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Everything you need to know to create, publish, and share a Kertoons storybook - from your first story to entering a monthly competition.

Quick jump

• Getting started (account & login)
• Creating your first story
• Reading, downloading & sharing your storybook
• Editing an illustration and regenerating it
• Printable coloring pages
• Liking stories & characters
• The Character Library
• Monthly Story Competitions
• Image credits, buying more & coupons
• Multiple languages, one storybook per language
• Privacy & safety
• Troubleshooting & common questions

Getting started (account & login)

Creating a story, saving characters, and entering competitions all require a free account. Kertoons is passwordless - there's no password to create or remember, just your email address.

• Sign up: click "Register" in the nav bar, enter your email address, and click "Send Verification Code." Kertoons emails you a 5-digit code.
• Log in: same flow - enter your email, then the 5-digit code that arrives in your inbox. The code expires after 10 minutes; click "Resend Code" if you need a new one.
• New accounts start with 50 free image credits (this default can be changed by the site admin).

Creating your first story

Go to Create a story in the nav bar and fill in the form:

• Story idea (2-3 sentences) - the only required field, e.g. "A curious kid and their pet find a lost baby bird and help it get home." Kertoons treats this as a starting spark, not the finished story - it invents a full narrative arc (a setup, a small problem, an attempt or setback, a turning point, and a warm resolution), sensory detail, character motivation, and a gentle closing moral that aren't in your sentence at all.
• Region / setting (optional) - e.g. "Kerala, India" or "a snowy mountain village." This shapes the story's visuals, culture, and language flavor.
• Also translate into (optional) - list any languages (comma-separated, e.g. "Hindi, Tamil, Spanish") to get a fully separate, independently downloadable storybook PDF in each one, alongside the English original. Each language costs image credits too - see Multiple languages below.
• Character photo (optional) - upload a photo to inspire one character's look. It's never used to identify anyone - only turned into a generic, kid-safe cartoon-style description.
• Feature characters from the Character Library (optional) - search for and pick published characters to star in this story; their name, appearance, and personality are locked in exactly as published.

Click "Create my Kertoons story ✨" and a progress bar tracks each step (writing the story, illustrating each page, translating, if requested). A story is 5 pages by default (the site admin can set this anywhere from 2 to 10), each with its own illustration and narrative text. Every illustration costs 1 image credit, so a 5-page story costs 5 credits - if your balance can't cover it, you'll see a prompt to add credits before you can generate.

Reading, downloading & sharing your storybook

• Once generated, your story shows each page's illustration alongside its text.
• Every language you requested gets its own complete, separately downloadable PDF - never English and translated text mixed on the same page. A button reads "📥 Download {Language} PDF" if that PDF already exists, or "⚙️ Generate {Language} PDF" the first time (after that it's cached, so re-downloading is instant).
• Choose "High (print, 300 DPI)" for print-quality output, or "Low (screen, smaller file)" for a much smaller download, before clicking download.
• A ZIP download bundles every language's PDF plus the raw page images and story data in one archive.
• As the story's owner, you'll also see a "📢 Publish story" button - this adds it to the public Gallery on the home page (cover image, title, and your name) for anyone to read. Click "🔒 Unpublish" to make it private again at any time. An unpublished story is visible only to you - it can't be reached even by someone with the direct link.

Editing an illustration and regenerating it

Don't love how one page's picture turned out? As the story's owner, you can fix just that page:

• Under each page's image is an editable box showing the exact prompt that produced the image currently shown - not an approximation, the real thing that was sent.
• Edit the text and click "🔄 Regenerate image" to send your edited wording straight to the illustrator, verbatim.
• Leave the box as-is to regenerate using Kertoons' normal character-consistency prompt instead (useful if you just want a fresh attempt at the same scene).
• Regenerating a page uses 1 image credit, the same as any newly generated image.

Printable coloring pages

Any story can also become its own printable coloring book - the same characters and scenes from your storybook, redrawn as black-and-white line art ready for crayons.

• As the story's owner, click "🎨 Generate coloring pages" below the regular illustrations - this batch-generates a line-art version of every page that doesn't already have one, in a single click.
• Each page generated this way costs 1 image credit, the same as a regular illustration. Pages that already have a coloring version aren't charged again if you run it more than once.
• Once at least one page is ready, the button becomes "📥 Download coloring pages (PDF)" - a standalone, ready-to-print PDF built from the coloring-page art, using the same PDF quality setting (high/low) as your regular storybook downloads.
• Coloring pages are freshly generated from your story's own characters and scenes, not an edited copy of the existing illustrations - so a little bit of color occasionally surviving here and there is expected, since the illustrator can only be asked for pure line art, not guaranteed to produce it exactly.

Liking stories & characters

See a story or a Character Library character you love? Click the heart to like it.

• The heart button appears on story and character cards, on a story's own page, and on a character's spotlight page - click it again to unlike.
• Liking requires a free account; signed-out visitors can see the like count but not click it.
• Sorting the story gallery or the Character Library by "Popular" ranks by like count - the community's real favorites, not just what's newest.

The Character Library

Characters you (or the community) create can be reused across many different stories instead of being reinvented every time.

• 🎭 Characters in the nav bar browses every published character - search by name or description, filter by category, age group, or school, and sort by newest or most popular.
• ✏️ My Characters is where you create and manage your own. Describe an idea in a sentence or two (e.g. "a brave young fox who loves stargazing"), optionally upload a reference photo (Kertoons will match its hair, face, and expression as closely as possible instead of inventing a look from text alone), choose a type (Kid, Boy, Girl, Man, Woman, Animal, Material object, or Character/other), and optionally tag it with a Category, Age group, and School. Kertoons invents the character's name, a detailed locked appearance description, a personality, and a reference portrait image.
• A new or edited character starts as a draft, visible only to you. Click "Submit for publication" to send it for a one-time admin review; once approved it appears in the public Library for anyone to use in their own stories. Editing an already-published character sends the change back for review before it goes live - the currently-published version keeps showing in the meantime.
• To use a published character in a new story, search for them under "Feature characters from the Character Library" on the Create page - the story is then written and illustrated around their exact locked appearance and personality.

Monthly Story Competitions

• 🏆 Competitions in the nav bar lists every competition currently open, each with its own theme (e.g. "Space Adventures," "Saving the Environment").
• Enter by submitting an existing story of yours, or creating a brand-new one specifically for it.
• Every entry is scored automatically by AI the moment it's submitted, across five categories - creativity, originality, story structure, educational value, and language quality - and appears immediately on that competition's live leaderboard.
• When a competition closes, results are finalized: every entrant receives a downloadable Participation Certificate, and the top 3 highest-scoring entries also receive a Winner Certificate (1st, 2nd, or 3rd place).

Image credits, buying more & coupons

• Every illustration generated - each page of a new story, every "Regenerate image" click, and each page generated by "Generate coloring pages" - uses 1 image credit. New accounts start with 50.
• Translating a story into another language uses 5 credits per language - see Multiple languages above.
• Image credits and translation credits share the same balance - there's only one number to keep track of.
• Click your credit balance ("🖼️ N image credits") in the nav bar, or open the Usage page, to see your balance and a full history of every image you've generated and every translation you've paid for.
• "➕ Add credits" buys a pack of 50 credits for $5 through Stripe Checkout - a secure payment page hosted entirely by Stripe. Kertoons never sees or stores your card number.
• Have a coupon code? Redeem it on the Usage page - each code can be redeemed once per account.
• Every completed purchase is listed under "Payment history" on the Usage page (credits granted, amount paid, date).

Multiple languages, one storybook per language

List any languages in "Also translate into" when creating a story (comma-separated, e.g. "Hindi, Tamil, Spanish") and each one becomes a fully separate, independently downloadable storybook PDF - never English and translated text mixed together on one page - with character names staying exactly the same across every translation.

Translation costs image credits, just like generating an illustration does: each language you request uses 5 credits, charged once per language as the translation happens - so requesting 3 languages for one story spends 15 credits, on top of whatever the story's illustrations cost. You can see a running log of every translation you've paid for - language, credits spent, and when - under the "Translation usage" card on the Usage page, right next to your image usage history.

Privacy & safety

• A photo uploaded for character inspiration is never used to identify anyone. Kertoons only extracts a generic, kid-safe visual description (hair, general look) from it to inspire the cartoon character.
• Every story follows strict built-in safety rules: no fear, violence, or negative stereotypes; humor is always kind; every story ends on a gentle, positive moral.
• An unpublished story is visible only to its owner - it can't be reached by anyone else, even with a direct link.
• Please also read the notice below about reviewing AI-generated illustrations before sharing them with children.

Troubleshooting & common questions

"Out of image credits" - your balance can't cover the story you're trying to create or regenerate. Click "➕ Add credits" next to your balance, or redeem a coupon on the Usage page.

"Please log in" when creating a story, managing characters, or entering a competition - these all require a free account; sign up only needs your email address, no password.

The verification code email hasn't arrived - check spam/junk first, then click "Resend Code" on the login or sign-up page. Codes expire after 10 minutes, so request a fresh one if you've been sitting on the page a while.

An illustration doesn't quite match earlier pages - every character is built from one fixed, word-for-word-identical description repeated on every page it appears on, and each generated image is automatically checked against that description (with one automatic retry if something looks off). Occasional drift can still happen, especially for less common animals or creatures. You can fix a specific page yourself - see Editing an illustration and regenerating it above.

A custom image prompt was rejected as unsafe - Kertoons automatically softens and retries its own generated prompts if this happens, but that automatic retry doesn't apply to a prompt you've hand-edited yourself in the regenerate box - just adjust the wording and try again.

My new character isn't showing up in the public Library - new and edited characters start as a private draft. Open "My Characters" and click "Submit for publication" - it needs a one-time admin approval before it appears publicly.