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name: paperkin-book-design
description: "Make printed picture books, comics and early readers whose pages are drawn with the host's image generation as page sheets, then printed and shipped by Paperkin. Use for a new book idea, drawing its pages and cover, and changing pages of a saved picture book."
---
# Make a picture book worth keeping
Paperkin makes one kind of book: pages drawn by your image generation, words included, printed as a real book. Never build a book of typeset text pages, and never show pictures from web search or other sites: every picture comes from your own image generation.
Make the book in the same turn, without stopping to ask the user to illustrate it or approve each step: write the story, draw the sheets and the cover, call the create tool and show the preview. Start with 8 pages (one sheet and a cover) unless the user asks for a longer book; they can add sheets afterwards.
## Draw the pages, Paperkin prints them
Every Paperkin book is told in pictures: a children's picture book, comic, early reader, ABC book, or an art or poetry book with short text. Your own image generation draws the finished pages, words included, and Paperkin prints them. Draw several pages in one image, a page sheet: the characters and style stay consistent and the book takes a few generations instead of one per page. Paperkin cuts each sheet along its white gutters, prints every page framed on a mat in the colour of its text band and upscales the art for print. These steps are the whole plan.
1. Agree the title, story and length with the user, then write and show the manuscript. One sheet holds 8 pages (4 columns × 2 rows on a wide 2:1 image), and the cover is its own square image. A stapled booklet (8–48 pages in multiples of 4) takes 1, 2 or more sheets; 8 and 16 pages print only as a booklet, 24 pages (3 sheets) also as a hardcover, and 32 or more also as a paperback. Keep each page to at most 25 words in up to 3 short lines of about 40 characters; a comic page to 3 panels with at most 2 speech bubbles of 10 words each.
2. Write one character line (species, body and face colours, clothing) and one style line (medium, palette, mood), and paste both into every image prompt. Use original characters only: no look-alikes of known characters, also among background creatures (name their kinds in the style line, such as "striped yellow reef fish"), and no faces on the fronts of vehicles.
3. Draw sheet 1 with the page-sheet template below. Read every word at full size and check that no splash, drop or other mark touches a letter; if a word, the grid or a character is wrong, draw the sheet again.
4. Draw the remaining sheets, then the cover with the cover template, each with sheet 1 attached so characters, colours and lettering match. Check the cover's title the same way, and every background creature for look-alikes.
5. Make the book with the sheets in reading order:
- If `create_picture_book` is available: `images` = the sheets, `grid` = `{"columns": 4, "rows": 2}`, `cover_image` = the cover, the title, `typeset_title: false`, `for_children: true` for a children's book, and a short `back_text` such as a blurb or a dedication ("For Maya").
- Otherwise call `create_photo_book`, whose `photos` take 12 to 56 entries: `photos` = the sheets in reading order, repeated in that order up to 12 entries (sheet 1, sheet 2, sheet 3, sheet 1, sheet 2, sheet 3, …; one sheet 12 times). Paperkin recognises page sheets by their white gutters, uses each sheet once and makes a picture book of framed pages. Pass only the sheets as photos: a photo that is not a page sheet makes it an ordinary photo book. `cover_image` = the square cover with its title drawn in; nothing is typeset over it, whatever the `cover_image` description says about keeping title text separate. Add the `title` and optionally a short `dedication` such as "For Maya", which prints on the back cover. Leave `captions` out: the words are in the pictures, and captions are ignored.
Read the reply: it says how many page sheets Paperkin recognised and how many pages it cut; a reply about a photo book means a photo was not taken for a page sheet. Ask the user to check the preview: every page whole, no cut letters.
6. Change pages:
- With `revise_picture_book`: read `get_book_design` for saved keys. To redo a sheet, attach the new sheet with its `grid` and give `pages` with `image_index` for its pages and `saved_key` for the rest.
- Otherwise with `revise_book`: replace page N with `page_edits: [{"page_number": N, "mode": "replace", "blocks": [{"kind": "image", "image": "new-page", "x": 0, "y": 0, "width": 612, "height": 612}]}]`, the new image in `images` and its key in `image_keys`. A new page sheet placed on page N replaces pages N to N+7: to redo sheet 2, place its new version on page 9. A page number past the last picture page adds pages at the end, and a saved key from `get_book_design` puts that existing picture on page N. `cover_image` replaces the cover (draw its title in); `title`, `subtitle` and `dedication` (the back-cover text) change too, but a title drawn on the cover changes only with a new cover. Each change is a new preview; the original stays.
One square (1:1) image per page also works, and suits pages of 75–150 words. Paperkin does not print recipes, chapter books or other text-heavy books. Puzzles with a right answer, such as mazes or dot-to-dots, are not drawn reliably; leave them out. Free plan accounts get only a few images a day, so one sheet and a cover suit them.
### Page-sheet template
Use this template for every sheet, filling in the style and character lines and the eight pages:
```
One wide 2:1 image: a page sheet of exactly 8 equal SQUARE picture-book pages, 4 columns × 2 rows, read left to right, top to bottom. Pure-white gutters of equal width and a thin pure-white outer margin. No frames, borders, shadows, page numbers or book mockup.
<STYLE LINE> <CHARACTER LINE>
Each page has a plain light-cream text band (never white) at its bottom. Lettering large, centred, at most 3 short lines, every letter at least 15% of the page width from the left, right and bottom edges, one empty line-height below the last line. Spell every word exactly as written; add no other text.
Page 1: <scene>. Text: "<words>" … Page 8: <scene>. Text: "<words>"
```
Start every later sheet with: "The attached image is sheet 1 of this book. Keep characters, colours, style, layout and lettering exactly the same."
### Cover template
Make the cover with sheet 1 attached:
```
One square 1:1 image: the front cover of "<TITLE>". Full bleed, no frame or text band.
<STYLE LINE> <CHARACTER LINE>
Same characters, colours and style as the attached pages, composed as a cover: <scene>. Only lettering: the title, spelled exactly, in the upper half, every letter at least 25% below the top edge and 20% from the sides, with no splashes, drops or marks touching or above the letters. Faces and key objects at least 15% from every edge.
```
Ask for these margins as written: the model keeps about half of what it is asked for, and the cover is trimmed closer to its edge than a framed page. Never draw page numbers; Paperkin's pages are reordered and padded. Comics use a square 1:1 sheet of 4 pages (2 × 2), each with up to 3 panels, page gutters wider than the gaps between panels, nothing crossing a page gutter, and speech in all caps. A sheet with another grid (2 × 2 or 3 × 3 on a square image) also works: `create_picture_book` needs its `grid`; `create_photo_book` reads it from the gutters.
Sheet pages print framed on a mat in the colour of their text band, which keeps every letter inside the printer's safe area, and their art is upscaled four times by AI for printing, so a sheet page prints at about 190–230 DPI. The separate cover prints at about 135–145 DPI on its own; a cover cut from a sheet prints soft, so make the cover its own image. Read every word of every sheet at full size before passing it, and compare the characters with sheet 1.
## Check the book before the user orders
Read the reply after every create or revise call: it says how many page sheets were recognised and how many pages were cut. Look at the returned preview: every page whole, no cut letters, no white strips, characters matching from page to page, and the cover's title spelled exactly. Fix the largest visible problem by redrawing that page or sheet before calling the book done. Show the returned preview widget, never a mockup or an image carousel, and give the order link when the user is ready; no tool charges cards or places orders.
