The calm: drawing, writing, listening to the story. The noise: query letters, agent research, switching tabs, reference images you can't find, submission spreadsheets, the dummy you have to format three different ways. Storyfolio handles the noise so you can stay in the calm.
Free to start. No signup. Your work stays on your machine.
Here is The Quiet Hour — a picture book about a grandmother teaching a child to notice the moment between day and night — moving through Storyfolio from the first note to the ready-to-send submission.
Start with a premise, a feeling, or an opening line. Paste in a manuscript you've been drafting in Scrivener. The synopsis and title live at the top of every view — it's the north star.
Drag images onto a free-form board: photos, screenshots, sketches you love, color palettes, anything that's making you feel something for the book. Storyfolio extracts the top colors from each image automatically — tap a swatch later to copy the hex straight into Procreate. Tag images by character, scene, palette, style, composition. Attach them to specific spreads when you know where they belong; leave them on the project library when they're still floating. From your iPad, an iOS Shortcut "Save to Storyfolio" sends images here from anywhere — Pinterest, Photos, Safari, in two taps.
A standard picture book lives in 32 pages — a Cover, a Title page, 14 body spreads, and a back cover. Storyfolio gives you the whole book as a single SVA-style sheet — drag, insert, reorder, lock. Word-density tints show your pacing at a glance. See the whole arc before you commit to any single page. Press ▶ Read to walk the book aloud — adjustable beat between page-turns, optional voice that reads the manuscript so you can hear the rhythm before the words feel right on the page.
Open a spread. Write the beat, the manuscript, and the art notes. Upload sketches — every version is kept — and iterate without losing earlier directions. Locking a spread marks it final.
Companion mode is a quiet read-only window of the current spread — your gathered references arranged the way you placed them, your sketch versions in a swipe-through carousel, the manuscript text below. Pin it on your iPad in Sidecar / split view next to Procreate, and the references stay with you while you draw. No tab-switching, no flow lost. Tap any inspiration → palette swatches → copy a hex → paste into Procreate's color picker. Iterate without breaking the spell.
Storyfolio holds an Editorial Companion — trained on the questions great picture book editors actually ask. Share your storyboard and you'll get back the kind of questions that move a book forward: "What does your protagonist want, here, in this moment?" "Where's your page-turn surprise?" "What story does the illustration tell that the words don't?" Never automated answers. The work stays yours — you just have an editor down the hall.
Export a book dummy PDF, a clean manuscript, and a one-page statement — the three documents agents and editors actually ask for. Lock the spreads you want included and press publish. Optional AI helps you find comparable picture books for your query letter, so you don't lose an evening to Goodreads.
Every feature started as something the maker wished existed. Nothing is here to fill a grid — if it's in the app, it earned its keep.
Drop in a .docx or paste your draft. Storyfolio suggests spread breaks — you review, accept, and edit. Your words, already paginated.
Open Storyfolio next to Procreate (Sidecar / split view). The current spread, your gathered references, and your sketch versions live in one quiet read-only panel — so you don't lose flow tab-switching while you draw.
Trained on the questions great picture book editors ask. Share a spread, get the kind of feedback that sharpens your book — never pre-written manuscripts, never AI-generated illustrations. Bring your own API key.
Three exports agents actually want: book dummy, manuscript with art notes, and a one-page logline/POV/comparables statement.
Paint by feeling. Pick swatches and mood keywords; Storyfolio threads them into every scene prompt.
Upload as many passes as you like. Label them "rough", "refined", "final". Nothing is ever overwritten.
Stored in your browser, never on a server. Not used to train AI. Storyfolio can’t see your work — no one can. Export anytime.
Storyfolio is a tool, not a service. The whole craft surface is free, forever — share it with your critique group. Pay once when you need a clean, professional deliverable.
The whole craft surface. Unlimited everything. The tier you share with your critique group.
No signup. No card. Open it and begin.
When it's time to send to agents or hand a clean dummy to an editor. Done once, not operated forever.
$49 one-time. License key arrives by email; paste it into Settings to unlock. 30-day refund, no questions.
No subscriptions. No seats. The Editorial Companion uses your own API key, billed by you, with whatever provider you trust. If you buy Pro and hate it, email the maker within 30 days for a full refund — no questions.
I burned out — the kind where the colors leave the world for a while. When I came back to myself, I went looking for what had made me feel alive before the jobs and titles. At the bottom of a box, I found a picture book I'd drawn at eight: a bear and a wren watching the snow.
So I started drawing again. The tools were all wrong, so I made this one — for myself, and then for anyone else like me. Storyfolio is not about productivity. It's about sitting down, quietly, and making the small thing that matters to you.
— the maker of storyfolio
Storyfolio holds your manuscript, your sketches, your references — all in your browser, on your device. Nothing uploads to a server. Nothing gets used to train AI. Storyfolio can’t see your work. No one can. Export to PDF, DOCX, or Markdown whenever you want; everything else is yours, and only yours.
When you turn on the Editorial Companion, the AI uses your own API key — your direct arrangement with the provider — so that conversation doesn’t route through Storyfolio either.
Storyfolio is free to start. No signup. No card. Just open it, and begin.
Tell my story →