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In a children's book, the pictures do half the storytelling. Children decide whether they love a book long before they can read every word on the page, and parents decide whether to buy it in the few seconds they spend looking at the cover. Australian Books Publishing provides custom children's book illustration for Australian authors — character design, full-page artwork, cover art, and the layout that holds it all together.
Every illustration is drawn for your book alone. Nothing is pulled from a stock library, and nothing is reused for another author. You choose the art style first, approve the characters, then review the rough sketches before a single page is coloured — which is exactly when changes are quick and painless rather than expensive.
Consistency is where most self-illustrated books come undone. Your main character has to look like the same character on page 4 and page 28, in daylight and at bedtime, from the front and in profile. We build a character sheet first so that never becomes a problem halfway through the book.
Best of all, the artwork is yours. Full copyright in every illustration is transferred to you in writing, so you can use your characters for a sequel, a school visit, or merchandise without ever paying a licence fee.
You see sample styles first — watercolour, flat vector, cartoon, or a softer storybook look — then we design your characters and give you a character sheet showing each one from multiple angles and expressions.
schedule consultationYour text is mapped to pages so the story lands on the right beat at each turn. You then approve rough sketches for every spread before any final artwork begins.
schedule consultationFinished colour illustrations for every spread, plus front cover, back cover and spine artwork designed to work at thumbnail size online and on a crowded bookshop shelf.
schedule consultationText placed over the art without fighting it, with correct bleed, safe margins and spine width for your exact page count — so files pass the printer's checks and nothing disappears into the gutter.
schedule consultationOur portfolio
Our Approach
We read your manuscript, work out the age band it's written for, and map the text to pages. You pick the art direction from real samples, so the look is decided before anyone picks up a pencil.
Character designs and rough sketches come to you first. Change a hairstyle, a setting, or an entire page at the stage where it costs nothing but a conversation — not after thirty pages are finished.
Final art is delivered at print resolution with correct bleed and margins, laid out spread by spread, and supplied in the formats KDP, IngramSpark and fixed-layout eBooks actually require.
Our Working Style
You send the text. We map it to spreads, confirm the illustration count your story actually needs, and agree the art style and timeline.
Character sheets and rough sketches for every page come to you for approval, with revisions included until the characters look right.
Approved sketches are painted up in full colour, then text is placed spread by spread and the cover is built to your final page count.
You receive print-ready files, high-resolution source artwork, and written transfer of copyright in every illustration.
Why Work with Australian Books Publishing
Our illustrators work in children's publishing specifically, which means they think in spreads and page turns rather than single pictures. Characters stay recognisable from cover to final page, and every image is sized and prepared for the printer from the very beginning.
Your story leads the artwork, never the other way around. You approve the style, the characters and the sketches, and because everything is published in your name, you keep full ownership of both the words and the pictures.
Frequently asked questions
You do. The artwork is created for your book only, and full copyright is transferred to you in writing along with the high-resolution source files. You can reuse your characters for sequels, school visits or merchandise without paying us anything further.
A standard picture book runs 24 to 32 pages, which usually means 12 to 16 full spreads. Shorter stories for very young readers can work with fewer. We map your text to pages first and tell you the count your story actually needs, rather than selling you extra pages.
Yes. You'll see samples in several styles — watercolour, flat vector, cartoon, or a softer painterly storybook look — and choose the direction before any work starts. If none of them feel right, we'll keep exploring until one does.
Say so, and it gets redrawn. That is exactly why sketches come before colour. Revisions at the sketch stage are included, and telling us early costs nothing — which is far better than living with a page you're not happy with.
Illustration is the slowest part of a children's book. Most picture books take a few months from approved sketches to print-ready files, depending on page count and how quickly feedback comes back. You get a realistic schedule before you commit, not an optimistic one.
Testimonials
I'd been telling my granddaughter this story for years and never thought it could become a real book. The illustrator got her favourite character right on the second sketch, and every page after that looked like the same world. Holding the finished copy was something I won't forget.
What sold me was seeing the character sheet before anything was coloured. I asked for the fox to look friendlier, they redrew it, and every spread after that was consistent. No arguments, no extra invoices, and the artwork is mine to use again.
The part I was dreading was the print file. They handled the bleed, the spine and the page count, and it passed the printer's check first time. I didn't have to learn any of it myself, and none of the artwork ended up lost in the fold.
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