What a personalised book costs and what's included

You don't order print instead of the digital book, you order it on top: first the book is created, you read it through and fine-tune it, and only then do you send the finished version to print. That's why the prices add up rather than being an either-or choice.

The things people ask about most, because they're used to seeing them as add-ons.

Delivery is added to the print order and is charged per parcel, not per copy — a second copy in the same parcel doesn't double it. The audiobook is an add-on: you can add it straight away with your order or any time later in your account, at the same price.

You only pay for an illustration regeneration once you've used up the included ones — after that it's NZ$0.69 each, bought in the editor one at a time or several at once. In practice most books are finished without paying anything extra: dodgy-looking illustrations are checked and regenerated automatically before you even see the book.

What you never pay for: storing the book, downloading the PDF again, rewriting the text or changing the dedication.

Real examples show best which items add up and which never appear at all. None of this is a bundle — every item can be ordered on its own.

The digital book has one price, however elaborate your ideas are. More heroes don't make it dearer — siblings, Mum and Dad and the dog in one book cost the same as a single child. Neither does the language or the illustration style, even though some styles take more work than others.

The same goes for the length of the dedication, the number of text edits or how many times you download the book. That's deliberate: while you're setting up the book, you shouldn't have any reason to skimp on what makes it a book for your child.

The only two things that genuinely move the price are a physical parcel (printing and delivery) and illustration regenerations beyond the ones included.

With an ordinary bookshop book, the cost of the text and illustrations is spread across the whole print run — thousands of copies share a single illustrator's work. With a personalised book nothing gets spread: the story is written for one child, and each illustration is made once, for one book, and never used again.

The second difference is printing. A personalised book is printed as a single copy to order, not in a print run — there's no warehouse and no risk of half a pallet left over, but there's no bulk discount either.

That's why you can't compare offers on the price tag alone. Compare what's included: whether the text and illustrations are created after you order, how many edits are free, and whether printing and delivery are in the price or on top of it. How to tell a name simply printed into a stock book from real personalisation is covered in our introduction to personalised books.

None of these is a trick — they're options that really are there at checkout, people just often don't know about them.

You can pay by card or mobile wallet through a secure payment gateway — your card details never reach us at all.

The book starts generating as soon as the payment is confirmed. If it needs to arrive in time for a birthday, our article on timings explains how much leeway to allow.

Discount codes, gift vouchers and partner codes all go into the same field at checkout and are taken off before you pay. You can use one code per order; a voucher, though, can be spent gradually across several items and its remaining balance carries over.