Child's Book Illustration

smurra3

Hello
My 4 year old made up a story and we are going to illustrate it with him and make it into a book.
It will only be 8 pages plus the covers and all pages and the covers will be fully illustrated.
I will have if finished and ready to print but I can't seem to find prices for printing illustrated books.
I want to print about 100 copies maybe 200.
Any help will be greatly appreciated.

5uspect

I'll move this to it's own shiny new thread.

BostonB

No idea either. Sounds a super idea though.

allaboutclicks

Hi Smurra3, you could try blurb.com - I'm not sure what the pricing is like for that many - but it's a way of self publishing and you can design the cover etc like you wanted. I used them once just to publish a once off book for a relation. I found their software easy to use and the quality of the drawings I sent in were fairly patchy and they turned out much better than I expected so I'd recommend them. For one book it could about 50e including postage - but I think it's much cheaper if you're printing in bulk. I think this is a fantastic idea for your son - so I hope you find a good solution.

Kenny Logins

Any (every?) local printer will do this for you. It's pretty basic stuff..

smurra3

Thanks for the replies.
Allabouclicks, Thanks for the link but I think they are far too expensive for what I am looking for, they do look good for other things tho.
Kenny, you're right about all printers doing this, but some of the ones I asked wanted stupid money.
At first i thought "Oh well, if thats the price then so be it." but then I got some prices off larger printing companies that specialise in books and was pleasantly surprised.
I'm waiting on a couple of other people to get back to me, but when i get a final price I will update the thread.

Thanks again.

Kenny Logins

It'll depend on the exact spec really. What size is the book(let)?

smurra3

A5
I can't believe I forgot to mention that:o

Kenny Logins

Can't see them being terribly expensive. Some printers may factor in artwork charges (what software are you using? Don't say MS Publisher.. ), lamination will add a few quid too..

smurra3

I'll be using Illustrator.
All the prices i got were based on the entire page being covered and no one ever inferred it could change due to the level of artwork. As it's not done yet i couldn't give them a sample but to date no one has asked.
One person did mention laminate and off the top of my head it was 65 euro per 100 books.
Books being as described earlier. Does this sound reasonable? And do you think it is necessary?

Kenny Logins

No, I just meant allowing for time spent to make your artwork print-ready, if necessary. The actual page content doesn't really matter - it's either black or colour.

€65 may be a minimum charge for a lamination setup and run, which is also common. Is lamination necessary? On kids' books, I'd say yeah, it is.

smurra3

Great, Thanks for the advice.
Laminated it is so.