Why we made Everbound
Everboundbegan as a gift. It started, really, as a wish at bedtime — new stories whenever we wanted, without another trip to the bookshop. Then my daughter came to me with a story idea of her own — fairies who don’t bring the night, they drink the day’s light— and I wanted to make it real: a proper illustrated book she could hold, read on a Kindle, and one day even hear read aloud at bedtime.
Somewhere in the making, I realised the process itself was the product.
The book that started it
That idea became The Girl Who Glowed— Book One of a five-book bedtime arc, fully written and illustrated: ten chapters, a cast of six, its own style bible and palette. We designed the characters together, a little like Studio Ghibli meets Quentin Blake, and when she saw one of them she went quiet and said, “That’s exactly what I wanted.” The whole way through, one thing mattered most: it was never a book about her — it was a book byher, her idea given real craft. It isn’t a hypothesis about what a personalised book could be. It’s one we actually made.
What I wanted the whole way through
A few things mattered at every step, and they’re the test for everything we build. That the book is a gift. That it’s real and keepable, not a novelty that’s forgotten by lunch. That it holds together as one world. That a person’s taste stays in the loop. That it’s genuinely good. That it can be held, read, and heard. And that it’s repeatable — good enough to give again, to someone else you love.
From a spark to a keepsake
The path I walked once — catch the spark, shape the world, write the story, lock the look, draw the cast, illustrate it, and bind it into a real book — is exactly the path Everbound walks with you. Your child brings the idea; Everbounddoes the writing and the drawing in a lush, hand-painted house style and gathers it into a book on your shelf, ready to print or gift — a book by them, not about them.
Why we’re building it
Because everyone has a story like this to give — to a child, a grandchild, or the kid they once were — and almost no one has the time to write and illustrate it by hand. Everboundis the repeatable way from a fleeting idea to a keepsake. That’s the whole reason it exists.