Inside the studio.

You bring the story you want to tell — a rough idea, a few lines, or a whole story — and a photo of each hero. A virtual studio, built to work the way a film studio does, takes it from there.

An open PlotJoys spread held on a lap — the kitchen scene where a mother says “Let’s take one big dragon breath”

How a book gets made.

  1. Concept
  2. Casting
  3. Wardrobe
  4. World
  5. Writing
  6. Illustration
  7. A last read

Nothing exists until you share your story — a rough idea, a few lines, or a whole story. Then a virtual studio makes it, one department at a time, each with one job — not one program doing everything.

  1. The photo a family uploaded of their son, and the storybook character drawn from it (the photo)the photo
    The photo a family uploaded of their son, and the storybook character drawn from it (the character)the character
    01

    Casting makes your people look like themselves

    Each hero is drawn once from your photo, and the photo is the truth: glasses stay, nothing is invented. A dog keeps its markings; a stuffie keeps its worn patches. That same drawing is on every page they’re on.

    “Max has a big game this weekend. Put him on the field.”

  2. Max and his mom reading his finished book — the printed words readable on the page02

    The writers’ room writes for your child’s age

    Rhythm and warmth for a two-year-old; one problem to solve for a four-year-old; more for six. Each page gets just the words that age can hold, so it reads aloud in one breath. Every book carries a phrase to repeat, a moment to do together, and something to find on the second read.

  3. Two pages from far apart in the same book — the same Max in both (early page)early page
    Two pages from far apart in the same book — the same Max in both (later page)later page
    03

    Wardrobe and props keep the world steady

    The sweater on page 3 is the sweater on page 12. The kitchen window stays where it was. The stuffie never changes. One department holds the book’s whole world together so nothing drifts, and each page is composed as one clear moment.

  4. A finished PlotJoys hardcover on a table04

    Nothing careless reaches you

    Every page is counted before a book is released; anything short is held and looked at by a person, never sent half-made. You read every page and change anything, as many times as it takes. And before a hardcover goes to press, a person looks at the art at full print size: small things we fix, anything bigger we show you and you choose.

Anything you want changed, we change — until you love it, or your money back. Photos stay inside the studio; birthdays are stored as month and year only.

Where the care goes.

At any point, anything you want changed we change — until you love it, or your money back.

Wondering how this compares with the other kinds of personalized book? The three kinds, compared.

Ava and Zoe on spread 1 — the same two girls as on the first page
Ava and Zoe on spread 2 — the same two girls as on the first page
Ava and Zoe on spread 3 — the same two girls as on the first page
Ava and Zoe on spread 4 — the same two girls as on the first page
Ava and Zoe on spread 5 — the same two girls as on the first page
Ava and Zoe on spread 6 — the same two girls as on the first page
Two sisters, one book. Ava and Zoe on every one of these spreads, from the first page to the last. Two children who look alike are hard to hold apart — this is what it looks like when it holds.

The measure.

So far, 47% of families who buy one book come back for another. A grandmother ordered one, then one more, then two. A father ordered three — then all three again in hardcover — and wrote: “I’m sure you’ll be hearing from me in the future.” And every Tuesday at Plano Day School, a pre-K class gets a new one; at pickup, one boy told his dad: “I want the story teacher again.”

Your photos.

One use: making your stories — they become your characters and your illustrations, and nothing else. Not for anything else, not by anyone else: every technology partner inside the studio is held to the same rule, and we check that they keep it. You can delete a profile and everything attached to it whenever you like.

The longer version, from me

I built this the way a studio works because that’s how good books get made: one person on casting, one on wardrobe, one on the words, one on the pictures, and one whose only job is making sure the child on page twelve is the child on page one. Here each of those jobs is done by a specialist I built for it, and I chose the best tool for each job rather than one tool for everything.

Before any of that, I spent a long time with children’s books: what makes a two-year-old ask for the same page again, what a four-year-old can follow, why some endings land and others lecture. That’s what the studio writes from. Then I rewrote its instructions thousands of times, on finished books and on what families asked me to change, so every fix stays fixed.

And I’m a mom. I wasn’t willing to put a careless book into the world my own daughter might read. I’m also a math PhD who led AI teams for a decade, which is how I could build it. The taste and the responsibility are human. They’re me.

— Dao, founder

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