📚 Kidillus Help Center

Everything you need to
publish your story

Guides, pricing, tools and live support for every step of your children's book journey — from idea to Amazon KDP listing.

⌘K
1,000+ Books Published
7 Art Styles
< 2h Avg Response
32+ Countries Shipped
🧭
Start Here
🖥️
Dashboard
🎨
Illustration
💰
Pricing
📦
Orders
📐
Formatting
🖨️
Printing
🧰
Free Tools
🛠️
Fix a Problem
💬
Support

How Kidillus Works

Kidillus is one studio that takes a children's book from manuscript to a finished, print-ready title on Amazon KDP and IngramSpark. This page explains every service, every page on this website, and exactly what to click at each stage.

🧩 What Kidillus actually does

Most authors who self-publish a picture book end up hiring four or five separate people: an illustrator, a cover designer, a formatter, someone to fix the files KDP rejected, and a printer. Each one works in a different file format, none of them talk to each other, and the author becomes the project manager by accident.

Kidillus replaces that chain with a single studio and a single dashboard. Your illustrations, cover, interior layout, print files and physical copies all come from the same team, in matching specifications, with one conversation thread and one order history. Every service below can also be bought on its own — you are never required to take the whole bundle.

🎨

Illustration

Character design and interior artwork in seven styles, drawn by hand for your story alone.

📘

Cover Design

Front, spine and back cover built to your exact trim size and final page count.

📐

Formatting

Print-ready interior PDFs and fixed-layout eBooks that pass KDP review on the first upload.

🖨️

Bulk Printing

Physical copies printed and shipped worldwide, from 300 copies upward.

🚀

Publishing Support

Guided KDP and IngramSpark setup, metadata, categories and launch help.

🌐

Author Websites

A professional site for your books, your bio and your mailing list.

🚪 The five ways to start

There is no single correct entry point. Pick whichever matches how certain you already are.

1

You want to see your character first — Character Sketch

Describe your main character, pick a style, and our illustrators draw it. A $7 reservation fee holds the slot, and that $7 is credited straight back against your final order if you go ahead. It exists only to keep the queue filled with real authors. This is the most common starting point for first-time authors who want proof before committing.

2

You know what you need — Price Quote

Build your own quote in about thirty seconds. Choose a style, set your page count, tick the extras you need, and the price updates live. You can print or save the quote without creating an account. The same page also holds complete book packages, book series packages, formatting packages and the bulk printing calculator.

3

You want a fixed, all-in price — Complete Book Packages

A 12, 24 or 32-page book with illustrations, cover, formatting and full commercial rights bundled into one number. Nothing is added later. Available in every art style.

4

You are planning more than one book — Book Series Packages

Commit to three, five or eight books and the per-page rate drops by up to 18%. You set the pages per book and every price updates immediately. One character bible carries the same cast across the whole series.

5

You still have questions — Contact or a support ticket

Message the studio directly, or open a ticket from the Support tab in this help centre. Tickets are tied to your account, so the team can see your orders while answering.

🗺️ The journey, end to end

Whatever entry point you choose, the path after it is the same. Each stage below has its own section in this help centre.

1
Quote
2
Pay
3
Brief
4
Artwork
5
Delivery
6
Publish
  1. Quote. Pick a style and page count, or choose a package. See Pricing & Calculator.
  2. Pay. Secure PayPal checkout, card accepted. Your order appears in your dashboard immediately. See Payments & Wallet.
  3. Brief. You submit your manuscript, character notes and references through the requirements form. See Orders.
  4. Artwork. Character sheets, then sketches, then colour — you approve each stage before the next begins.
  5. Delivery. Final files land in your order page: 300 DPI artwork plus print-ready PDFs.
  6. Publish. Upload to KDP or IngramSpark, or have us walk you through it. See Publishing.
🎓 Never published before? Start with the free Complete Self-Publishing Guide and the Book Project Planner. Both are free, need no account, and will tell you what your book actually requires before you spend anything.

🏢 Who you are working with

Kidillus was founded in 2021 by children's book illustrator Aadil Khan. The studio team includes illustrators, colour artists and a book designer, and every illustration is reviewed before delivery. The studio is based in India and works with authors worldwide — mostly in the USA, UK, Canada and Australia. All communication is in English, through your dashboard.

Every illustration is drawn specifically for your story. No stock art, no reused characters, no templates. Full copyright and commercial rights transfer to you on final payment. Read more on the About page or in our Copyright Policy.

Not sure where to begin?

See your main character drawn before you commit to anything else.

🎨 Reserve a Character Sketch

Account, Sign-In & Security

How to create an account, sign in, recover access, change your details, and what your public author profile shows the world.

✍️ Creating an account

You do not need an account to browse the site, build a price quote, read the learn guides or use any of the free tools. You need one the moment you want to place an order, because every order, message and file is tied to your account.

There are two ways to register at the sign-in page:

  • Email and password. Standard registration. You choose a username, which becomes part of your public profile address.
  • Continue with Google. One click, no password to remember. Your Kidillus account is linked to that Google address.

An account is created automatically when you reserve a character sketch or pay for an order, using the email address you entered. If you later sign in with Google using the same address, both routes land on the same account.

🔑 If you cannot sign in

1

Forgotten password

Use Forgot password on the sign-in page. A reset link is emailed to you. The link expires, so request a fresh one rather than reusing an old email.

2

The reset email has not arrived

Check your spam or promotions folder first. Our mail is sent from a noreply@ address on the kidillus.com domain with SPF, DKIM and DMARC all passing, but filters still misfile new senders. Add the address to your contacts so future order notifications reach your inbox.

3

You signed up with Google and forgot

If a password reset says no account exists, try Continue with Google with the same address. Many authors register one way and try to sign in the other.

4

Still locked out

Email the studio from the address you believe is on the account. Because support tickets require a login, an email is the right route when you cannot get in at all.

⚙️ Settings — what you can change

Everything below lives in Dashboard → Settings.

🙍

Profile

Display name, job title, profile photo, custom status and bio — these appear on your public profile.

✉️

Email address

Changing your email sends a confirmation to the new address before it takes effect.

🔒

Password

Requires your current password. Changing it does not sign you out of other devices automatically.

🏷️

Username

Your public profile address. Changing it changes that URL, so any link you already shared will stop working.

📍

Address & country

Used for printing and shipping quotes. Keep this current if you plan to order physical copies.

💳

Finance

Wallet balance, lifetime spend and payout details if you earn referral commission.

⚠️ Before you change your username: your public profile lives at kidillus.com/your-username. If you have already put that link in a book, on social media or in an email signature, changing the username breaks it. Decide early and leave it alone afterwards.

🌍 Your public author profile

Every account has a public page at kidillus.com/your-username. It shows your display name, photo, bio and the work associated with your account. It is a legitimate author link you can share in a query letter, a press kit or a social profile — and it is indexed by search engines, so it can be found by readers.

If you would rather have a full website of your own, with your own domain, book pages and a mailing list, see Author Website Design.

🛡️ Privacy and your manuscript

Your manuscript, artwork and personal details stay inside our own platform. The site runs on software built in-house rather than on a plugin marketplace, so your files are not passed to third-party vendors. Full detail is in the Privacy Policy, and the cookie behaviour is described in the Cookie Policy.

💡 Use one email throughout. Your orders, wallet balance, referral earnings and support tickets are all keyed to one account. Paying for a second order with a different email creates a second account, and the two cannot see each other's history.

Your Author Dashboard

Every panel, every button, and what each number actually means. This is where your whole project lives once an order exists.

After signing in you land on your dashboard. It is a private workspace tied to your account — nobody else can see it. The left navigation holds eight areas, and each is explained below.

🏠

Dashboard

Your home screen — statistics, active orders, inbox preview and shortcuts.

📦

Orders

Every project you have placed, with status, files, delivery and reviews.

💬

Inbox

Direct chat with the studio, file sharing and custom offers.

💰

Earnings

Wallet balance, Kidillus Cash, transaction history and payout requests.

🎁

Refer & Earn

Your referral link, invited users and commission tier.

📚

Library

Digital items associated with your account.

🚀

Publish Book

Publishing workspace for your finished titles.

⚙️

Settings

Profile, email, password, username, address and finance details.

📊 The statistic cards

Across the top of the dashboard are your account metrics. They are live — they change the moment an order moves.

  • Active Orders. Projects that are not yet completed or cancelled. Treat this as your work-in-progress count.
  • Completed Orders. Projects delivered and closed. This number is what drives your cashback total.
  • Total Lifetime Spend. Everything you have paid across all orders. Click through to generate a finance report as a PDF — useful at tax time.
  • Kidillus Cash. Your wallet balance, usable against any future order at checkout.

🔄 The order tracker

Your most recent orders appear with a progress bar. Each stage lights up as the work advances, so you can see where a project actually is without asking.

✓
Pending
✓
Requirements
✦
In Progress
4
Delivery
5
Completed

Each stage is defined in full under Orders & Project Lifecycle.

📬 Inbox preview

The latest message from the studio is shown on the dashboard itself, so you can see whether anything needs your attention without opening the inbox. Click it to open the full conversation.

🧰 Free tools, built in

The dashboard links directly to the publishing tools, so you do not have to leave your workspace to use them:

  • EPUB Studio — convert a manuscript to eBook format
  • KDP Formatter — format your Amazon book description
  • Book Planner — organise chapters and estimate budget
  • Book Paginator — plan page layouts and spreads
  • Brief Generator — create an illustration brief
  • ISBN Barcode — generate a print-ready barcode
  • Cover Calculator — get exact KDP cover dimensions

All of them are also public at kidillus.com/tools — see Free Tools for what each one does.

🔔 Custom offer alerts

When the studio sends you a custom offer — a tailored price for work that does not fit a standard package — a notification appears at the top of your dashboard with the title and amount. You can Accept or Reject it without navigating anywhere. Accepting takes you to payment; rejecting closes the offer and leaves the conversation open.

⏰ Notifications

The bell icon carries everything the system needs to tell you: payment confirmations, requirement requests, delivered files, revision updates and review activity. Clicking a notification opens the exact order it refers to. Email notifications mirror the important ones, so you do not have to keep the dashboard open.

📱 It works on your phone. The dashboard is fully responsive. Authors routinely approve sketches and reply to the studio from a phone while away from their desk — the file viewer, chat and approval buttons all work on a small screen.

No orders yet?

Build a quote in about thirty seconds — no account needed to see the price.

⚡ Open the Price Quote

Inbox, Chat & File Sharing

How to talk to the studio, send and preview files, handle custom offers, and what response times to expect.

🗂️ How the inbox is laid out

The inbox has a conversation list on the left and the open conversation on the right. Messages are delivered in real time — you do not need to refresh. Every conversation is permanent and tied to your account, so a thread from six months ago is still there with all its files.

Chat is the right place for anything about the work itself: reference images, character notes, corrections to a sketch, questions about a page. Keeping it in chat rather than email means the whole history sits next to your order.

📎 Sending files

Attach files directly in the chat. Large uploads are sent in resumable chunks, so a dropped connection does not lose a big file — it continues from where it stopped when the connection returns.

  • Images (JPG, PNG, WebP) preview inline — click to open full size.
  • PDFs open in an embedded reader, page by page, without downloading.
  • Word documents (.doc, .docx) open in a built-in viewer that shows real pages with the original formatting, spacing and alignment. You can zoom, scroll, switch to a two-page spread, or download the original.
  • Everything else is available as a direct download.
💡 Send your manuscript as a document, not as screenshots. A .docx or PDF lets the studio read page breaks and text placement correctly. Screenshots of pages lose the structure and slow the brief down.

💸 Custom offers in chat

If your project does not fit a listed package — an unusual page count, a mixed set of styles, extra characters, a rush timeline — the studio sends a custom offer inside the conversation. It states the scope, the price and the delivery time. Accept it and you go straight to payment; an order is created automatically. Reject it and the conversation simply continues.

Custom offers are the correct route for anything bespoke. You never have to guess a price or pay for a package that does not match what you need.

🔔 Notifications and alerts

New messages raise a badge on the inbox icon and a bell notification. If you are away, an email alert follows so a reply does not sit unseen for days. Clicking any notification opens the exact conversation or order it refers to.

⌚ Response times

The studio is based in India and works Indian business hours, which overlap the UK morning and the US evening. In practice most messages are answered within a couple of hours during the working day. A message sent late at night in the Americas is typically answered by the next morning.

If something is genuinely urgent — a KDP deadline, a launch date — say so in the message. Urgent threads are prioritised, but only if we know they are urgent.

⚠️ Approvals move the project, messages do not. Saying "looks good" in chat is helpful, but the project only advances when you approve the stage on the order page. If work seems stalled, check whether an approval is waiting on you.

Illustration Styles & Process

Seven art styles, what each one suits, what you receive, and how a book goes from manuscript to finished spreads.

🖌️ The seven styles

Style is the single biggest decision you make, because it sets the price, the timeline and the age group your book speaks to. Every style has its own page with real published samples — follow the links and look at actual books before choosing.

2D Flat Colour

$20 / page

Clean shapes, bold flat colour, no complex shading. The most popular style for toddler and preschool books — young eyes focus on the character and the action. Best for ages 0–6: board books, alphabet books, phonics readers.

See samples →

Solid / Bold Cartoon

$25 / page

Thick confident outlines with fully saturated colour. The strongest style for Amazon thumbnails because it stays readable even at small sizes. Best for ages 4–10: adventure, superhero, sports and moral-lesson titles.

See samples →

Soft Pastel / Whimsical

$25 / page

Diffused edges and muted pastel palettes with no harsh outlines. Every scene feels like a memory. Best for ages 0–5: bedtime stories, lullabies, emotional literacy and family themes.

See samples →

3D Rendered

$30 / page

Depth, volume and film-style lighting — characters look like they walked out of an animated feature. Currently the strongest performing style on Amazon KDP. Best for ages 3–10: fantasy, magical adventure, series and standout covers.

See samples →

Watercolour

$30 / page

Hand-painted, traditional and timeless. The classic storybook look. Best for ages 2–8: fairy tales, nature stories, animal books and sentimental picture books.

See samples →

Realistic

$35 / page

The most detailed and most expensive style. Suited to older readers, non-fiction, historical subjects and books where accuracy matters more than stylisation.

See samples →

Coloring / Line Art

Quoted per project

Clean black-and-white line work designed to be coloured in. Used for colouring books and activity books, where page count is usually much higher than a picture book. Priced per project because the volumes differ so much.

See samples →

🎯 How to choose

If you are undecided, work through these in order:

  1. Start with the age group. Younger readers need simpler shapes and fewer details on the page. A busy realistic spread overwhelms a three-year-old.
  2. Then look at your competition. Search your book's category on Amazon and look at the top twenty covers. The style that dominates is the style that sells there.
  3. Then check the thumbnail. Most Amazon buyers decide from an image the size of a postage stamp. Bold, high-contrast styles survive that; delicate ones can disappear.
  4. Then check your budget. The gap between $20 and $35 a page is roughly $480 over a 32-page book. If budget is tight, a well-executed 2D flat book beats a half-finished realistic one.
🎨 Still unsure? Reserve a character sketch for $7, credited to your order. Seeing your own character in a style settles the question far faster than looking at other people's books.

📐 What's included with every illustration

  • Original artwork. Drawn for your story alone — no stock art, no reused characters, no templates.
  • Character design sheet. Your main characters designed from multiple angles with a range of expressions, before any page is drawn. This is what guarantees your protagonist looks like the same character on page 1 and page 32.
  • 300 DPI print-resolution files. Sized correctly for your trim size, with bleed where the layout needs it.
  • Full commercial licence. Copyright transfers to you on final payment — publish, sell, print merchandise, with no royalties owed to Kidillus.
  • Editable source files are included with complete book packages and series packages.

⚙️ The illustration process

1

Brief and manuscript

You submit your text, your character descriptions, the age group, and any reference images. The more specific you are about personality and setting, the fewer revisions you will need later. The free Illustrator Brief Generator produces a complete brief for you if you are not sure what to include.

2

Character design

Each main character is designed and sent to you for approval — multiple angles, expression range, relative sizes. Nothing else starts until you are happy. Changes here are fast and cheap; changes after thirty spreads are drawn are neither.

3

Sketches

Page layouts in pencil — composition, where the text will sit, what happens in each spread. You review and request changes before any colour is applied.

4

Colour and finishing

Approved sketches are coloured and finished. Colour roughs are shared so palette and mood can be adjusted before full production.

5

Delivery

Final files land in your order page at full print resolution, ready for formatting or direct upload.

There is a full written walkthrough with examples in the free guide The Children's Book Illustration Process.

⚠️ Approve each stage honestly. If a character's face is not quite right at the design stage, say so then. Approving to be polite and raising it after the book is coloured turns a five-minute fix into a redraw.

Book Cover Design

Why the cover is bought separately from the interior, what a full print cover actually contains, and how spine width is calculated.

Your cover does more selling than every interior page combined. On Amazon, a reader sees it at thumbnail size next to twenty competitors, and decides in under a second whether to click. A cover that works at full size but turns to mud at 160 pixels wide costs you sales you will never see.

Cover design is available on its own at kidillus.com/book-cover, and is bundled into every complete book package and series package.

📦 What a cover order includes

  • Front cover artwork — original illustration, not a crop of an interior page.
  • Title and author typography — chosen to stay legible at thumbnail size.
  • Spine — with the title and your name, at the exact width your page count and paper require.
  • Back cover — blurb layout, author photo and bio placement, and space reserved for the barcode.
  • A single print-ready PDF — one flat file with the correct bleed, exactly as KDP and IngramSpark expect.
📐 Spine width is not a design choice. It is arithmetic: page count × paper thickness. A 32-page book has a spine barely wide enough for text; a 200-page novel has room for a title. The cover cannot be finalised until your final page count is locked, which is why cover work usually follows interior formatting.

🔢 Getting the dimensions right

If you are preparing your own cover, or simply want to understand the numbers, use the free KDP Cover Size Guide. It explains trim size, bleed, safe margins and how the full wraparound canvas is built. The ISBN Barcode Generator produces a print-ready 300 DPI barcode for the back cover.

For hardcover editions through IngramSpark, the cover also needs a wrap allowance for the board — see IngramSpark Hardcover Formatting.

🎯 Covers that perform

  1. One clear focal point. Usually your main character, usually looking at the reader.
  2. Title readable at thumbnail. Shrink your cover to 160 pixels wide and look at it. If you cannot read the title, nor can a browsing parent.
  3. Contrast against white. Amazon's background is white. A pale cover disappears into the page.
  4. Category conventions. Bedtime books look calm; adventure books look energetic. Fighting the convention rarely pays.

Need a cover only?

Cover design can be ordered on its own, without interior illustration.

📘 See Cover Design

KDP & IngramSpark Formatting

Turning finished artwork and text into files that pass review on the first upload — trim sizes, bleed, fonts, and the four formatting specialisms.

Formatting is the step most first-time authors underestimate. Beautiful illustrations in the wrong colour profile, at the wrong trim, with fonts that are not embedded, will be rejected by Amazon KDP — often several times, with error messages that do not say what is actually wrong.

Formatting is available on its own at kidillus.com/formatting and is included in complete book packages and series packages.

📦 What you receive

  • Print-ready interior PDF at 300 DPI, correct colour profile, with bleed where your layout requires it.
  • Correct trim size and margins for the platform you are publishing on.
  • Embedded fonts, so text renders identically on the printer's machine as on yours.
  • Correct page order and pagination, including the front matter and any blank pages the binding requires.
  • Fixed-layout ePub where that package includes it, for illustrated books on Kindle.

🧩 The four formatting specialisms

🖼️

Children's book KDP

Full-bleed picture book interiors where artwork runs to the page edge.

✏️

Colouring books

Single-sided pages, generous margins and bleed-through prevention.

📱

Fixed-layout ePub

Illustrated eBooks that keep their layout on Kindle instead of reflowing.

📕

IngramSpark hardcover

Casebound specifications, board wrap and the wider spine allowance.

📏 Supported trim sizes

All standard KDP and IngramSpark sizes are supported. The most common for children's books are:

Trim sizeTypical useOrientation
8.5 × 8.5 inPicture booksSquare
8 × 10 inPicture books, activity booksPortrait
8.5 × 11 inColouring and workbookPortrait
11 × 8.5 inLandscape picture booksLandscape
6 × 9 inChapter books, novelsPortrait
5 × 8 inEarly readers, pocket editionsPortrait

The full technical explanation of trim, bleed and margin is in the free guide Trim Sizes, Bleed & Margins.

🔤 Fonts

  • Licensing matters. A font you downloaded free for personal use may not be legal in a book you sell. We use fonts cleared for commercial print.
  • Always embedded. If fonts are not embedded in the PDF, the printer substitutes something else and your layout shifts.
  • Readable for the age group. Early readers need larger type, generous line spacing and simple letterforms — a decorative face that looks charming to an adult can be unreadable to a five-year-old.

🧪 Check your own file first

If you already have a file and want to know whether it will pass, run it through the free KDP Formatting Checker & EPUB Generator. It will tell you why KDP rejected a file, and can convert a Word document into a compliant reflowable EPUB or a fixed-layout picture book PDF.

⚠️ Lock your text before formatting begins. Formatting lays out a specific manuscript. Editing the text afterwards — even a single added sentence — can push content onto a new page, change the total page count, and therefore change the spine width on a cover that is already finished.

Bulk Book Printing

Physical copies printed and shipped worldwide — when bulk printing beats print-on-demand, and how to get a quote.

Amazon's print-on-demand prints one copy when a reader buys one. That is perfect for an untested title and terrible for school visits, launch events, bookshop stock or anything you want to sell yourself, because the per-copy cost never falls.

Bulk printing works the other way: a setup cost spread over the run, then a low per-copy price. The more copies, the cheaper each one. Get a live quote in the Bulk Printing tab of the Price Quote page, or read the overview at kidillus.com/book-print.

🧾 What the calculator asks for

  1. Quantity. Default 500. Hardcover has a minimum order of 300 copies.
  2. Page count. Your final interior page count, including any blanks.
  3. Trim size. 8.5 × 8.5, 5 × 8, 6 × 9, 8 × 10, 8.5 × 11 or 11 × 8.5 inches.
  4. Colour. Full colour (CMYK) or black and white. Full colour is substantially more expensive per page, which is why colouring books are usually printed in black and white.
  5. Binding. Hardcover (casebound) or saddle stitch.
  6. Delivery region. United States, United Kingdom, Canada, Australia or Europe.

📦 Binding, and which to choose

📕

Hardcover (casebound)

A rigid board cover. The format libraries, schools and gift buyers expect from a picture book. Minimum 300 copies. Highest perceived value, highest unit cost.

📄

Saddle stitch

Folded and stapled through the spine. Light, cheap and ideal for thin books, activity books and giveaways. Not suitable for high page counts, and has no printable spine.

🚚 Shipping and delivery

Printed books are shipped internationally with tracking. Delivery time depends on the destination region and the size of the run — a short run to the United States arrives considerably faster than a large run to Australia. The quote shows the estimate for your chosen region. Full terms are in the Delivery Policy.

⚠️ Customs and import duty are the buyer's responsibility. Books crossing a border may attract local duty or tax that is not part of the printing quote. Check your own country's threshold before committing to a large run.

🤔 Bulk print or print-on-demand?

  • Choose print-on-demand if you are testing a first title, have no events booked, and want zero inventory risk. Your book goes live on Amazon and prints as it sells.
  • Choose bulk printing if you have school visits, markets, a launch event, local bookshops, or you are selling directly and want a real margin per copy.
  • Many authors do both — print-on-demand for Amazon, a bulk run for everything they sell in person.

There is a longer written comparison in the book printing guide and in KDP vs IngramSpark.

💡 Do not print before you have a proof. Order or approve a single proof copy and read it on paper. Colour shifts, trim drift and typos that are invisible on a screen become obvious in print — and finding one after 500 copies have been made is an expensive way to learn.

Publishing Services & Author Websites

Getting the finished book onto Amazon KDP and IngramSpark, and building a home for it that you actually own.

📚 Publishing services

Having print-ready files is not the same as having a published book. Publishing Services covers the gap: account setup, metadata, categories, keywords, pricing and the upload itself.

Kidillus guides you through the KDP process and delivers ready-to-upload files with a checklist specific to your book. We do not ask for your Amazon account password — your publishing account stays yours, your royalties come to you directly, and nobody else holds the keys to your title.

⚠️ Be careful with "publishers" who want control. If a company asks to own your ISBN, publish under their imprint, or hold your KDP login, you are not self-publishing any more. Your rights stay yours at Kidillus — see the Copyright Policy.

🌐 Amazon KDP, step by step

1

Create your KDP account

Free, in your own name, with your own tax and bank details. Royalties are paid to you.

2

Title and metadata

Title, subtitle, description, categories and keywords determine whether anyone ever finds your book. This matters more than most authors expect — work through the Title & Metadata Guide and use the KDP HTML Formatter to give your description proper formatting instead of a wall of plain text.

3

ISBN

KDP gives you a free ISBN tied to Amazon distribution. If you want wider distribution — bookshops, libraries, IngramSpark — buy your own ISBN so the book is registered to you as publisher. Generate the barcode free with the ISBN Barcode Generator.

4

Upload interior and cover

Two separate files. Use the KDP previewer and check every single spread, not just the first few.

5

Price, proof, publish

Set your price, order a proof, read it on paper, then publish. Review usually takes up to 72 hours.

The complete walkthrough with screenshots is in How to Publish on Amazon KDP, and the wider picture is in the Complete Self-Publishing Guide.

📣 After you publish

A published book with no reviews and no audience sells almost nothing. The free guide How to Launch Your Book & Get Your First 10 Reviews covers the launch window, honest review routes, and what actually moves a children's title in its first month.

If you want the book available as an eBook or audiobook as well, start with eBook & Audiobook Publishing for Children's Books — illustrated books need fixed-layout ePub, not the standard reflowable format.

🌍 Author website design

An Amazon listing is rented space. An author website is yours: your books, your bio, your school-visit information, your mailing list, and a link you can put on the back of every book you print.

It matters more than it sounds. Publishers, event organisers, librarians and journalists look for an author website before they take an enquiry seriously, and a mailing list is the only audience channel no platform can take away from you. Every Kidillus account already gets a basic public profile at kidillus.com/your-username — the website service is for authors who want a full site on their own domain.

Ready to publish?

See what full publishing support covers, from files to live listing.

🚀 Publishing Services

Pricing, Calculator & Packages

Every way to buy, what each one costs, and how to work out the price of your own book before you talk to anyone.

All pricing lives on one page: kidillus.com/price-quote. It has five tabs, and each is a different way of buying the same studio's work. Nothing is hidden behind an enquiry form, and no price on this site is negotiable downward by asking — the numbers you see are the numbers everyone pays.

🧮 1. Illustration Quote — pay per page

The à-la-carte option. Pick a style, set how many illustrations you need, tick any extras, and the total updates live. You can print or save the quote without creating an account.

Illustration stylePer pageBest for
🎨 2D Flat Colour$20 / pageAges 0–6 · board & ABC books
⚡ Solid / Bold Cartoon$25 / pageAges 4–10 · adventure, action
🌸 Soft Pastel / Whimsical$25 / pageAges 0–5 · bedtime, feelings
✨ 3D Rendered$30 / pageAges 3–10 · fantasy, series
💧 Watercolour$30 / pageAges 2–8 · fairy tales, nature
🔬 Realistic$35 / pageOlder readers · non-fiction
✏️ Colouring / Line ArtQuoted per projectActivity & colouring books

➕ Add-ons

Any of these can be added to a per-page quote. They are flat fees for the whole book, not per page. Complete book packages and series packages already include the cover, formatting and interior layout.

Add-onPriceWhat it covers
📘 Book Cover Design+$30Front, spine and back, print-ready
📐 Formatting+$30Print-ready KDP interior PDF
✍️ Professional Editing+$30Manuscript edit before layout
📱 eBook Conversion+$20Fixed-layout ePub for Kindle
🎨 Interior Layout Design+$50Full inside design and typesetting

⏱️ Typical delivery

Delivery times from the complete book packages. The clock starts when your requirements are submitted, not when you pay, and it pauses while a stage waits for your approval.

Style12 pages24 pages
2D Flat Colour10 days20 days · 32pg: 25 days
Soft Pastel12 days22 days · 32pg: 28 days
3D Rendered15 days25 days · 32pg: 30 days
Watercolour15 days25 days · 32pg: 30 days

Solid / Bold Cartoon, Realistic and Colouring books are quoted individually — ask in chat or build a quote and the delivery estimate appears on the card.

Optional extras that can be added to any quote: book cover design, KDP formatting, professional editing, eBook conversion and interior layout design.

Worked example. A 32-page picture book in 2D flat colour is 32 × $20 = $640 for the illustrations. Add a cover and formatting and you are at roughly $700. The same book in watercolour is 32 × $30 = $960 before extras. That difference — about $320 — is the real cost of a style decision, which is why it is worth making deliberately.

📦 2. Complete Book Packages — one fixed price

Illustration, cover, formatting and full commercial rights bundled into a single number, with nothing added later. Available at 12, 24 and 32 pages in every art style, with unlimited revisions included.

A package is cheaper than buying the same components separately, and removes the risk of discovering a missing piece halfway through. If you know you want a finished book rather than a set of images, start here.

📚 3. Book Series Packages — the volume discount

If you are planning a series rather than a single title, this is the cheapest route per page. Choose three, five or eight books; set how many pages each book has; and every price on screen updates immediately.

Series sizeDiscountAgainst
3 booksabout 8% offBuying three single books
5 booksabout 12% offBuying five single books
8 booksabout 18% offBuying eight single books

Every series includes a character bible — the same cast, consistently drawn, across every book. That consistency is the thing readers notice in a series and the thing that is hardest to get from separate freelance orders.

Page counts from 8 to 60 per book are supported, in steps of four. Very large series — high page counts across eight books — are quoted by hand rather than paid instantly, because a project of that size is booked with a deposit and a milestone schedule rather than a single payment.

📐 4. Formatting Packages

Formatting bought on its own, priced by book type and page count. Four families are available: picture books, activity and colouring books, novels and chapter books, and textbooks. Each has three tiers by page count, and the larger tiers add fixed-layout ePub or IngramSpark files.

🖨️ 5. Bulk Printing

A live printing calculator — quantity, page count, trim, colour, binding and delivery region. See Bulk Book Printing for what each option means.

💡 How to budget your book

1

Count your illustrations, not your pages

A "32-page" picture book does not need 32 separate illustrations — some spreads run across two pages. Plan your spreads first with the free Picture Book Paginator and you may find you need fewer images than you assumed.

2

Add the non-illustration costs

Cover, formatting, ISBN if you want your own, proof copies, and any editing. The Book Project Planner totals these for you and produces a milestone timeline.

3

Compare against a package

Once you have a total, check it against the complete book package for the same page count. Packages usually win.

💱 Prices display in your currency. All work is priced and charged in US dollars. The site converts the display for convenience, but the amount your bank is charged is the dollar figure, so your final total can move slightly with the exchange rate.

If you want the wider market context — what illustration costs elsewhere and why quotes vary so much — read the free guide How Much Does Children's Book Illustration Cost?

Price your book now

No account needed. Print or save your quote when you are done.

⚡ Open the Price Quote

Ordering & the Project Lifecycle

Exactly how to place an order, what every status means, how revisions work, and what happens at delivery.

🛒 How to place an order

1

Build or accept a price

Either configure it yourself on the Price Quote page, or accept a custom offer the studio sends you in chat. Both end in the same place.

2

Sign in

You can build a quote without an account, but payment needs one so the order has somewhere to live. If you do not have one, it is created during checkout.

3

Pay

Secure PayPal checkout — a PayPal balance or a debit or credit card both work. If you have Kidillus Cash, tick the box to apply it and the amount charged drops accordingly.

4

Submit your requirements

Your order appears in your dashboard immediately with a requirements form. This is where your manuscript, character notes, references and any special instructions go. Work does not start until this is submitted, so do it the same day if you are in a hurry.

5

Approve each stage

Character design, then sketches, then colour. Each one waits for you.

📋 What each status means

StatusWhat it meansWho is it waiting on
PendingOrder created, payment registeringSystem
RequirementsPaid — waiting for your brief and manuscriptYou
In ProgressThe studio is working on your bookStudio
DeliveryFiles delivered for your reviewYou
RevisionYou asked for changes; they are being madeStudio
CompletedYou accepted the delivery; order closedNobody
CancelledOrder stopped before completionNobody
⚠️ "Requirements" means the project is waiting on you. This is the single most common reason an order appears to stall. If your status has said Requirements for a week, your brief has not been submitted — open the order and complete the form.

🔁 Revisions

Complete book packages and series packages include unlimited revisions. That is not a licence to redesign the book after it is finished, and it is not meant to be — it means you are never charged for getting a stage right before moving on.

The process is deliberately stage-gated:

  • At character design — change faces, proportions, clothing, colour, personality. Cheap and fast.
  • At sketch stage — change composition, what happens on a page, where text sits. Still inexpensive.
  • At colour stage — adjust palette, lighting, mood.
  • After final delivery — corrections are made, but a change that invalidates an earlier approved stage (redesigning a character after thirty spreads are coloured) is new work, and is quoted as such.

This is why approving honestly at each stage matters so much. The structure protects your budget; skipping through it defeats the point.

📁 What you receive at delivery

  • High-resolution artwork at 300 DPI, correctly sized for your trim.
  • Print-ready PDFs where formatting is part of your order.
  • Fixed-layout ePub where your package includes it.
  • Editable source files with complete book and series packages.
  • Full commercial rights, transferred on final payment.

Files are attached to the order in your dashboard. Download them to your own computer and keep a backup — do not treat the dashboard as your only copy of your book.

❌ Cancellation and refunds

Creative work is not returnable in the way a physical product is, so refunds are calculated by how much work has been done. An order cancelled before work begins is in a very different position from one cancelled after twenty finished spreads. The full terms, including how milestone-based refunds are calculated, are in the Refund & Cancellation Policy.

If something has gone wrong, raise it in chat or open a support ticket before cancelling. Most problems are a misread brief and are fixed in a revision round.

⭐ Reviewing your order

When an order completes you can leave a review with a star rating, written feedback and images of the finished book. Reviews appear on the public reviews page. Completing an order also credits 3% cashback as Kidillus Cash to your wallet, usable against any future order.

🔎 Finding an old order

Every order you have ever placed is in Dashboard → Orders, including cancelled ones, with its full file history and conversation. Nothing is deleted when an order closes.

Payments, Wallet & Referrals

How you pay, how Kidillus Cash works, what cashback you earn, and how the referral programme pays commission.

💳 How you pay

All checkouts run through PayPal. You will see two buttons:

  • Pay with PayPal — uses your PayPal balance or linked account.
  • Debit or Credit Card — pays by card through PayPal's secure checkout. No PayPal account is required for this route, which is the one most authors use.

Kidillus never sees or stores your card number. The transaction happens entirely inside PayPal's checkout, and all of it is encrypted.

💡 There are no hidden fees. The quoted price is what you pay. No platform commission, no subscription, no royalty on your book sales, and no charge for the revision rounds included in your package.

👛 Kidillus Cash — your wallet

Kidillus Cash is store credit held against your account. It appears on your dashboard and in Earnings, and it can be applied to any order at checkout — tick Use Kidillus Cash on the package card and the amount charged to your card drops by your balance.

Credit reaches your wallet three ways:

🎁

Cashback

3% of the order value is credited when an order completes.

🤝

Referral commission

Commission from people you invite lands in your wallet automatically.

⚖️

Adjustments

Any credit the studio issues as part of resolving an order.

Your full transaction history is in Dashboard → Earnings, and lifetime spend can be exported as a PDF finance report — useful for tax records.

🤝 Refer & Earn

Every account has a referral link in Dashboard → Refer & Earn. Share it, and when someone registers through it and places an order, you earn commission in Kidillus Cash. Your rate depends on how many people you have invited:

TierInvitesCommission
⭐ Starter0–95% on the first 5 orders of each invitee
🚀 Pro10–497% commission
👑 Partner50+10% commission

There is no cap on how many people you can invite. To keep it fair, commission is capped at $50 per order and is paid on orders placed within one year of the person joining.

This works best if you already write or speak about self-publishing. A referral link in a blog post about illustrating a children's book can generate commission for years. There is also a dedicated affiliate page for partners who want to promote at scale.

💸 Withdrawing earnings

Referral commission can be spent as Kidillus Cash on your own orders, or requested as a payout from Dashboard → Earnings. Payout terms, thresholds and processing times are set out in the Payout Policy.

🧾 Invoices and receipts

PayPal emails a receipt for every transaction immediately. Inside Kidillus, each order carries its own record, and the finance report on your dashboard produces a dated PDF covering any range you choose.

↩️ Refunds

Refunds for creative work are calculated against the work already completed — see the Refund & Cancellation Policy for how milestones are applied. Refunds are returned by the original payment method; wallet credit used on an order is returned to the wallet.

⚠️ Do not open a PayPal dispute as a first step. A dispute freezes the order and stops the studio from working on it or refunding you directly, which makes everything slower for you. Message the studio or open a support ticket first — almost every payment problem is resolved within a day.

Free Publishing Tools

Six working tools, free, no account required. What each one does and when to reach for it.

These are not lead magnets with a form in front of them. They are the tools the studio uses, opened to the public at kidillus.com/tools. Use them whether or not you ever order anything.

✅

EPUB & Fixed-Layout Generator

Find out why KDP rejected your file, and convert a Word document into a compliant reflowable EPUB or a fixed-layout picture book PDF. The one to use when an upload keeps failing.

📝

Illustrator Brief Generator

Builds a complete, professional design brief to send to any illustrator. Use it before you order — a sharp brief is the cheapest way to avoid revision rounds.

🔤

Amazon KDP HTML Formatter

Turns plain text into bold, structured HTML for your Amazon book description. A formatted description converts noticeably better than an unbroken paragraph.

📖

Picture Book Visual Paginator

Plan a 32-page picture book with drag-and-drop spreads. Map story pacing and illustration notes before briefing anyone — and often discover you need fewer illustrations than you thought.

🔢

ISBN Barcode Generator

Industry-standard ISBN-13 barcodes for your back cover, print-ready at 300 DPI and downloadable instantly.

📅

Book Project Planner

Estimate total publishing cost and generate a milestone timeline, so your book launches on schedule and within budget. The right first stop if you are still deciding whether to go ahead.

There is also the KDP Cover Size Guide, which calculates exact cover dimensions including spine width for your page count and trim size.

🗺️ Which tool, when

Where you areUse thisWhy
Deciding whether to publishBook Project PlannerReal budget and timeline
Manuscript writtenPicture Book PaginatorPlan spreads, cut image count
About to hireIllustrator Brief GeneratorFewer revisions later
Artwork finishedCover Size GuideExact spine and bleed
KDP rejected your fileFormatting CheckerTells you what is wrong
Setting up the listingKDP HTML FormatterA description that converts
Printing your coverISBN Barcode GeneratorPrint-ready barcode

All seven, free, right now

No sign-up, no email wall, no trial limit.

🧰 Open the Tools

Learning Hub, Portfolio & Blog

Eleven free long-form guides covering the whole self-publishing path, plus where to see real work and real reviews.

📚 The guides

These are complete written guides at kidillus.com/learn, free and with no sign-up. Read in roughly this order if you are starting from nothing.

1

How to Write a Children's Book

Structure, word count by age group, pacing across spreads, and the mistakes that make a manuscript unpublishable before anyone illustrates it.

2

How to Self-Publish a Book — The Complete Guide

The whole path end to end. The single best overview if you only read one.

3

How Much Does Children's Book Illustration Cost?

Real market rates, why quotes vary so wildly, and how to tell a fair price from a bad one.

4

How to Hire the Right Illustrator

What to ask for, what to check, and the warning signs that a project will go wrong.

5

The Illustration Process: Sketch to Print-Ready

What actually happens between a manuscript and finished files, stage by stage.

6

Trim Sizes, Bleed & Margins

The technical guide. Read this before you commission artwork at the wrong dimensions.

7

Amazon KDP vs IngramSpark

Which platform suits children's books, and why many authors use both.

8

How to Publish on Amazon KDP

Step by step, from account creation to live listing.

9

Book Title & Metadata Guide

Titles, subtitles, categories and keywords — how readers find your book at all.

10

eBook & Audiobook Publishing

Why illustrated books need fixed-layout ePub, and whether an audiobook is worth it.

11

Launching Your Book & Getting Your First 10 Reviews

The launch window, honest review routes, and what actually moves a children's title.

🖼️ Portfolio, blog and reviews

🎨

Portfolio

Real published projects as case studies — the brief, the style, the finished book.

✍️

Blog

Shorter articles on illustration, publishing and the children's book market.

⭐

Reviews

Ratings and written feedback from authors who completed orders here.

🏢

About Kidillus

The founder, the studio team, the process and the technology behind the platform.

Every Page on This Website

A complete directory of kidillus.com — every service page, style page, guide, tool, policy and dashboard area, with one line on what each is for.

💼 Services & pricing

PageWhat it is forAccount needed
Price QuoteCalculator, packages, series, formatting, printingNo
Character SketchSee your character drawn — $7, credited to your orderNo
IllustrationAll seven art styles in one placeNo
Book CoverCover design on its ownNo
FormattingKDP and IngramSpark interior filesNo
Book PrintBulk printing and worldwide shippingNo
Publishing ServicesFull publishing supportNo
Author Website DesignA website for you and your booksNo

🎨 Illustration style pages

📐 Formatting specialisms

🧰 Free tools

📖 Learn & read

🔐 Your account area

  • Dashboard — statistics, active orders, inbox preview, tool shortcuts
  • Orders — every project, its status, files and reviews
  • Inbox — chat with the studio, file sharing, custom offers
  • Earnings — wallet, Kidillus Cash, transactions, payouts
  • Refer & Earn — referral link, invitees, commission tier
  • Library — digital items on your account
  • Publish Book — publishing workspace
  • Settings — profile, email, password, username, address, finance
  • Your public profile — kidillus.com/your-username

📜 Company & policy

Troubleshooting

The problems authors actually hit, and what to do about each one.

🔐 Account and sign-in

  • Reset email never arrived. Check spam and promotions. If there is still nothing, you may have registered with Google — try Continue with Google on the same address.
  • "No account found" but you are sure you ordered. You probably paid with a different email address. Each address is a separate account.
  • Signed in but the dashboard looks empty. Orders attach to the account that paid. If you checked out as a guest with another address, the order is on that account.

💳 Payment

  • Card declined. International transactions are often blocked by default. Call your bank, or use the PayPal balance route instead.
  • Paid but no order appeared. Wait a minute and refresh — confirmation occasionally lags. If it is still missing, send the PayPal transaction ID in a support ticket and it will be matched manually. Do not pay twice.
  • Charged a different amount than displayed. Prices are charged in US dollars; your bank converted at its own rate and may have added a foreign transaction fee.

📤 Uploads and files

  • A large upload failed partway. Uploads resume rather than restart — try again on the same file and it will continue. A stable connection helps; mobile data mid-journey does not.
  • A Word document will not preview. Older .doc files sometimes render imperfectly. Save as .docx or export to PDF and re-send.
  • You cannot find delivered files. They are attached to the order in Dashboard → Orders, not in chat. Open the order itself.

🎨 The project itself

  • Nothing seems to be happening. Check the status. Requirements means it is waiting on your brief. Delivery means it is waiting on your review.
  • The character does not match what you imagined. Say so at the character design stage, with references. This is exactly what that stage exists for, and changes there are quick.
  • You need to change the page count mid-project. Message the studio. It changes the price and the spine width, so it needs a custom offer rather than a quiet adjustment.

📕 KDP rejections

  • "Content outside the printable area." Your margins or bleed are wrong for the trim size. Run the file through the Formatting Checker.
  • "Fonts are not embedded." Re-export the PDF with font embedding enabled.
  • "Cover dimensions do not match." Spine width depends on final page count. If the page count changed after the cover was built, the cover must be rebuilt — see the Cover Size Guide.
  • Images look blurry in the previewer. Artwork is below 300 DPI at print size. Upscaling a small image does not fix this; it needs the full-resolution original.

🖥️ The website itself

  • A page looks broken or out of date. Hard refresh — Ctrl+F5 on Windows, Cmd+Shift+R on Mac. The site is behind a cache and your browser may be holding an old copy.
  • Notifications are not arriving by email. Check spam, then add our address to your contacts.
  • Something is genuinely broken. Open a support ticket and say what you clicked, what you expected and what happened. A screenshot helps more than a description.

Not covered here?

Open a ticket and the studio will answer with your order history in front of them.

🆘 Open a Support Ticket

Frequently Asked Questions

Straight answers to the questions authors ask before they order.

📦 Orders & process

How long does a complete illustrated children's book take? ▼
A 12-page book runs roughly 10–15 days, a 24-page book 20–25 days and a 32-page book 25–30 days, depending on the art style — simpler styles are faster than watercolour or 3D. Each package card on the Price Quote page shows its own delivery estimate. Timelines start when your requirements are submitted, not when you pay, and they pause while a stage is waiting for your approval.
Do I own the copyright to the illustrations? ▼
Yes, completely. Full copyright and commercial rights transfer to you on final payment. You can publish on Amazon KDP or IngramSpark, print and sell physical copies and create merchandise, with no royalties owed to Kidillus. See the Copyright Policy.
Can I see something before paying for a whole book? ▼
Yes. Browse the portfolio and the seven style pages for real published work, free. To see your own character drawn, reserve a character sketch for $7 — that fee is credited back against your final order if you go ahead.
How many revisions do I get? ▼
Complete book packages and series packages include unlimited revisions. The process is stage-gated: you approve character designs before sketches, and sketches before colour. Changes within a stage are included. A change that undoes an already-approved stage — redesigning a character after the whole book is coloured — is new work and is quoted separately.
What file formats do I receive? ▼
High-resolution artwork at 300 DPI sized for your trim, plus print-ready PDFs where formatting is part of your order, and a fixed-layout ePub where your package includes it. Editable source files are included with complete book packages and series packages.
Will my characters look the same on every page? ▼
Yes — that is what the character design sheet is for. Every main character is designed from multiple angles with a full expression range and approved by you before any page is drawn. Series packages extend this into a character bible that carries the same cast across every book.
Do you use AI to generate the artwork? ▼
No. Every illustration is drawn by our illustrators for your story — no stock art, no reused characters, no templates. The studio team and process are described on the About page.

💳 Payments & pricing

What payment methods do you accept? ▼
All checkouts run through PayPal. You can pay with a PayPal account or with a debit or credit card through PayPal's secure checkout — a PayPal account is not required for the card route. Kidillus never sees or stores your card details. Kidillus Cash wallet credit can be applied to reduce any payment.
Are there hidden fees or commissions? ▼
No. The quoted price is what you pay. No platform commission, no subscription, no royalty on your book sales. Prices are charged in US dollars, so your bank's conversion rate and any foreign transaction fee are the only variables.
What is Kidillus Cash? ▼
Store credit held on your account. You earn 3% cashback when an order completes, plus any referral commission you have earned. It can be applied to any future order at checkout, or requested as a payout under the Payout Policy.
Can I get a refund? ▼
Refunds for creative work are calculated against the work already completed, on a milestone basis — an order cancelled before work begins is treated very differently from one cancelled after twenty finished spreads. The full terms are in the Refund & Cancellation Policy. Please raise any problem in chat or a support ticket first; most are a misread brief and are fixed in a revision.
Is a series package cheaper than buying books one at a time? ▼
Yes — roughly 8% less for three books, 12% for five and 18% for eight, compared with buying the same books individually. You also get a single character bible across the series, which is difficult to achieve with separate orders.

📚 Technical & publishing

What trim sizes do you support? ▼
All standard KDP and IngramSpark sizes. The most common for children's books are 8.5 × 8.5, 8 × 10, 8.5 × 11 and 11 × 8.5 inches, with 6 × 9 and 5 × 8 for chapter books and early readers. The technical detail is in Trim Sizes, Bleed & Margins.
Will my files pass KDP review? ▼
Files are built to the platform's specification — correct trim, bleed, resolution and embedded fonts — to pass on the first upload. If a rejection does occur, send us the exact error message and it will be corrected. You can also test any file yourself with the free Formatting Checker.
Can you publish to Amazon KDP on my behalf? ▼
We guide you through the entire process and deliver ready-to-upload files with a checklist for your book. We do not ask for your KDP account password — your publishing account, your ISBN and your royalties stay entirely yours. See Publishing Services.
Do I need my own ISBN? ▼
Not for Amazon alone — KDP provides a free ISBN tied to its own distribution. If you want wider distribution through bookshops, libraries or IngramSpark, buy your own so the book is registered to you as publisher. The barcode is free from the ISBN Barcode Generator.
Can you print physical copies for me? ▼
Yes. Bulk printing with worldwide shipping is available from the Bulk Printing tab of the Price Quote page. Hardcover has a minimum of 300 copies; saddle stitch suits shorter runs and thinner books.
Where are you based, and does the time difference matter? ▼
The studio is in India and works with authors worldwide, mostly in the USA, UK, Canada and Australia. Working hours overlap the UK morning and the US evening, and most messages are answered within a couple of hours during the working day. All communication is in English through your dashboard.

Still have questions?

Open a support ticket — the team can see your orders while they answer.

💬 Contact Support

🎫 Support Tickets

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📞 Other Ways to Reach Us
📖 Guides

In-depth guides covering every stage of self-publishing a children's book.

How to publish on Amazon KDP

Step-by-step walkthrough from manuscript upload to a live listing.

Read guide →

Trim sizes, bleed & margins

Pick the right trim size and set bleed and margins correctly the first time.

Read guide →

The illustration process

What happens between your manuscript and finished artwork, stage by stage.

Read guide →

Complete self-publishing guide

The full path from first draft to published book, in one place.

Read guide →

KDP vs IngramSpark

Royalties, distribution and print quality compared side by side.

Read guide →

How to hire an illustrator

What to look for, what to ask, and how to brief an illustrator properly.

Read guide →

How to write a children's book

Structure, word count and pacing for picture books that work.

Read guide →

KDP cover size & spine width

Calculate spine width and build a print-ready wraparound cover.

Read guide →

Title & metadata guide

Keywords, categories and subtitles that help readers find your book.

Read guide →

Launch & get reviews

A practical launch plan for the first 30 days after publishing.

Read guide →

eBook & audiobook publishing

Fixed-layout Kindle and audiobook options for illustrated books.

Read guide →

Book printing guide

Paper stock, binding and print quality explained for children's books.

Read guide →
🧭 Explore

Helpful resources

Everything else on Kidillus, one click away.