Make Our Book

Resource type: Pupil publishing

Price band: £

Key stage: KS1, KS2, KS3, KS4, KS5

Region(s): All of UK

Make Our Book is a publishing web app that allows schools to create their own full-colour, professionally-printed books.

A Make Our Book project can be used to celebrate children’s own writing, to create a year book or leavers’ gift, and even as a fundraising activity. It can involve a whole school, a year group, a class or a smaller group of children. However, as the platform aims to help all young people see themselves as authors, it does not support ‘winners only’ type projects.

The platform is simple and straightforward to use:

Create an account and set up your book project.
Pupils write and illustrate their articles, poems or stories on paper.
Scan the illustrations and upload them on to the website. Type the text directly in to your book project pages.
Print out a PDF of the book so that each child can proofread and edit their work. Pupils can also do their own online editing with their unique access code.
Select a cover image for your book.
Ask parents to send in money for the number of copies that they would like to receive.
Finalise the size of your print run and press Publish to place your order.

Cost: The Make Our Book platform is free to use. Schools only pay for the cost of printing their books. There is a Price Calculator to help you work out your costs and an appropriate selling price.

About Make Our Book: Make Our Book was set up by Emma Barnes, founder of independent publisher, Snowbooks, and publishing management software company, General Products Ltd. Since its launch in 2014, Make Our Book has helped children all over the country become published authors.

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Your book is printed as a high quality paperback, measuring 129 x 198mm with a soft matte cover finish.
There are templates for prose layouts, poems and acrostic poems.
You can run your Make Our Book project as a wholly subsidised project, ask parents to cover the costs, or sell the books at a higher price in order to raise money for your school.
A Make Our Book project provides real purpose for children’s writing and reinforces the importance of editing and proofreading their work.
A great way to boost young writers’ confidence and self-esteem.