The brief

A layout book's premise screen asks different questions from a novel's, because "chapters × target words" means nothing to a coloring book.

What it asks

The print format first. Platform, trim, binding, ink, paper and bleed sit at the top rather than below the fold, because ink is the expensive, irreversible choice and burying it is how authors get it wrong.

A page count appropriate to the preset. For a picture book this is a dropdown rather than a free number: printers count in eight-page signatures, and 34 pages is not a thing most of them will make.

Preset-specific questions. A coloring book is asked about subject, style and complexity. A picture book about the character, the reading age and where the words sit on the page. A recipe book about cuisine and how a method is laid out.

The brief is the prompt

This is the part worth understanding.

Your answers are not filed away as metadata. They are appended to the prompt for the page plan and for every single image. That is what keeps the fox on page 9 the same fox as on page 4 — the brief travels with every render.

So a vague answer produces a book that drifts. "A fox" gives you a different fox every page. "A small red fox with one white ear and a blue scarf, gentle expression, no other animals" gives you a book.

Every field on the brief carries a line of prompt with it. There are no decorative fields.

Where the words go

Presets that print words on the page — picture books, recipe books, photo books — ask where those words sit.

That answer does two jobs at once: it positions the text box, and it tells the illustrator to leave that part of the picture quiet. Because both come from the same answer, the words land in the band the artwork was drawn to accommodate, rather than across somebody's face.

Changing it later

The brief is editable. Changing it does not retroactively redraw pages you have already rendered and paid for — it steers what happens next.

If you change the character's description halfway through, regenerate the briefs or the art for the pages you want brought into line. See The page plan for per-page regeneration.

What to watch for

• Fill the brief in before generating the page plan. The plan is generated from it, and replanning discards briefs you have hand-edited.
• The description of a recurring character is the single highest-value field in an illustrated book. Spend a minute on it and every page benefits.
• Reading age is a real constraint, not a label. It sets the minimum type size the preflight will accept, because a picture book set in nine-point type is not a picture book.