7. Publish

You're at the finish line. The last step is to read your whole book front to back, sign off on every page, and go live. Once you publish, families visiting your storefront can pick this storybook and make their own child the star. Here's exactly what happens and what to check before you commit.

What "publish" actually does

Publishing turns your finished draft into a live storybook that families can create their own version of. The moment you publish, it appears in your storefront catalog at your address ({slug}.prestostories.com) and any family who visits can personalize it with their own child. Nothing goes live until you publish, so take your time on this step.

A finished storybook is a cover plus ten illustrated story pages, every page a square, full-page illustration. It prints as a square hardcover (or softcover) book.

When you land on the Publish step

After you approve your page art, the studio moves to the STEP 7 · PUBLISH card. The first thing you'll usually see is Converting your story into a template… with a short spinner. This is the studio making each page personalizable, mapping where the child stands, how big they appear, and how they're posed on every page, so any family's child can step into the story. It takes a few seconds. Leave it be.

Once that finishes, the card shows one of two things. If something still needs attention, you'll see A couple of things need a fix first with a short list of friendly blockers, each with a plain-language line telling you how to fix it. If everything is rendered, you'll see Read your book before publishing with a big 📖 Read & confirm your book button. That's your invitation to open the proof reader.

Read and confirm your book

Tap 📖 Read & confirm your book to open the proof reader. This is a full-screen, front-to-back read-through of the finished book, the same book each family will get, shown with a fixed stand-in child named Leo, age 7, standing in for whatever child a family later personalizes. You'll see the cover first, then each spread: the square illustration on one side and the personalized story text on a cream paper page beside it.

For each story page you sign off on three things. These are your quality checks, read carefully, because they confirm the page is right for every family who uses it.

1. ◎ Highlight the child, opens a view where everything except the child is dimmed and the child is spot-lit. This shows you exactly who gets swapped out for each family's own child. Confirm the right figure is highlighted; the button becomes ✓ Right child once you do.
2. Image looks good, confirm the illustration reads well. Tap it and it becomes ✓ Image.
3. Text reads right, confirm the wording. Tap it and it becomes ✓ Text.

Move through with Confirm & next → (or the on-screen arrows). The tick rail across the top fills in as you go, gray for untouched, amber for partly signed, green for done. When every page is signed off, the header pill flips to ✓ Finish and you can tap ✓ Finish proofing, which simply closes the reader.

Fixing something during the proof-read

If a page needs a tweak, you don't have to leave the reader. On the illustration, tap ✎ Change something… to open a panel where you describe what should change (for example, "make the dog smaller and on the left"), pick which saved cast and setting the page draws from, and tap Re-render this page. To fix wording, tap the story text (✎ tap to edit), make your change, and tap Save text.

Publishing your book

Once every page carries all three sign-offs and the checklist is green, the Publish card shows ✓ Ready to publish with an enabled Publish template button. If you want to peek at the raw checklist, expand Technical checks to see each item with a checkmark.

Tap Publish template. It runs the checklist one more time, then goes live. The card flips to a celebration: a ✓ PUBLISHED badge and Your template is live 🎉. From here you can:

• See it live ↗, open the storybook exactly as families see it.
• Copy link to share, grab a link to send to parents.
• Done, back to dashboard, return to your list of storybooks.

Your storefront and Element catalog also become available once you've published your first storybook. To learn what parents see and how they make their own copy, see What families see. To brand the page families land on, see Your storefront.

Editing after you publish

Publishing isn't the end, you can still change a live book. Reopening a published storybook opens a full-screen book editor. Text changes go live right away. But a regenerated image is held back: families keep getting the previous version until you check the new art's child highlight. You'll see an amber note, Families still get the previous version, check this one to make it live →, until you confirm it. In other words, regenerating a page means you re-confirm that version before families receive it.