The honest price map, from cheapest to most expensive
- $50–$300 — gig-site "book trailers." Usually a template: your illustrations panned and zoomed over stock music, sometimes with your character cut out and floated across the screen. Fine for a facebook post; parents can tell. The style of your illustrator is rarely preserved because nothing is actually animated.
- $500–$1,500 — custom short scenes. This is where real animation of your art begins: a studio builds motion from your illustrations, keeps the palette and character details faithful, and delivers formats for social and school use. Our version is the $697 social scene — 15–30 seconds, cinematic, delivered in 7–10 days in vertical, square and widescreen, with a school-visit pitch kit included.
- $3,000–$8,000 — trailers and short films. Story arc, music, multiple scenes, real pacing. Ours start at $4,997. This is launch-event and press-kit territory, and it's where a book starts looking like a property rather than a product.
- $10,000+ — episodic and broadcast work. Multi-minute films and series. Only sensible once a smaller piece has proven the audience.
Why the same 30 seconds varies 10× in price
Three things drive the difference: whether your actual illustrations are animated or replaced with a template look; whether a human checks every frame against your book (palette, proportions, the details that make your character yours); and whether you get usable formats and rights. On that last one — never pay anyone who keeps the copyright. The finished film should be 100% yours, in writing. Ours always is.
The trap that costs more than money
The most expensive mistake we see isn't overpaying — it's authors buying a cheap trailer that misrepresents their book, posting it, and burning their launch moment on something that looks nothing like the art a parent will actually find inside. You get one first impression per book. A $200 trailer that costs you your launch is not cheap.
What's actually worth paying for (a spending order)
- Start free. Any serious studio should show you your own character animated before asking for money. We deliver a free preview within 24 hours from your existing illustrations — that's the audition, and it costs you nothing.
- Buy one scene, not a film. $697 buys you the moment that stops a scroll and opens a school's door. Use it for a month. Watch what happens.
- Upgrade with evidence. If the scene performs — saves, shares, school replies — the trailer pays for itself. Every dollar of the scene credits toward it.
One real number for context
Authors doing school visits commonly earn $300–600 per visit. That means a single scene that helps you book two school visits has paid for itself — everything after that is margin. That's the arithmetic to run, not "can I afford animation" but "what does the door it opens pay."