Self publish a children’s book, built around illustration

No. Royalties land directly in your KDP, IngramSpark, Apple Books, Kobo, or aggregator account, never in ours. You keep 100% of the rights to the manuscript, illustrations, cover, character likeness, audiobook, foreign, merchandise, screen, and animation. Everything we make transfers to you on final payment. There is no royalty share and no derivative claim, and every character travels with you if you write book two elsewhere.

No, we are a self-publishing service, so you are the publisher. Every retailer account is opened in your name, and you keep 100% of your rights and royalties. Traditional children’s book publishers work the other way: they buy the rights, pay an advance, choose the illustrator and pay you a royalty, and the largest ones read only manuscripts sent by an agent. See when traditional publishing is the better fit.If you want a traditional publisher instead, see our list of children’s book publishers accepting submissions.

A 32-page picture book costs $1,542 to $4,493 to self-publish with us, and publishing alone starts at $249 if your files are finished. With your own art, editing, cover, formatting and publishing come to $1,542. With 16 illustrations the total is $3,593, and a book written and illustrated for you is $4,947. For hardcover, bookstores and libraries, choose Global publishing ($999). The cost section above breaks it down by book type.

Printing a 32-page full-color paperback costs $3.60 to $4.20 a copy on Amazon (as of October 2026), taken from each sale, so nothing is paid upfront. At a $12.99 list price you keep about $3.59 to $4.19 a copy. To print your own copies for school visits, order them at print cost through your IngramSpark account. Board books need an offset print run, since KDP and IngramSpark do not print on board stock.

For picture books, early readers, and most chapter books, yes, because the category sells on the art as much as the words. Edit first and illustrate second, so no illustrator starts before the manuscript is final. Children’s book illustration starts at $99 for a single illustration, and the packages cost $2,595 for up to 16 illustrations or $3,495 for up to 24, with book formatting included free. Middle grade and young adult novels usually need only a cover illustration.

Every illustration is drawn by a human children’s book illustrator, matched to your manuscript by age category, style, and tone, with rounds of changes from sketch to final art, and a character bible (a guide to how each character looks) for series continuity. You keep full rights to the final art. If you want an explicit no-AI clause, it can be written into the agreement before you sign. Here’s what KDP, publishers and copyright allow for AI art. Here’s what KDP, publishers and copyright allow for AI art.

Fixed-layout ebook formatting locks every page the way the printed book shows it, so the illustration, the text placement, and the page composition stay together on every device. Reflowable formatting moves the words around depending on font size, screen orientation, and device, which destroys picture book spreads. A four-year-old swiping an iPad sees broken pages instead of the book the illustrator drew. Fixed layout is essential for picture books and most early readers. See our picture book formatting styles.

Yes, and each new book in a series can bring readers back to the earlier ones. Series planning covers character consistency, illustration style continuity, cover code that signals the series at a glance, metadata that ties the books together in search, and, with Global publishing, pre-orders for book two while book one is still selling. Scoping the series at the start costs less than retrofitting it after book one lists, because the character bible, cover code, and metadata are built once.

Yes. Through your own IngramSpark account you can order author copies at print cost, and IngramSpark lowers the print price on larger orders (as of October 2026). You then resell them at full retail margin at school visits, in classroom sets, as library donations, and in gift bundles. The IngramSpark account is set up during publishing, and bulk orders are billed by IngramSpark directly, not through us.

Uploading to KDP yourself gets a book onto Amazon. Our children’s book publishing services add what the category expects: illustration planned spread by spread, fixed-layout ebook formatting for picture books, premium color paper for print, age-category metadata written for how parents and educators search, and, with Global publishing, IngramSpark hardcover for library and gift channels. Launch planning is a separate service you can add.

It depends on the stages the book needs, and several run at the same time. Editing takes 7 to 15 business days, a full illustration package 3 to 4 weeks, picture book formatting 5 to 10 business days, and publishing setup 5 to 30 business days depending on the tier, plus your review time at each stage. Cover design runs alongside illustration. Chapter books and middle grade move faster because interior art is lighter.

Five things sit outside publishing packages. Audiobook production (voice talent, studio recording, post-production) is a separate service at $0.045 per word with an $899 minimum, and the Global publishing tier covers audiobook distribution setup, not the recording. Character merchandise, plush toys, and apparel are outside our scope. Animation rights deals, agent representation, and studio pitching are not handled here. School visit booking is author-led. Manuscript writing and illustration are separate services with their own rounds of changes.

Word count and target age decide it. Board books: 100 to 200 words, ages 0 to 3. Picture books: 400 to 800 words, ages 3 to 7, usually 32 pages. Early readers: 1,000 to 2,500 words, ages 5 to 8. Chapter books: 5,000 to 12,000 words, ages 7 to 10. Middle grade: 25,000 to 50,000 words, ages 8 to 12. Young adult: 50,000 to 90,000 words, ages 12 to 18. Our guide on how to write a children’s book shows how to plan each one.

Uploading is free on Amazon KDP and IngramSpark, Draft2Digital charges new accounts a one-time $20 fee, and printing comes out of each sale. What costs money is the art and the cover. If you draw your own pictures or already have an illustrator, you can publish for close to nothing. Our guide on how to publish a children’s book covers each free step, and publishing with us starts at $249.

Yes. Our Amazon tier is $249 for the Kindle ebook, and Online Stores, at $549, adds the Amazon paperback plus four more ebook stores. We upload your fixed-layout ebook and print-ready paperback file, choose your categories, and set the KDP reading age, all in your own account. Doing it yourself? Our guide on publishing a children’s book on Amazon walks through each step.

The upload is straightforward. The hard part is the order of work: edit before illustration so you never pay for the art twice, lock the age category before layout, and use a fixed-layout ebook so pages stay exactly as designed. Keeping characters the same on every page is why the character bible exists. Our step-by-step guide covers the rest.

No. Many authors self-publish children’s books for exactly that reason. Agents who represent picture books are selective, and finding an agent and then a publisher often takes a year or more. A traditional publisher pays for the art, but it also picks the illustrator, the cover, and the title. See the traditional publishing trade-off in full. Self publishing a children’s book means you keep the illustrator you chose and every royalty the book earns.