Book Illustration Services for Picture Books, Cookbooks and More

Illustration style is the biggest decision in the whole project, so we settle it first. A picture book for four-year-olds might call for soft watercolor textures and round shapes. A middle-grade adventure often suits ink lines and flat color. A cookbook may need clean botanical studies, and a workbook may need simple diagrams a child can copy. We ask for books you admire, then prepare two or three small sample pieces in different directions. You choose one, and that choice sets the look for every page that follows.

Characters come next. For any book with recurring faces, we draw a character sheet before a single scene. It shows the same figure from the front, side and back, with a few expressions, a color palette, and size comparisons if there are several characters. This sheet is what keeps a fox the same fox on page three and page thirty. Fantasy authors get a similar treatment for creatures, costumes and symbols. If your book has a map, we agree its style, scale and place names early, since lettering is hard to change once the art is inked.

We are straightforward about fit. Some styles take far longer per page than others, and a very detailed painted look across forty pages is a different undertaking from a simple line style. If your budget or schedule points toward a lighter approach, we say so and show how it can still look polished. Choosing a style that the whole book can sustain matters more than choosing the most impressive sample. Readers notice when quality drops halfway through a book, and we plan the workload to prevent it.

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Print files need more than good drawing. Interior art is delivered at 300 dpi at final printed size, in CMYK for print and RGB for ebook, with bleed of typically 0.125 inch where the image runs to the page edge. Key details stay inside a safe margin so trimming never cuts a face or a word. Printers publish their own templates and limits, and these change over time. We check the current specifications of your chosen printer, including trim size and any color rules, at the start of the project.

You receive final files organized by page or spread, with clear names, in the formats your layout needs. Commonly that means layered working files, flattened PNG or TIFF images, and a high-resolution PDF. We can also supply a lower-resolution set for your website and social posts. If you want the art placed into your interior with the text, our book formatting service can handle it. For an ebook, we check how images behave on small screens, since a spread that works in print may need adjusting. Nothing is final until you have viewed it at real size.

Ownership is stated in writing before work starts. You, the author, receive the rights to use the illustrations in your book, in print, in ebook form and in promotion of that book. Wider uses are agreed separately and in writing, so nobody is surprised later. These include merchandise, toys, animation, reuse in other books and licensing to other publishers. If you want broader rights from the start, tell us and we will document them. A confidentiality agreement, an NDA, is available before we see your manuscript.

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