Interview with Bookbildr founder Eliza Donovan

What is Bookbildr? 

BookBildr is a web app that lets everyone create their own illustrated books. This is possible thanks to an intuitive editing tool, ready-made images, and a printing integration with Peecho. BookBildr serves a global market of parents, grandparents, students, teachers, community workers, children, and whoever else wants to become a writer. 

“We had a grandmother who wanted to make books for her grandkids. Now she’s selling on Amazon!” says Bookbildr Founder Eliza Donovan. “We have users all over the world, writing books in all kinds of languages (we even had a user make a book in a very rare language, Marshallese).”

What is the story behind Bookbildr?

The idea of BookBildr came to Eliza while looking for a website allowing her to create a children book filled with made up songs, poems, and stories she wrote for her two-years-old son. 

Although she found several print on demand companies who would print the book, they all needed the finished files for the cover and interior complete of illustrations, bleeds, and margins.

“I didn’t have the money to hire someone to illustrate the book, and I think it’s silly to spend so much money on a book for personal use,” says Eliza. “So I just had to create BookBildr that makes creating a book easy, without any drawing or design skills.”

How does Bookbildr work?

BookBildr operates with an intuitive editing tool that lets users design books. The platform uses free public domain illustrations that people can use in case they want to sell their works, Google Fonts to make their text look its best in any language, stock photos, backgrounds, a drawing tool, and an upload function for users to upload their own images.

Once users complete their books, they have the option to either download them as PDFs or get professionally printed copies delivered to their address. In addition, due to popular demand, BookBildr has started offering add-on services like professional illustrations, ghostwriting, editing, translating, and formatting for Amazon.

Why is Bookbildr partnering with Peecho, and how does the integration work?

“Peecho has been a true blessing,” says Eliza. “I found it on Google and I’m so glad I chose it as BookBildr’s printing partner. The API was very easy to implement, Peecho doesn’t need any special formatting, it handles stuff other printers don’t, and the team is fantastic to work with!”

Thanks to the integration with Peecho’s API, Bookbildr’s customers are able to purchase both digital files and beautiful, high quality prints of their works in different sizes and formats (softcovers, hardcovers, layflats).

The ordering process is quick and easy:

1. Once users create a book using Bookbildr's free design tool and save their project, they can purchase a PDF or print by completing Peecho’s personalized checkout.
   
2. Bookbildr automatically sends the digital file to Peecho.
   
3. Peecho creates the order, sends the PDF to the user, and prints and delivers a high quality print directly to them.

Peecho’s extensive print network allows to route each order to the print partner nearest to the recipient, offering advantageous prices and worldwide shipping.

What are Bookbildr’s plans for the future?

"Expand, expand, and expand!” says Eliza. “We've already launched BookBildr for Education that offers group memberships for schools, unlimited PDF downloads, and sharing and commenting features.

Our network of partner illustrators is growing, which allows us to offer custom illustrators to people with very different budgets.

We are also planning to launch a mobile app, an affiliate program, and a BookBildr shop where our users will be able to sell their books and reach a wider audience.”

Curious to learn how a print offering could benefit your business?

Get in touch with us at globalsales@peecho.com