Most picture books are 32 pages and square (210 × 210mm), in paperback or hardback. As a guide, 100 square paperbacks cost £338 and 100 square hardbacks £618, with UK delivery included.
All three bindings work, so your page count and how the book will be read decide the rest. Once the format is clear, our children’s book printing page has a quick quote form for picture books like these.
The sizes that work for children’s books
Square is the classic picture-book shape, but there’s no rule. Choose the size that suits your illustrations and your reader. We give sizes height first.
| Format | Size | Good for |
|---|---|---|
| Square | 210 × 210mm | Picture books. The most popular choice, and the most cost-effective square. |
| A4 portrait | 297 × 210mm | Activity and colouring books, with plenty of room to draw. |
| A5 portrait | 210 × 148mm | Early readers and chapter books. Compact and cost-effective. |
| Landscape | A5 landscape (148 × 210mm) up to A4 landscape (210 × 297mm) | Panoramic scenes. Flo The Fish is A5 landscape; Radio Jones is an A4 landscape hardback. |
| Large square | Up to 294 × 294mm | Big, immersive spreads. Rodney Matthews chose 240 × 240mm in hardback, for a 480mm-wide spread. |
| Small square | From 148 × 148mm | Little hands and series. The Little Bee books are 148 × 153mm, just off-square. |
| A6 | 148 × 105mm | Pocket-sized books, a neat impulse buy at fairs and gift shops. |
| Custom | Anything within these limits | Vlad and the Great Fire of London is 280 × 216mm; What Football Job Can You Do? is a pocket-sized 198 × 129mm. |
Page counts and binding: stapled, paperback or hardback
32 pages works in all three bindings. How you count those pages depends on the binding, so here’s the quick version.
The most affordable, and it opens completely flat, lovely for reading aloud and for pictures across a spread. Pages go up in fours, and it suits thinner books best.
A square spine for the bookshop shelf. A 32-page paperback is 28 inside pages plus a 4-page cover. A few millimetres disappear into the spine, so plan your spreads.
The classic gift edition, built to survive bedtime after bedtime. We count inside pages only, so a 32-page hardback has 32 inside pages, plus endpapers you can print.
There’s no right or wrong. A hardback can carry a higher cover price, and it costs more to print. Plenty of authors print a paperback run alongside a hardback edition, and every hardback quote we send also prices the same book in softback. Our binding guide compares all three.
Sorry, we don’t print board books. They’re still made almost exclusively in China. A hardback picture book is the sturdiest alternative we print.
Paper for picture books, activity and colouring books
- Silk is our safe all-rounder, with a soft sheen and true colour. 130gsm is our standard for inside pages.
- Gloss gives bright illustrations maximum punch.
- Uncoated is natural and matt, and takes crayons, felt tips and pencils beautifully, so it’s the one for activity and colouring books. It softens colour a little, where silk and gloss stay truest.
- 170gsm is our heaviest inside page. On a slim hardback picture book, it gives every page more body in small hands.
Paperback covers are 300gsm, and a hardback case is printed on 170gsm silk and wrapped round board. Either way we laminate the cover so the ink doesn’t crack at the fold. Matt is our go-to and gloss gives high shine. Soft-touch feels velvety but shows fingerprints, so for children’s books we’d stick to matt or gloss.
Mixing works well too. Pouch’s Magical Worry Cheeks (210 × 210mm) pairs a gloss-laminated cover with uncoated inside pages: bright on the shelf, tactile inside. Printing the inside pages in black ink only, as on a colouring book, also brings the price down.
Our free sample pack has every house paper and weight, printed so you can judge colour as well as feel. It’s free in the UK and usually goes out the same day.
Text size and layout tips
Children’s books use much bigger type than adult books: around 16–20pt, where 9 or 10pt is the minimum for body text. Clear, simple typefaces help early readers, and make life easier for parents reading aloud.
- Keep words in the safe zone. Text, faces and page numbers sit at least 5mm inside the trim.
- Run edge-to-edge art into the bleed. Any illustration that touches the edge needs 3mm of bleed.
- Keep text away from the spine. On a paperback, leave 6–8mm on the spine side of every page, and 10–12mm on the first and last inside pages, where the cover is glued on.
- Nudge spread images outwards. A few millimetres disappear into the spine on paperbacks and hardbacks, so move each half of a cross-spread image 2–3mm outwards, and never run small text across the fold. Stapled books open flat, so spreads work beautifully.
- Planning a series? Keep the size, fonts and layout the same on every title, so readers spot the set straight away.
The files we need
| Binding | What to send |
|---|---|
| Stapled | One PDF of single pages in reading order, cover first and back cover last |
| Perfect bound | Two PDFs: a cover spread (back, spine, front) and the inside pages as single pages |
| Hardback | A cover wrap, the inside pages as single pages, and two endpaper files if your endpapers are printed. We send you the exact cover size. |
Build every page at the finished size with 3mm bleed, images around 300dpi and fonts embedded. Illustrators often export double-page spreads: our free Spread Splitter turns them back into single pages in about a minute. The cover file guide and hardback set-up guide show exactly how to lay out a cover.
What a children’s book costs to print
Prices checked September 2026 · we confirm the exact price on your quote. UK delivery included. No VAT on books.
The price per copy falls as the run grows. 500 of the paperback cost £1,100 (£2.20 each), and 250 hardbacks £1,230. For 1–20 copies, the instant calculator prices your book as you click, and our guide to printing costs explains what moves the price.
Common children’s book mistakes
Fix: Keep text 6–8mm from the spine side, and never run small text across the fold of a spread.
Fix: Stapled books go up in fours, and a paperback needs at least 28 inside pages plus the cover. An extra illustration or a blank page usually rounds it up.
Fix: Aim for around 16–20pt for young readers. Print a page at home at 100% and read it at arm’s length.
Fix: Illustrations need around 300dpi at the size they print. A small web image stretched across a spread will look soft.
Watch, and hear from an author
Want more? Here are our design and styling tips, the full hour-long children’s book guide, and a colouring book walkthrough:
7:21Winning solutions for designing, styling and printing a children's book. Ex Why Zed.775 views · opens on YouTube- 1:14:19Action packed guide to children's book printing at Ex Why Zed4.2K views · opens on YouTube
- 2:00PRINTING A COLOURING BOOK from your illustrations for children to enjoy | Ex Why Zed638 views · opens on YouTube
I printed my self-published children's book, "Beannach and the Great Highland Bake", with Ex Why Zed. They nailed it. Handing artwork over to a printer feels like a gamble for an indie author, but the results are incredible. The colours are exactly right. You get rich, dark tones with zero muddiness or fading. Every tiny texture and character expression shows up perfectly, which makes all the difference in a children's book.
Quick questions
Can I get a sample copy before the full run?
Yes. Order a single test copy to check the paper, binding, page order and finish in your hands before committing to the full run. There’s no minimum order. It isn’t colour-matched to the final run.
Should I design in inches or millimetres?
Millimetres if you can. We work in millimetres and give sizes height first, so it’s easier to match your file to your quote.
Can I use AI to illustrate my book?
It can work for illustrated pages and simple layouts. Ask for the finished size plus 3mm bleed at 300dpi, and try the ready-made prompts on our Artwork Hub.
Can you design my book or supply an ISBN?
We don’t offer design or ISBNs. Nielsen are the UK ISBN agency, and you can add the barcode to your back cover yourself. We do check every file for free and tell you exactly what to change.
Story ready? Let’s price it.
Tell us the size, page count, binding and quantity, and we’ll come back the same working day. A real person checks every file for free before anything prints.
