This document (the “Contribution Guidelines”) sets out content and technical guidelines for any contribution you may wish to make. For further information regarding requirements that must be met by contributions, please also refer to our Frequently Asked Questions or to our Terms of Contribution. If you have any questions that are not addressed, please email us at This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it .This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it .

1.
A document called “Terms of Contribution” will be the basis of our agreement with you.  It will be displayed as part of this process and you will need to agree to it before we will consider publishing your book, which will be referred to as “Your Works”.  At the beginning of the Terms of Contribution we define some terms that are important for this process:

The Contributor refers to the person who submits works to Sharing Books.  The Contributor may be the Writer and/or the Illustrator or another party who has the authorization to contribute the book on behalf of the other parties involved.

The Writer refers to the author of a literary work (such as a story) that is incorporated into Your Works.

The Illustrator refers to the author of an artistic work (such as an illustration or painting) that is incorporated into Your Works.

2.
Title:  the title of your book will be checked against other books on this site and you may be asked to submit a different title if it is already used by someone else.  You may want to have a few variations of your title ready.

Book description: you will be asked to enter a brief description of your book that will be displayed when presenting your book to visitors.  Note that this description may be edited by our librarians.

Book cover thumbnail: this is a small image that will be used when presenting your book to visitors.  This is a jpeg file that you can create from your cover page or of a character of your book.  Choose something that is representative and remember that this will be just a few square centimeters, so there is not a lot of room for details.

The text file of your book: preferably in a recent Word file (1997 or newer) or a compatible file.

The Image file of your book:  this file must be in a pdf format.  Refer to technical guidelines at the bottom of this document for more details.

If you do not have these documents ready.  We recommend that you interrupt this process, gather the proper files you need and return when you have them ready.  You may want to print this page as a reference.

3.
When you upload your contribution, you make an application to Sharing Books.  Your contribution may then be approved or rejected for publication by Sharing Books.  The decision is final.  Sharing Books does not use editors, we will not be responsible for the review of your contribution and we will not give specific feedback as to why a contribution is rejected. You may want to consult a professional editor if you decide to modify your contribution and re-submit it.

4.
Please keep in mind that the works made available by Sharing Books are intended for children aged under 11 and that our first objective is to foster literacy.  Most of us at Shared Books Ltd. are parents, so we expect you to think like a parent when offering your contribution.   Ask yourself if you would want your children or grand children to read your contribution?

5.
Sharing Books has the right to remove a contribution at any time and for any reason, including concerns raised about the appropriateness of a contribution for our target audience.  We may choose to remove a contribution if we receive complaints.  Also, a contribution may, over time, become inappropriate for the Sharing Books website.  For example, some Anime characters have shifted from being benign cartoons to being violent and sexual cartoons in later editions.  Such a shift would likely cause a character to no longer be appropriate for children aged under 11.

6.
In many families, there are a few topics not discussed at the dining room table:  sex, politics and religion are sensitive topics, especially when dealing with a young audience.  We ask you to review and filter your contributions accordingly before uploading them.

SEX:  No contributions to Sharing Books should depict sexual acts.  This does not mean that a book educating children about sexual predators would necessarily be inappropriate.  Gratuitous nudity is  not appropriate. This does not mean that a book showing a bare breasted woman would necessarily be inappropriate.  The context should guide you.  For example, a book about art showing a nude sculpture or a book about a culture where women are bare breasted may be appropriate.

POLITICS:  Contributions promoting a political party, opinion or position will likely not be appropriate.  Anything hinting at or promoting “hate” towards another person or group is not appropriate.  On the other hand, books educating children about democracy or the role of an elected official could be appropriate.  A book about a country or a historical person could be appropriate.

RELIGION / RACE:  Issues with these topics may be similar or related to those identified in connection with politics.  Anything hinting at or promoting “hate” towards another person or group is not appropriate.  On the other hand, a book explaining a religion, or depicting an event or a historical figure, may be appropriate.

FANTASY AND VIOLENCE:   Many children’s classics contain a fair amount of fantasy and occasional fights.  However, gratuitous violence and gore is inappropriate.  Also, contributions containing weapons will likely be inappropriate.  However, a contribution may be appropriate if weapons  are presented in an educational context to promote safety.

FOUL LANGUAGE:   Languages are living things and the meanings of words evolve.  For example “wicked” which meant really bad when most of  us learned English is now often used by people to describe something exciting.  The public’s tolerance for "four letters" words vary with demographics.  Remember that our purpose is to encourage literacy and refrain from obscenities and foul language.

LANGUAGES OTHER THAN ENGLISH OR FRENCH:  Sharing Books requires that you provide a certified English or French translation of any contribution you upload.  The translation may be used by Sharing Books for various purposes, such as considering complaints relating to your contribution or offering your contribution in different language versions.

QUALITY:   Sharing Books has not been created for critics.  Quality is very subjective.  We expect the work uploaded to be showing a wide range of skills levels as we encourage new creators to upload their works.  We will let the popularity of the works submitted determine  “quality”.

TEXT VS IMAGES:   Some people in the children books industry impose limits on the amount of text a book contains.  Often these limits reflect the constraints the industry faces when publishing on paper.   We do not have such limits other than the technical guidelines below.   What we expect is that the works submitted will vary from very little text with images to all text with no images for works aimed at older children.  You are the creator and we will respect your choices.

TECHNICAL GUIDELINES: As explained in the Terms of Contribution, we reserve the right to modify the look and delivery of your contribution to adapt to different technical requirements, such as screen sizes, speed of downloads and other technical constraints that may be necessary to distribute your contribution to the largest audience possible.  In the event that we find a corporate sponsor for your book, we may add the  sponsor's name to your contribution.  This would be done in a discreet  and tasteful fashion.

Please do not send us any hardcopies of contributions, whether by mail  or otherwise.  All hardcopies will be “returned to the sender”  unopened and at your expense. If you are not sure how to ensure that your contribution meets the guidelines below, we suggest that you print this page and take it to a friend who is technically competent or to an office service company.   The guidelines are not very complicated for a person with technical knowledge.

We need the text of your contribution.  We would prefer the file format to be recent  Word files (1997 or later) but we will do our best to accommodate  other file formats.

We also need you to scan your images with your text inserted where you want it on your illustrations.  There is no need for a higher  resolution than 100dpi.  Ideally the file you upload should not be  greater than 3 Mb to ensure reasonable download times to your readers.

Note that when you assemble your images with your text into a book, it may be preferable for you to use your photo editing software to reduce the size of your images into new image files before inserting them  into your book.  This will avoid inflating the size of your book PDF file.

You need to assemble your scans into one PDF file covering your entire book.  We will not assemble separate images into a book for you. Multiple PDF files will be rejected.