Picture book maker with characters that never change

Fablemora is a story book generator that makes a complete picture book from one sentence. It writes the story, draws every page, letters the words into the artwork the way a comic letters its balloons, and typesets the result as a print-ready PDF with its full cover. Every character is drawn from one locked reference sheet, so the same face appears on page 4 and on page 40.

Made by Fablemora

Make a picture book See a finished picture book

A storybook maker that draws from one locked reference

The hard part of making a picture book is not drawing one good page. It is drawing thirty of them in which the child, the dog and the kitchen are recognisably the same child, dog and kitchen.

Before any page is drawn, every character in the book gets one reference sheet — a single image of that character, approved once. Every page after that is drawn against it. The sheet is the reference; the pages are checked against it rather than against each other, so a drift on page 12 cannot become the new normal for pages 13 to 30.

One character reference painting sits above three widely separated story pages in which Mina, Pip and their kitchen remain perfectly consistent.

Create a picture book with the words lettered into the art

A picture book is not a novel with pictures above the text. The words sit inside the artwork, in the space the illustrator left for them, in the same hand as the drawing — the way a comic letters its balloons.

The size is not left to chance: it is measured off the finished page and redrawn if it lands outside the band a young reader needs.

An open spread integrates large hand-lettered narration and speech balloons into the quiet sky around Mina and Pip.

A picture book creator that hands you a book, not a folder of images

The page count is rounded to a multiple of four, because a picture book is bound from folded signatures and a count that will not fold is a printing error rather than a design choice. The trade standard is 32 pages and that is what a default book comes out at.

Margins, bleed and the gutter that grows with thickness are all computed for the size you chose, and the finished file is checked before you see it.

Three finished copies display the illustrated front, titled spine, full back and neatly bound thirty-two-page interior of Mina’s book.

The sizes this kind of book usually is.

These are the trims a book like this is normally set at, and the studio starts from them. Pick any of them, or any of the others — the interior is typeset to whichever you choose and the cover is built around it, with the spine measured off the finished page count rather than estimated.

8.5 × 8.5″ (21.6 × 21.6 cm)
8 × 10″ (20.3 × 25.4 cm)
8.25 × 8.25″ (21 × 21 cm)
7 × 10″ (17.8 × 25.4 cm)
8.5 × 11″ (21.6 × 27.9 cm)

12 more sizes available — every trim works for every kind of book.

Before you start.

How long does a picture book take?

Minutes, not days. The story, the illustrations, the lettering and the typesetting all happen in one run, and you watch it happen.

Can I use the book commercially?

Yes. One payment, no royalties, no licence to renew. You own the book and may sell it.

What do I actually receive?

A print-ready PDF at the book size you chose, a cover, and an EPUB validated by EPUBCheck. An audiobook is optional.

Can I change the story after it is written?

Yes. The story, the characters and the art direction are all written down before a page is drawn, and you can change any of it before it is built.

Will a printer accept the file?

The interior is checked against the trim, bleed, gutter and page-count rules before you are given it. We check what we can check; no engine can promise what an individual printer will accept.