Talk to us
Bring last year’s list of things that were wrong
There is no form on this site, no trial to start and nothing to buy. What there is, is a conversation, and every adviser has the same document somewhere: the list of what went wrong in the book that already printed.
Bring one of these
Last year’s errata. Names, page numbers, the student who should not have been in it. Every entry on that list has a cause, and most of the causes are the same three problems. Fifteen minutes on it tells us both more than a demonstration would.
Your last three weeks. Not the production schedule — what actually happened. Who was working, when, on what, and which decisions got made at speed by whoever was available.
The group photograph you could not use. Or the one you used and thought about afterwards. It tells us what your school actually believes, which is more useful than a requirements list.
Where your candids come from. If the answer is student phones and a shared drive, say so; almost everybody’s is. The interesting question is what you would need for that to change, and it is rarely software.
Three things we will say before you ask
One. We do not print your book. If you were hoping for one arrangement covering imagery and printing, this is not it.
Two. A group frame with one refusal does not go in, and there is no crop-or-blur option. Plan your team photography knowing that.
Three. Nothing can be bought — not copies, not ads, not a run. Live payment is not turned on.
Any of the three is a legitimate reason to stop, and stopping in the first ten minutes beats stopping in February.
What we would need, if it goes further
Which band your book is in. It sounds trivial and it decides everything on this site. A K-12 school making one book should say so early, because it is carrying two regimes in one object.
Your permission form as it actually reads. Not a description — the document. Whether it expires, whether it is per student, and what it says about a family who never returned it.
Your deadline. Working backwards from the real one is the only way to find out whether a change is worth attempting this year or should wait for next. Advisers who adopt anything new in February have our sympathy and rarely our recommendation.
What a second conversation usually is
A working session against your own roster and one real spread, rather than a demonstration. The only environment that tells either of us anything is your production, and the only interesting question is what happens when something changes late.
What it establishes is narrow and useful. How long a rebuild takes when a permission changes in week two of three. Whether an editor can do real work in a class period. And what your index would look like if it were derived rather than typed — which is usually the moment an adviser recognises last year’s errata list in it.
About the conversation itself
Is there a trial?
Not a self-serve one. Setting this up against a real roster is work rather than a signup, and a demonstration that is not against your own material would tell you nothing about the only thing that matters, which is whether it survives your deadline.
Can our editors be part of it?
From the second conversation, if you want them to be, and it is usually a good idea. They will find in twenty minutes what an adult reviewer misses in a term. That is your judgement about your own students rather than something we would ask for.
Is mid-year a bad time to talk?
It is a fine time to talk and usually a bad time to change anything. If you are inside eight weeks of a deadline we will tell you to finish the book first, because a programme that switches systems in February loses a year it cannot get back.
Do we have to decide anything at the end?
There is nothing to decide about money because there is nothing to buy. The only decision at the end of a first conversation is whether there is a second one.
Where it happens
Through the platform’s own front door at homeroom.software, where a person at Stanley Studios picks it up. This site collects nothing from you: no form, no address to hand over before you can read anything.
What follows is a conversation rather than a sequence, and there is nothing to buy at the end of it. That is the actual state of the product, not a soft close.