A picture book with consistent characters

Illustrative example. This walkthrough shows how the workflow fits this kind of book. The author and book are fictional; no results are claimed.

Marcus teaches preschool, and for years he has told his classes the same bedtime story: Tilly, a small hedgehog who is afraid of the dark, goes for a night walk with her grandmother and comes home asking to leave the light off. He wants to publish it as a square paperback picture book, Tilly and the Night Walk, with Tilly looking like the same hedgehog on every page. Here’s how he could make it in AIBookWriter, with the settings he’d choose and what each step costs. Before any paid action, the app shows its price, his balance and the balance after.

Choosing the plan

Visual books are part of the Pro plan: $30 a month billed yearly, or $37 monthly, with 5,000 credits a month. Marcus starts there, since the illustrations, the formatting and his book page all need it.

Concept

He chooses Visual Book and describes the story in a paragraph: the hedgehog, the grandmother, the walk under the stars and the ending. The app fills in the basics from his description for free.

Basics and format

Visual books settle their physical format at the start, because the art depends on it. On Basics & format, Marcus chooses:

• Kind of visual book: Picture book. The other options are bedtime story, comic, manga, coloring book, alphabet book and social story.
• Trim size: 8.5" × 8.5", the square picture-book size. The trim is chosen this early because changing it later reflows the pages.
• Page layout: single pages rather than two-page spreads, to keep each page turn simple
• Art style: Watercolor storybook. One style is used for every page, so the book looks like one book.
• Number of pages: 24
• Title, author name and language: Tilly and the Night Walk, his own name, English

Characters and style

Consistency comes from this step. Marcus describes each main character precisely. Tilly is a small hedgehog with a cream-colored face, a striped yellow scarf and a paper lantern she never puts down. Her grandmother has silver-tipped spines, round glasses and a patched blue shawl. Each main character gets a reference image, which the app uses to draw them the same way on every page, in the book’s single art style. He looks at the reference images carefully before going on, because every page builds on them.

Pages and illustrations

On Pages & illustrations he works through the book page by page, giving each page its text and describing what the picture should show. He writes the text himself, a line or two per page, and reads each page aloud to hear the rhythm. Picture books depend on page turns, so he ends several right-hand pages on a small question, such as “What was that sound?”, and puts the answer after the turn.

Each visual page costs 20 credits to illustrate, so 24 pages come to 480 credits. When a page doesn’t work, say the lantern ends up in the wrong paw, he generates that page again, and the app shows the price before each new attempt. Visual books don’t have a whole-book review step, so once the pages are done, he reads the whole book aloud from start to finish to check the story and the pictures together.

Metadata and cover

On Metadata & cover he writes a short blurb for parents, adds keywords and chooses up to three store categories for children’s books. He generates an AI cover for 30 credits and checks the lettering of the title and his name before keeping it.

Format and export

Format & export produces a print PDF with bleed, the extra artwork past the trim line that keeps white slivers off the page edges after cutting, and runs preflight checks before export. The spine width for the paperback cover is calculated from the page count. Formatting costs 200 credits once for the book, so if he changes a word later, the re-export is free.

On KDP, he selects the 8.5" × 8.5" trim, the bleed option and premium color ink, because KDP’s standard color option requires more pages than his book has. Then he orders a printed proof, since watercolors can look different on paper than on screen.

Publish and distribution

On Publish he sets up an author page and a book page for Tilly and the Night Walk, with an email sign-up for parents who want to hear about the next book. On Distribution he drafts social posts for launch week and a press kit to share with local libraries and bookstores, all built from the book.

The credits in this example

These are the main charges; smaller actions, such as redrawn pages, character reference images and launch materials, show their price, if any, before they run.

• Concept and basics: free
• 24 illustrated pages: 480
• AI cover: 30
• Formatting: 200
• Total: 710 credits, within one month of Pro’s allowance