Story Series & Episodes

The idea

A series turns separate books into connected episodes. Each printed book carries a code on the back cover, and that code leads somewhere useful: the animated video, the series page, or the next episode. A reader finishes book one, scans the code, watches the video, and finds book two waiting.

Think of how chapter-book series worked when you were a kid. You read one, then you wanted the next one. A ToonyStory series gives your books that same pull, with a video between each pair of books as the bridge.

This guide walks the whole setup from a single finished book to a working series.

Step 1: Finish episode one

Start with a book you have already written and illustrated. Any book can become episode one. If you plan to print it, review the proof first as usual, because the code on the back cover is part of the printed book and cannot be changed after printing.

Step 2: Turn on the back-cover code

1. Open your book in the editor and go to the back cover
2. Click the QR button in the bottom-right corner of the page
3. Turn on Print QR on back cover

The panel shows you the exact link the code will carry, under "This code will print as." What you see there is what prints.

Step 3: Choose where the code leads

The panel's "Where it goes" section lists every destination your book supports:

• This book only. The code opens this book's read-along page.
• The series. The code opens your series page, which lists every episode and keeps growing as you add more. If the book is not in a series yet, picking this option starts one, and the book becomes episode 1. A book printed today will still surface episode 5 a year from now, because the series page updates while the printed code stays the same.
• The whole collection page. The series page without a specific episode selected.
• The animated video. The code opens the video share page for this book's current render. This option appears once the book has a finished video.

Two extra pickers appear depending on your choice:

• Lands on (series): choose which episode the code opens. A code on the back of episode 3 can send new readers to episode 1 so they start from the beginning.
• Starts at (video): choose which scene the video opens on. A useful trick: point the code at the scene where the printed book leaves off, so scanning the book continues the story instead of repeating it.

If a chosen destination stops being available later, for example a video you re-render or an episode you remove, the printed code falls back to the book's own page. It never leads to a dead end.

Step 4: Choose how it looks on screen

Printed copies always use the scannable QR code, since paper cannot be tapped. For the shared digital book you get a choice under "On the shared digital book":

• QR code: the same code, shown on the digital back cover
• Button readers can tap: a tappable button carrying your caption, which is usually the better fit on a screen

In button mode, the editor shows the actual button on the back cover. Click its text to edit the label in place, and use the floating toolbar to change its color and style. The label falls back to a sensible default based on the destination, such as "Watch this story" for a video.

The caption under the QR code works the same way: click it to edit the wording, and the toolbar's background control styles the code's plate separately from the blurb card.

Step 5: Continue the story

To create episode two, open episode one and use the sequel flow, or ask Toony to continue the story. The sequel flow creates the series container for you and numbers the new book as the next episode. Episode numbers stick: removing an episode later never renumbers the others, because printed codes depend on them.

If you want the video to tease what happens next without giving it away in print, mark the teaser pages video-only. Right-click a page and toggle it. Video-only pages render in the video but never appear in the printed book, the shared digital book, or the page count you pay for. They are the cliffhanger.

Step 6: Render each episode's video

Open the video dialog and render the book. You can select specific pages, set scene lengths, and pick a narration voice. Once a render finishes, the video destination appears in the QR panel, and the video share page becomes available for that episode.

What readers experience

• The series page lists every episode with its video front and center, and a link to read each book. When one episode's video ends, the next episode is offered right in the player.
• The video share page has two modes: Read along, which plays scene by scene with the story text, and Full film, which plays the whole video straight through. A Scenes button opens a strip of thumbnails for jumping around. When the video ends, the next episode is one tap away.
• The book's read-along page shows your button or code on the back cover, except when it would point at the page the reader is already on, in which case it stays out of the way.

Printing and selling the next book

ToonyStory prints and ships each ordered book for you, so there is no separate print service to set up. Each episode is its own book with its own back-cover code. The loop looks like this:

1. A reader finishes the printed episode 1
2. The code leads to the video or the series page
3. The series page shows episode 2 with its cover and video
4. They order episode 2, whose code leads onward again

Keep your series page shared, or the codes fall back to single-book links. The panel warns you when the series page is not public and lets you publish it with one click.