Book Submission Guidelines

Quality assurance for authors and Illustrators submitting books to Scriptive's library

Book Formatting
Book Submission Process
Story Evaluation Rubric

Book Formatting

Sizing

Being an online platform; We are not constrained by physical book constraints. This does allow some freedom and flexibility.

Aspect Ratio

Pages with a landscape/horizontal aspect ratio looks best and are preferred for our platform as they will be displayed on computer monitors that are typically in landscape orientation; We will also accept vertical aspect ratio pages as well, But that is not our preference.

Width and Height

A minimum image height of ≥800px is required. Best results will be had if submitting in original quality. If an image is made for a double page spread, it should be double the width of a single page image. All images should be the same height.

Bleed and Border

Our stories are not traditionally printed, they will be in our online library, so no bleed or border is necessary.

File Format

If submitting multiple files, zipping them into a single zip folder can ensure all files stay together and that there will be no issues in transfer.

Image Format

Image formats such as png, jpg, and bmp work best for our platform at ≥800px vertical resolution. If submitting in a lossy format such as jpg, please ensure the quality is set high enough to not show any artifacts or color banding. To ensure quick processing time and ensure the highest quality; It's best for text to not be embedded into the image. We can accept it otherwise, but we cannot guarantee the artwork underneath the text will reflect the original.

PDF Format

Books can be submitted in PDF form. However, please ensure that the book is submitted as a single PDF file, not one PDF per page. Images embedded in the PDF file should follow the Image formatting described above.

Original Source Files

PSD (Photoshop) and other original source files are not required but are a welcome addition and can be helpful for us if we run into any snags with the images.

File Naming

Series of images should be named sequentially and should be padded with 0s to contain the same number of characters between every image. This prevents different software from sorting the pages incorrectly. For example:

❌"page_1.jpg", "page_2.jpg", "page_3.jpg" ... "page_15.jpg",
✔️"page_01.jpg", "page_02.jpg", "page_03.jpg" ... "page_15.jpg"

❌"0.jpg", "1.jpg", "2.jpg" ... "20.jpg",
✔️"00.jpg", "01.jpg", "02.jpg" ... "20.jpg"

The title page should be labeled as page 0.

Book Submission Process

Curious what the process looks like to submit a book to Scriptive? Let's break it down!

Visual Diagram

Definitions

Not Submitted

This is the very first status that a new book receives after you create it. Scriptive doesn't necessarily do anything with books in this status unless the author or illustrator requests assistance. Books remain in this status for as long as you need them to. This allows you to gather all the detail on your timeline, and submit them as you have them.

Submitted

Once a book has all the details necessary for Scriptive to review it, and you're ready to move forward, you submit your book for review! When a book is in this status, it has been added to the submission queue for our Library Management team. They will review the book based upon our Story Evaluation Rubric to ensure it is a good fit for our library.

This process can take up to a few weeks.

Info Required

Occasionally, Scriptive may need some additional information in order to complete the review of a book. In these situations, a member of our Library Management team will set the book to this status, and request the necessary information required to proceed.

Approved - Processing

Things are looking great in this status! After the book has been reviewed, and the Library Management team gives their stamp of approval, they will set the book to this status, and then it will enter the queue for processing. This processing is required to ensure a uniform and consistent experience in our software. But don't worry; it's just technical stuff. We will not change the content or looks of your book in the process.

This process can take up to a few weeks to complete.

Approved - Published

Wahoo! Once the necessary processing has been completed, your book is officially in our library, and helping young minds’ imaginative growth.

Declined

Every once in a while, we come across a book that just doesn't quite fit. After comparing your book against our Story Evaluation Rubric, we may decide to decline your book submission. Please note that this does not make you a bad author or illustrator! These decisions are made on a per-book basis, and you are more than welcome to submit other books if you wish.

Update in Progress

We get it; things change. If your book has already been submitted, but you make a change to your submission, it will automatically enter this status. Similar to the "Not Submitted" status, the book will remain in this status until you re-submit it for review. If the book was already published to our library, it will remain there unless a situation specifically necessitates otherwise.

Removal Requested

Are things just not the way you hoped they would be? If, for whatever reason, you decide that you would like us to remove your book from our library, you can request a removal. Once the removal request has been submitted, the submission will enter this status. Similar to the "Approved - Processing" status, there is work that needs to be done to ensure a uniform and consistent experience in our software.

This process can take up to a few weeks to complete.

Removed

After the process of removal is complete, we will change your book to this status. This indicates that your book is no longer available in our library.

Removal Cancelled

Whoops! Didn't mean to submit a removal request? If the original request was an accident, or if your situation changed and you would like to keep the book on our platform after all, you can request a cancellation of the removal. Depending on where we were in the processing of removing your book from our library, we may have to re-process your book.

This process can take up to a few weeks to complete.

Story Evaluation Rubric

Due to the nature of our platform (the text of the stories will not be seen, just the illustrations), it is crucial that ALL stories can generally be clearly discerned from just the pictures alone. Understandable, sequential, engaging, concrete story plots. These stories should generate fun and engaging images that could easily help a child be able to write a creative story.
Our audience age is approximately ages 7-12, with the 8-10 age range being our “golden” range. All stories should be geared towards this age range. Avoid stories that are too simple or too complex.
Transition from State A to State B: Are there gaps in the story or characters that are hard to show just with pictures? If the child is following the story and suddenly things change without explanation, it could be due to missing dialogue or ideas that are hard to show visually.
Universality: The books in WriteStories will be used in various places like the countryside, cities, the US, India, and more. Fantasy and learning new things are okay, but if understanding the story depends on specific cultural knowledge or advanced concepts, there might be issues. For example, if your villain makes fake archeological artifacts or spreads false news to crash a company's stock, it could be hard for an 8-year-old or a 10-year-old to understand, especially with just simple pictures and no words. Being sensitive to a worldwide audience is very important. All stories should ideally be universal and be able to be used in any culture if possible.
Evil as Evil: Not all stories can or should be sunshine and unicorns. Conflict as part of the story arc can come from a number of sources (natural or bad personal choices, etc...). It is ok, to depict evil in the story (also keeping in mind the age of the children - nothing too disturbing or above age-level appropriateness), but it needs to be portrayed as evil and not good or neutral. It is important to keep in mind that any evil portrayed as evil in the story needs to be able to be clearly shown as such in the pictures as well as text.
This is our publicly shared statement regarding our library of books. Does the story adhere to this statement?

- - - Scriptive believes that books can have a profound influence on the lives and development of all of us, including our children. Because of this, Scriptive is very careful with what books are chosen for the Scriptive library and are vetted by our team of experts. Scriptive guarantees selections in our library are family-friendly and age-appropriate.
    - As to content, there are also things that we actively seek. We enjoy books with powerful messages that teach kindness, respect, bravery, trustworthiness, helpfulness, cheerfulness, and hard work. We enjoy beauty in writing and illustrations, positive messages, and wholesome fun.
    - However, there are things we actively stay away from. We avoid inappropriate and sexual content, profane language, and innuendos. We avoid stories that are disrespectful or have inappropriate behavior to any group or individual. We also stay away from political messaging.

Cohesiveness: The story should not depend on dialogue or internal conflict. The story should be able to be discerned from the visible pictures.
Story Arc: Does the story contain a story arc? This is important for writing development in children and we want to emphasize that on our platform.