The page plan

A layout book runs through three stages: ① Premise, ② Design and ③ Release. Design has four views, switched at the top of the screen:

• Script — the page plan, described on this page: every page's words and picture direction, read top to bottom like a script.
• Page and Spread — the page designer.
• Storyboard — every spread at once, as thumbnails. Drag to reorder.

Design opens on the Script for a book that is mostly words, such as a picture book or a coloring book that tells a story, and for any book with no pages yet. Every other book opens on the Page view. Switch between them whenever you like.

The Script lists the title and copyright pages, every page you have planned, any page you add, and, in a puzzle book, the answer key. Pages are grouped into runs ("Puzzles 1–40", "Rounds 1–10", "Page design · 24 pages", "Answer key"), so a long book stays easy to scan. Each row starts with a small picture of the page, drawn exactly as it will print. Click it to see the page bigger.

The words go into the design's own text box. Whatever you write for a page lands in the box its layout puts there, so the layout decides where the words sit. Move or restyle that box on the layout in the Page view and every page in that design follows, with its words intact.

Words are never left printing loose. If a page moves to a layout with no box for words (Full bleed, or a lined page), or the box is deleted from its layout, its words are set aside: kept, but not printed. The Script shows them struck through and says why. Choose a design with a words box for that page, or put the box back on the layout, and they go straight back in. On a Free page or a template you built yourself, words stay on the page for you to place by hand, and a page always keeps its picture, whatever design it moves to.

The page's layout is chosen on the Premise, and only there. The line above the Script says which layout the book uses, with a button back to the Premise to change it.

Working on a page

Select a page to work on it, right there. The panel beside the Script (below it, on a phone) holds everything that page can take:

• What its design prints — the page's name, the words on a picture-book page, a word search's word list for each puzzle, a How to play page's heading and rules. There is no field for words the design has no box for, so nothing can be typed over a picture or a puzzle.
• The artwork brief — what the picture shows, for books with AI artwork. The line under it says which cast members the picture is drawn with.
• Draw this page — renders just this picture, at the price shown on the button. Once it is drawn, ✦ Change it edits the picture you have rather than starting again.
• Duplicate, move earlier or later, change its design, or delete it. Every page after a move is redrawn for the side it now lands on.
• ✦ Ask about this page opens the assistant with the page already named.

Some pages travel together. In a coloring book with colour guides, a design and the guide that faces it move, duplicate and delete as one. In a two-player puzzle book with a page each, so do a round's two pages.

The front of the book

A new book starts with a title page and a copyright page, filled in from the book's title and author. They are ordinary pages: select one and choose Open in the designer to change its words or style, or Delete it if the book does not need it.

＋ Add pages starts with the pages that go at the front of a book, one click each: a Title page or Copyright page (if the book has none), a Dedication, a This book belongs to page and, in a book you colour in, a Colour test page. They go after the front pages the book already has.

Adding pages

＋ Add pages adds any number of the book's own pages, or another kind:

• the designs used in this book,
• the kinds of page it offers — How to play, a Section opener, a Notes page in a puzzle book, or a Free page that is yours for any words and pictures,
• More designs — the other layouts of this kind of book, for a book that mixes them (a planner's month pages among its weeks, for example).

New pages go after the page you have selected, or at the start of the book when the title or copyright page is selected. They always go before an answer key. In a coloring book with colour guides, every new design gets its guide.

Pages that are not puzzles take no puzzle number, so the puzzle numbers and the answer key still agree.

Artwork for the whole book

The toolbar holds the book-wide tools:

• Generate art… opens the list of pages that can be drawn, all ticked, with the total cost and your balance. Untick any you want to leave. Pages that can't be drawn yet are listed separately with the reason.
• Image quality sets the resolution the artwork is drawn at. The price on every draw button follows it.
• Cast (or Recurring look) opens the characters or elements that should look the same on every page.

The status line beside them says how many pages are illustrated, how many are ready to draw, and how many still need a brief.

What to watch for

• A page with no brief can't be drawn, because there is nothing to draw from. The button is dimmed as well as disabled, so it reads as a step still to do rather than a broken button.
• A colour guide can't be drawn before its design. A guide is that drawing, coloured in, so it waits until the design is drawn.
• No price, no button. If prices can't be loaded, the draw buttons stay off and say why, rather than charging an amount you were never shown.
• Puzzles go out of date. Each puzzle page says whether its puzzles are made — or were made at a grid size the Premise no longer sets. Generate them again to make them at the new size.
• Edit the design itself in the Page view. A change there redraws every page in that design.

The assistant

The assistant works through the same actions. It can plan the pages, write their briefs and words, rename pages, fill a design's own boxes and add pages of a kind the book offers. It never invents a title, copyright or answer page, and never puts text where the design has no box for it. Every change it offers is a card you accept, and the last one you accepted can be undone from the card.

The assistant can read every page of the book, however long it is: each page's name, brief, words, whether it is drawn and its puzzles. It looks through all of them for something you name ("which pages have the fox?"), and reads the pages a request is about in full before it changes them. This costs nothing and is always up to date, because it reads the pages as they are now.

When you accept a card that draws pages, the card shows the drawing as it happens: how many pages are done, what has been charged so far, and Stop.

You can also ask about part of the book: "rewrite pages 20 to 40 so they are about winter" changes just those pages, at most 40 at a time, and "redraw pages 10 to 15" offers to draw just those. "Check every page" looks over the whole book at once and tells you which pages have problems — and which checks still need the proof on the Release step, because some things can only be seen on the finished page.

The assistant can change the design too. "Make the titles bigger on every page" or "remove the footer everywhere" changes the page template, so every page that uses it changes at once. On one page it can move, restyle, copy, add or remove things, or bring back something you deleted from the template, and that change stays on that page only. It never removes a picture, and never removes a page's puzzle, picture or words. "The fox looks different on page 7" can be an edit of the picture that's already there, rather than a new drawing: the card shows its price, and the earlier version stays in the book's art library.

You can show the assistant an image: press the paperclip beside the message box, paste one, or drop it on the box. Ask for pages "drawn like this" or "with this place in them" and the card that draws them shows the image, and every page it draws follows it. It costs the same as any drawing. The image is saved to your art library like any upload.