It depends on what’s personal: the name, the face, or the whole story.
Quick comparison
Australian dollars, delivered prices, checked 1 October 2026. Four brands link to our full comparison with them.
| Brand | Price (A$, delivered) | Delivery to Australia | Preview before you pay | Made from a photo | Story made for them |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Paperlake | $99 hardcover, $119 Keepsake | Up to 3 days + up to 10 business days post |  the whole story, the cover and the first two pages | | |
| Wonderbly | From $54.99 on sale (usually $59.99 to $64.99) + post at checkout | Prints in 2 to 4 working days; date at checkout | all pages |  an avatar | a template |
| Imagitime | $74.98 to $89.98 | 7 to 14 days | the whole book | from 2 to 4 photos | fixed titles |
| Storybug | $34.98 to $44.97 | Made and shipped within 3 business days | the full book | Your photo as a character | about 120 fixed titles |
| Dinkleboo | From $43.98 ($33.99 + $9.99 untracked) | Dispatch 1 to 3 business days, then 7 to 12 untracked | the full story | an avatar | a template |
| Hooray Heroes | From $39.98 (most $49.98 to $59.98) | Made and shipped within 3 business days (their claim) | the full book | a hand-drawn avatar | a template |
| My Story Tale | $29.98 to $39.97 | Made and shipped within 3 business days | the full book | a character builder | about 75 fixed titles |
- Price (A$, delivered)
- $99 hardcover, $119 Keepsake
- Delivery to Australia
- Up to 3 days + up to 10 business days post
- Preview before you pay
- the whole story, the cover and the first two pages
- Made from a photo
- Story made for them
- Price (A$, delivered)
- From $54.99 on sale (usually $59.99 to $64.99) + post at checkout
- Delivery to Australia
- Prints in 2 to 4 working days; date at checkout
- Preview before you pay
- all pages
- Made from a photo
- an avatar
- Story made for them
- a template
- Price (A$, delivered)
- $74.98 to $89.98
- Delivery to Australia
- 7 to 14 days
- Preview before you pay
- the whole book
- Made from a photo
- from 2 to 4 photos
- Story made for them
- fixed titles
- Price (A$, delivered)
- $34.98 to $44.97
- Delivery to Australia
- Made and shipped within 3 business days
- Preview before you pay
- the full book
- Made from a photo
- Your photo as a character
- Story made for them
- about 120 fixed titles
- Price (A$, delivered)
- From $43.98 ($33.99 + $9.99 untracked)
- Delivery to Australia
- Dispatch 1 to 3 business days, then 7 to 12 untracked
- Preview before you pay
- the full story
- Made from a photo
- an avatar
- Story made for them
- a template
- Price (A$, delivered)
- From $39.98 (most $49.98 to $59.98)
- Delivery to Australia
- Made and shipped within 3 business days (their claim)
- Preview before you pay
- the full book
- Made from a photo
- a hand-drawn avatar
- Story made for them
- a template
- Price (A$, delivered)
- $29.98 to $39.97
- Delivery to Australia
- Made and shipped within 3 business days
- Preview before you pay
- the full book
- Made from a photo
- a character builder
- Story made for them
- about 75 fixed titles
Pick by what matters
- A story written only for them, painted across every spread: Paperlake
- Lowest price on this list: Hippo Blue, $10 on sale, plus post
- Photo likeness at a template price: Storybug
- Widest baby and family range: My Story Tale
- Fastest stated making: Dinkleboo, Storybug, My Story Tale, Hooray Heroes
Jump to: worth it · babies · families · themes · boys and girls · wheelchair
Best for: the main gift, from a photo
- A painted scene across every spread
- Up to 6 people in one book
- Dearer than most books here
A full painted scene across every spread, drawn from the child's photo, in one house style. The story is written for them from what you tell us, and you read it in full before you pay.
Read the full Paperlake review
Some photo storybooks put the picture on one page and the words on the facing page; ours is one painted scene across both pages with the words set into it.
The Keepsake adds a six-photo album and an online copy. 3 people are included, and each extra person up to 6 is $15. A person checks every page against the photo before it prints, and the words are placed by hand. Printed in Australia or New Zealand. Not happy with it when it arrives? Send us a photo and we’ll reprint it. No questions asked.
Best for: a known template brand
- All pages previewed
- A delivery date at checkout
- The same story for every child
Wonderbly says it has delighted over 10 million readers. You build an avatar around their name and preview every page; the story is a template every child with that name gets.
Read the full Wonderbly review
Most titles are $64.99; two sibling titles are $54.99 on sale. It prints and dispatches in 2 to 4 working days and shows a delivery date at checkout. On 1 October 2026 its Australian site also offered a second book half price with code BOGO50.
Best for: likeness in a set story
- A character from 2 to 4 photos
- A free whole-book preview
- Fixed titles, one child per book
Imagitime turns 2 to 4 photos into an illustrated character and places it in one of its fixed stories. You preview the whole book free before paying.
Read the full Imagitime review
It states its books are printed in Australia and quotes 7 to 14 days delivery. One child per book; two titles add Mum or Dad, none adds a sibling. Its Australian address is now imagitime.com; the old .com.au is parked.
Best for: a low-cost gift
- The lowest start price here
- A full story preview
- An avatar, and the same plot per title
Dinkleboo is the budget pick: more than 100 template titles from $33.99, previewed in full. It says it doesn't use real photos; you build an avatar instead.
Read the full Dinkleboo review
It dispatches from New South Wales in 1 to 3 business days, then 7 to 12 untracked ($9.99) or 5 to 7 tracked ($14.99). More than half its titles add a parent, and a road-trip title takes up to four children; there is no twin title. It claims over 65,000 reviews.
Best for: a hand-drawn template
- Hand-drawn avatars
- Made and shipped in 3 business days
- A template story
You build an avatar from art its artists drew and place it in a template story, made and shipped within 3 business days, it says. Its range leads with books about dogs and cats.
Read the full Hooray Heroes review
Prices dropped this year from $59.99 and $69.99 to $39.99 and $49.99. The site is mid-move to a new website, with most books marked coming soon, so check the price it shows you. It claims over 3 million books sold and holds 4.3 on Trustpilot.
Also sold in Australia
- Storybug (printed in Melbourne): your photo turned into a character in about 120 fixed titles from $24.99, with 10,000+ Trustpilot reviews.
- My Story Tale (Melbourne): the widest baby and family range here, twins and siblings included, from $19.99, with a name-and-skin-tone builder.
- Papier Tales: gift titles for mums and dads, and one for grandma, from $26.99 for a mini ($39.99 standard), printed locally, with a preset avatar.
- Hippo Blue (Melbourne): the cheapest book on this list at $10 on its current sale, with six stories and stock characters.
Are personalised books worth it?
It depends on what is personal. A name printed in a template story is a fair $20 to $40 gift. A keepsake is worth more when the child is recognisably in the pictures and the story is about their own life. The full range in Australia runs from $10 for Hippo Blue’s softcover on sale to $119for our Keepsake, so “personalised book” covers two products at two prices.
The doubt comes from buyers, not from us. A Reddit thread on these books says “every character looks the same and just has different skin and hair colors”, and a Wonderbly reviewer on Trustpilot wrote “Nothing overly special … other than seeing your name”. The test for any brand here, ours included: how much of the book would survive a different child’s name on the cover?
The research is thinner than the marketing suggests. One small study found 18 children, averaging just under four, learned new words better from the personalised sections of a book (Kucirkova, Messer and Sheehy, 2014). The same lead author found no such difference with personalised digital books in 2020. So buy it as a keepsake, not as an education.
The longer answer is on template or written for them.
Can I read the whole book before I pay?
With us, yes: you read the whole story and see the cover and the first two pages before you pay, and you can change any line. After payment, a person checks every page against the photo before it prints, and if it is still wrong when it arrives, we remake it. It is the question our buyers ask most: 8 of 22 email threads asked some form of “can I read the full story before it’s printed”.
The preview column above says what the rest show: Imagitime, Storybug, Dinkleboo, My Story Tale, Wonderbly and Hooray Heroes show every page of the template.
What you’ll see, step by step, is on what you see before you pay.
Personalised baby books for the first year
For a baby, the best personalised book is their first year, kept in a book: the people, pets and little things of age one. One-year-olds are our most common age, 14 of our first 36 paid orders. Under about 18 months the reader is the parent, so the book is a love letter now and a keepsake later.
A baby story book is not a memory journal. A journal (“baby’s first year memory book”) is filled in by the parent and read by adults. A story book is read to the child, this year and every year after. If you want personalized pages the baby is in, that is the one to buy. The same book works as a keepsake book for a newborn: written to them, about the family waiting for them.
A first birthday book is the common next one, and personalised baby gifts has the rest of the gift list. Buying for December? See a baby’s first Christmas book.
The whole family in one book
Up to 6 people go in one book, each drawn from their own photo. 3 are included in the price, and each person from the fourth is $15. Anyone without a photo can stay in the words: named in the story but never drawn or charged. Grown-ups are only ever drawn from their own photo.
25 of our 36 paid orders added people. In the first 24, the 17 that did added 31 extra people: 14 of them mum or dad, 5 the family dog, plus friends, siblings, aunts, a grandparent and a cousin. One newborn book held all six children of the family. One buyer told us the number of characters we fit was the reason they chose us.
Reviewers notice who is left out: a Dinkleboo reviewer asked why only one parent could be shown, and a mum on Reddit was hurt that the four books her son’s grandmother personalised named granny, dad and the baby brother, never her. Each has its own page: brothers and sisters, a book for twins and all the grandchildren in one book.
The family dog
Can you get a custom book about your dog? Hooray Heroes now leads its Australian range with books about the dog itself. Ours work the other way: the book is about the child, and the dog goes in as family. Brothers, sisters, Nanny and the dog. Name the dog when you tell us about the child and we offer them a place in the pictures, the same as a person. A drawn pet takes one of the 6 places and is priced the same way: 3 included, then $15 each. 5 of our 36 paid orders put in a pet, usually the family dog.
Themes they love: dinosaurs, diggers, mermaids, space
There is no theme menu here. When you order, we ask what the child is completely into at the moment, and the answer becomes the book. One parent’s answer: “Diggers. Points at every single one out the car window and yells DIG.” That child’s book is a digger book, and the digger is in their street, not a stock one. Dinosaurs, trains, space, mermaids, princesses, superheroes, any adventure they are currently living: same rule.
The template brands do themes as a catalogue: Dinkleboo sells more than 100 fixed titles from $33.99. Storybug has about 120 and My Story Tale about 75. That is a wide choice, and every child who picks a title gets its plot.
No brand on this page can do licensed characters: nobody here will draw Bluey or Paw Patrol in your child’s book.
Personalised books for boys and girls
We don’t ask whether the child is a boy or a girl, and there is no such field in our order form. We ask what they love, and the story follows that, so a book for my son and a book for my daughter are made exactly the same way.
The template brands mostly do ask: Hippo Blue offers up to ten preset looks sorted boy or girl by hair colour, and Papier Tales’ builder asks for gender. The risk is in the writing, not the menu. One parent on Reddit found a sibling book with “a bit about being quiet and being helpful” in the girl’s version and not the boys’. Read the preview and check what the story asks of your child.
A child in a wheelchair, drawn as they are
Wheelchair, glasses, not walking yet? They’re drawn as they are. Before writing, we ask a plain question about how the child looks and moves, and the family decides what is shown. One parent asked us to leave a harness out of the pictures, so we did. One buyer came to us after other companies said they had no wheelchair character; three or four buyers have now written to thank us for exactly this. The story is about the child, not the wheelchair.
If you’re buying for…
Christmas
Order a Paperlake book by Monday 30 November. Dates for every brand.
A first birthday
What goes in a first-year book.
A baby
The right book for each age, from newborn up.
Brothers and sisters
Both children in one story.
Grandparents buying
One book each, or everyone in one.
Twins
One book that holds them both.
How we chose
Paperlake publishes this guide and is one of the seven brands in it, so read independent reviews too. We compare the brands Australian families meet: in search results, social media, parenting forums and the ads running in Australia. On 1 October 2026 we re-checked every price and claim on each brand’s own site and added Storybug and My Story Tale. Storique is dropped: its figures dated from May 2026, and it ships from Switzerland. For each brand we weigh how personal the book is, the delivered price in dollars, delivery to Australia, and what buyers say. The full method is on the methodology page.
