Showcase your work at Bologna Children's Book Fair

The Bologna Children's Book Fair (31 March – 3 April, 2025) is the world's leading event for children’s publishing, bringing together publishers, literary agents, and art directors who are actively searching for new illustration talent.

In collaboration with Art Lab Agency, exactly.ai will be taking collections of illustrators work to this year's fair. We’ll be displaying selected artist’s portfolio’s on a stall and in meetings with industry leaders.

Our partners at Art Lab Agency collaborate with Penguin Random House, Scholastic, Usborne, Highlights Magazine, and many more. If selected, your work will be shown in Art Lab’s exclusive publisher meetings, giving you the chance to secure commissions, book deals, and even representation by a leading illustration agency!

This is an exceptional opportunity for illustrators to have your work seen by key decision-makers in the publishing industry. If selected, your portfolio will be presented to art directors and publishers actively looking for fresh talent.

The styles

For this open call we’re looking for talented illustrators working in:

• Children’s book illustrations – all genres from picture books to middle-grade novels
• Comic & graphic novel artists – bold storytelling, dynamic compositions, and striking visual narratives
• Illustrators with distinctive styles – unique, expressive, and market-ready

Rules

For this competition we can only accept entries to creative commissions from models trained using your own images. We cannot accept models trained using AI-generated images or which intentionally copy other artists’ work.

How to submit

1. Generate images with your model
2. When you like an image, press the “Competition” button on the top right corner of your screen
3. Choose frame with an image and press "Submit artwork"
4. You will see on a screen all images that you have submitted

While training a model on exactly.ai is a paid service, we want this competition to be open to everyone so we are offering a free month of an exactly.ai subscription to allow every artist to participate.

Training a model on your own artwork allows you to scale up output in order to serve more clients and experiment with your style, all while maintaining full control over your artwork as every model and all the images created with it belongs only to you.

To claim your free month click here!

This promo code is valid until 3rd March and can only be used once per customer. You will need to cancel your subscription before it renews or you will be charged.

Or you can activate your promocode through the interface:

Steps from the video:

1. Sign-up or log-in to exactly.ai.
2. Click the orange "upgrade" button in the top right-hand corner of the workspace.
3. Select to either pay monthly or pay yearly with the toggle at the top. If the discount is applied to a monthly subscription, the promocode will cover the entire cost. If you choose a yearly subscription, the code will provide a discount equivalent to one month’s subscription price and you will be charged.
4. Find the "Private plus" plan and click "Subscribe to Private plus", this will allow you to create more models to test and submit your best-performing one.
5. Proceed to the checkout, you will have to attach a bank card to receive your free month but don't worry you will not be charged.
6. Click "Apply Promotion Code" under "Subtotal", type in BOLOGNA and click "Apply".
7. Continue with the checkout as usual and click "Subscribe" you will not be charged.
8. You will now have 1000 credits applied to your account to train your model and apply to the competition, good luck!

If it is your first time training an exactly.ai model take a look at our guide to make sure you get the best results.

We’re excited to see the models you train for this unique creative brief. Once you’ve created your artwork, submit via the link below. The selected artist will be chosen by Art Lab after the deadline.

Please share this open call throughout your networks and on social media!