How We Make a Cozy Bee Book: From Photo to Printed Keepsake

We’re a small studio in London, and every book we send starts with one child. Here is exactly what happens between the photo you upload and the book that arrives through your letterbox.

1. You choose a story and upload a photo

Every book is a complete story written by our team — a birthday adventure, a football match, a first day at school, a walk through Monet’s garden. You choose the one that fits your child, then upload a clear photo of them. On our create page you can do this first and see the result for free before you decide.

2. We draw your child as the story’s character

Your photo is turned into a storybook character that keeps their face, hairstyle and clothes — a faithful translation into illustration, not a new face. We use an AI image model on Google Cloud for this step, under terms where your photo is not used to train it.

3. We put them into the story

Your child’s name goes on every page, and your own message goes on the first. The story itself is ours: written, edited and checked by people, with the same care for every child. Books are available in English, German, French, Spanish, Italian, Dutch and Turkish.

4. We check every book before it’s printed

Before anything goes to print, a person on our team reads the whole book: the name, the dedication, the pictures and the story. If something doesn’t look right, we fix it before it reaches you.

5. It’s printed close to you and posted

Printed books are made by our print partner in the country nearest to you — in the UK for UK orders — which means less time in the post and a smaller footprint. We make and post each book within a few days, and UK delivery is free. PDF editions are emailed to you instead.

How we look after your child’s photo

Children’s photos deserve extra care, so we keep the rules simple:

• Private by default. Photos are kept in private storage and are never shown publicly or used for advertising.
• Deleted automatically. If you don’t order, the photo and preview are deleted within 30 days (details for an unfinished order after 14). If you do order, they’re kept for 180 days — long enough to reprint a book if the post loses it — and then deleted.
• Never used to train AI.

You can read the full details in our privacy policy.

If something isn’t right

Every book is made for one child, so we can’t take back a book you’ve changed your mind about. But if anything is wrong — a misprint, damage in the post, a mistake of ours — we’ll reprint it or refund you. See returns and refunds.

Why we do it

We started Cozy Bee to help keep the bedtime story going. A book where they’re the hero is a book they ask for again and again. You can read more on our mission page.