent a half-finished Canva link and got useful feedback a fortnight before she needed it. Nobody here is judging a work in progress.
Planning your own collection? Have a look at our self published book printing service, or map out your format, page count and paper in a few minutes with the Printed Project Builder.
