Writing your book
- I'm not a writer. Can I still do this?
- Yes. Most people who make a book with us would not call themselves writers. They are parents with a story in their head, or one half-written in a drawer.
- You do not have to start with a blank page. Give us a rough draft and we will round it out. Give us just an idea and we will take a first pass at the writing from it. Either way what comes back is a starting point: keep what you like, change what you do not.
- That first pass tends to be the thing that unsticks people. Saying "not like that, more like this" is a far easier job than facing an empty page. Fable & Kin is for anyone with a story to tell, not only for people who think of themselves as writers.
- How much of the writing is actually mine?
- Entirely up to you, and you choose at the start.
- Bring a finished story and we lay it out and illustrate it. We do not rewrite a word without your say so. There is more on getting a story you have already written illustrated and printed, including what the pictures look like across a whole book.
- Bring a rough draft and we give it one light edit pass, tidying the wording and fixing the places that trip when you read it aloud. After that nothing changes unless you change it.
- Bring an idea and we write you a first draft from it. The more you tell us, the more of it comes from you rather than from us, and from there you cut it and change it until it is yours.
- Whichever you pick, you can edit any word yourself, right up until you approve the book for printing.
- What age should I write for?
- You tell us, and we write to it: ages 2 to 3, 3 to 5, 5 to 7, or 7 and up.
- The age you pick sets how the book is written rather than what it is about. It changes the words chosen, how long the sentences run, and how much happens on each page. Every book is twelve illustrated spreads whichever age you write for.
- Can I change things after I have submitted?
- Yes. Nothing is printed until you approve it, and there are two goes at it before that.
- When your illustrated book comes back, you go through it page by page: change any illustration you are not happy with, and fix any word you want to fix. When you are done, you see the finished book exactly as it will print, laid out as the spreads it binds into, and approve it from there.
- Can I give one of these as a gift?
- Yes, and most people do. You write the book and give the finished thing, so the gift is partly your own words.
- The two we get asked about most have their own pages: books for and about grandparents, and Christmas books, which have a print deadline worth knowing about. See gifts for grandparents and Christmas books.
- Do I have to finish it in one go?
- No. Your draft saves as you write and waits for you. There is no deadline and nothing to pay until you decide to finish the book.
The illustrations
- Who makes the illustrations?
- They are AI-generated. That is what makes a one-off illustrated book cost US$37.99 instead of the thousands a commissioned illustrator charges, fairly, for weeks of skilled work.
- You choose the style your book is drawn in, you see every page, and nothing goes to the printer until you approve it.
- Can I upload a photo of my child?
- You can, and you do not have to. Plenty of people never upload one.
- A full description works: age, hair colour and cut, eye colour, skin tone, glasses, the jacket they never take off. The more you write, the closer the drawings get.
- If likeness matters enough to you to upload a photo, this is exactly what happens to it. Before your first upload we ask you to confirm you have the right to use it, and we record that. Every photo is checked automatically before it is used. We use it once, to draw the illustrated version of that character, and every picture in the book is drawn from that rather than from the photo. When your book is finished, or if you abandon the draft, we delete the photo. Your book and its illustrations are unaffected.
- What we cannot promise: the photo passes through the AI services that generate the illustrations. Their standard terms exclude customer content from training, and photos we send are set to expire rather than sit there, but we are not going to guarantee another company's policy on their behalf.
- What if I do not like one of the illustrations?
- Change it. Every book comes with an allowance for changes, which stretches to roughly a dozen small tweaks to a picture, or around six pages redrawn from scratch, or any mix of the two.
- A tweak changes one thing and leaves the rest of the picture alone, like making the dog's collar red. A redraw takes the page back to your words and draws it again.
- Will my book look like anyone else's?
- No two Fable & Kin books tell the same story, and the illustrations are drawn for yours.
- What is the same between our books is the format and the finish: 28 pages, 21 × 28 cm (8 × 11″) portrait, in whichever of our illustration styles you choose.
Cost, shipping and delivery
- What does it cost?
- Writing is free. Finishing your book costs US$11.99 for the digital edition, US$37.99 for the softcover or US$44.99 for the hardcover, plus US$9.99 shipping on printed editions.
- The payment is what illustrates the rest of the book, which is why the digital edition costs something too. Both printed editions include the digital edition. Full detail is on the pricing page.
- How long until my book arrives?
- Allow about 10 working days from the day you approve your book.
- That is guidance rather than a promise. We do not print or ship the books ourselves, so the dates depend on printing and delivery times we do not control. You get a tracking link by email once it ships.
- Do you ship to my country?
- We ship to New Zealand, Australia, the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada and Ireland, for a flat US$9.99 wherever it is going.
- Everything is charged in New Zealand dollars, including from overseas, so your bank sets the conversion rate on the day. The digital edition has no shipping and arrives by email.
Your story and your privacy
- Who owns the story and the book?
- You keep ownership of everything you provide: your text, your descriptions and any photos. We only have permission to use them to make your book.
- Once you have paid, you can use, print and share your finished book for personal purposes. The exact wording is in our terms, and we would rather point you at it than paraphrase it here.
- Is my story used to train AI, or shown to anyone else?
- We do not use your content to train our own models, and we never publish, sell or share your book.
- Your story does pass through the AI services we use to write and illustrate it. Their standard terms exclude customer content from training. We are not going to claim a contractual guarantee on another company's behalf, and our privacy policy sets out exactly which services see what.
- What about my child's personal information?
- We ask for the least the book needs, which is a name, a description, and whatever you write. It is used for nothing except making your book.
- Uploaded photos are deleted once the book is finished. The privacy policy has the detail, including how we handle children's photographs specifically.
Still deciding?
Writing costs nothing, so the cheapest way to find out whether you like this is to start and see how it feels.
Free to write. Finish your book from US$11.99.