Studio accepts one upload format: CBZ. A CBZ is a ZIP archive of page images with the extension renamed.
It is also what VerseDB hands back to readers when you allow downloads, so it is the format on both ends of the pipeline.
What goes inside the archive#
Pages must be JPG, PNG, WebP, or GIF. Anything else in the archive is ignored, including ComicInfo.xml, hidden files, and the __MACOSX folder macOS adds.
Page order comes from the filenames, sorted naturally. Name your files with zero-padded numbers of equal width so the order is unambiguous.
Pad to an equal width: 001.jpg, 002.jpg, 010.jpg. A cover named cover.jpg sorts to the end, because digits sort before letters — make the cover 001.
Each upload is capped at 300 MB, 250 pages, 100 MB per image, and 60 megapixels per image.
Every page is re-encoded to WebP and scaled to fit within 3200px on its long edge. Source images larger than that gain nothing, so 2000–3200px on the long edge is the useful range. Small or blurry pages stay small and blurry.
Building the CBZ#
From a folder of page images:
cd pages/
zip -X -r ../book.cbz . -x '.*' -x '__MACOSX/*'
Any zip tool works. The -X flag and the exclusions only keep macOS metadata out, which Studio ignores anyway.
Check the order before you upload. This lists the files the way Studio will read them:
unzip -l book.cbz | awk '{print $4}' | grep -Ei '\.(jpg|jpeg|png|webp|gif)$' | sort -f
If the cover is not first, renumber and rebuild.
Converting from another format#
CBR — a CBR is a RAR archive holding the same page images. Unpack it with The Unarchiver, Keka, or unar book.cbr, then zip the images as CBZ. Do not rename a .cbr to .cbz: the archive is still RAR inside, and the upload fails.
PDF — export the pages as images at 300 DPI, then zip them. Acrobat does this under Export To → Image; on the command line, pdftoppm -jpeg -r 300 book.pdf page. If your PDF is a print master, export the trimmed pages rather than the version carrying bleed and crop marks.
EPUB — a fixed-layout comic EPUB already holds page images: unzip it, pull the images out, and rebuild as CBZ. Check the order, since EPUB filenames are often not sequential. A text EPUB has no page images to extract — convert it to PDF with Calibre first, then follow the PDF steps.
After you upload#
Pages process in the background. Once they are ready, review them in the page grid, set your reading mode and direction, then submit the edition for review. Submitting requires two-factor authentication on your account.
Every upload requires the rights attestation checkbox. Accounts suspended under the repeat-infringer policy cannot upload.
Uploading again replaces every page on the issue and resets the edition to draft. An approved edition loses its approval and needs a fresh review.
Preview-only editions are capped at 3 pages. Use interior story pages, not the cover.
