Shakespeers is an online community for young writers. On Shakespeers, kids- Write stories, poems, plays, or whatever they’re in the mood to create- Share their writing with other kids- Read what other kids are writing- Exchange helpful feedback with peers We value writing for its own sake. Shakespeers is fun, playful, creative, and collaborative. There are no grades or tests, no stress, and nothing mandatory. It’s a joyful place to explore, get inspired, and make your writing even better.We believe kids can help each other become better, more confident writers. Our peer feedback system is designed to help kids give and receive helpful comments on each other’s writing. We’re here to build each other up, not tear each other down. Kids can react to each other’s writing by choosing supportive emoji and answering these questions:-What did you like best?-What’s one thing the author could do to make this even better?Families can order beautiful, hardbound books of their young writers' stories through Shakespeers. Celebrate your budding author's creativity by purchasing a printed book of their writing. Our books make wonderful gifts for grandparents, parents, teachers, and young writers, who'll love seeing their stories in print. Books cost $29 for up to 150 pages and $39 for up to 300 pages. Ordering books is easy: you don't need special software or design skills. Simply choose the stories you'd like to include, select one of our professionally-illustrated book covers, and let us know where to send your books. Learn more here.
Writing is fun and inherently valuable. Everything we do should be in service of kids writing, reading, and helping one another — and having fun along the way. Kids are capable. We build products and policies that respect kids and avoid condescension. We trust that kids can give and receive helpful feedback, and we support them in building those skills. Rules are transparent & consistently applied. We make our content principles and terms of service easy to find and understand. We are committed to enforcing our rules and updating them as needed to best serve our users and community. Keep parents informed, but respect their time. We create opportunities for parents to be aware, notified, and supportive of what their child is doing on our product. But after verifying their child’s account, we don’t expect or require constant engagement from parents in order for kids to enjoy the full product experience.
Write for fun. Kids express themselves through stories, poems, or whatever type of writing they're into at the moment. They can get inspired by the prompt of the day, or write whatever’s on their mind. Share with other kids. Kids read what their peers are writing and share their writing with them too.Help each other get even better. Kids tell each other what they think of their writing with emoji & supportive comments, and they get their peers' kind, constructive reactions to their writing.
First, parents create an account for their whole family and help their kids each select a username and avatar. Parents get real-time notifications on their dashboard whenever their child(ren) submit writing and once we’ve reviewed their writing to ensure it follows our content rules. We also send parents a digest email letting them know what their kid(s) were up to that day. Parents can also order beautiful, hardbound books of their young writers' stories via Shakespeers. Learn more here.
Whatever they’d like! We love stories, poems, plays, chapter books … you name it :) As long as your child is having fun, we’re excited for them to write in whatever form or genre they’d like. Just be sure to follow our content rules to keep Shakespeers safe and age-appropriate for the whole community.
With a paid account (just $4.99/family/month), kids can share as much writing as they’d like – there are no limits!
That's amazing -- we're so impressed by kids taking on long-form writing projects. Kids who are working on lengthy pieces don't need to wait until they're done with their entire project to share their writing on Shakespeers. Just as many great novelists have done, your child can publish their novel serially. For example, they might share a chapter at a time, rather than waiting to publish the entire novel. This will give them the chance to get feedback from their peers along the way and to get the community excited about what they're working on before it's done.They might also choose to share sections they want feedback on. Maybe a particular scene is giving them trouble, and they'd like their peers to suggest how they might improve it. They can share that scene even if the entire novel isn't done yet, and other kids can help them get unstuck.And when they just need to take a break from their novel for a little while, they can always check out our prompt of the day. Maybe writing a poem, short story, or essay in response to the daily prompt will mix things up for them and give them that burst of creativity they were looking for!
Shakespeers is designed for writers ages 8 and up; many of the writers on the platform are in upper elementary school, middle school, or early high school. We trust families to make decisions about whether it’s the right fit for each of their kids. To keep the platform safe for everyone, we ask kids to keep their writing PG, and we moderate writing to ensure it’s age-appropriate.
We take kids’ safety seriously. To access the site, kids need permission from their parent or guardian.Our team moderates all writing and comments to ensure adherence to our content rules. We ask writers not to share any personal information on Shakespeers. Rather than create their own usernames, kids select a username from our bank of fun options. We also care about kids’ psychological safety and have designed Shakespeers to be a fun, supportive place for kids to become even more confident in their abilities to write, read, and give and receive feedback.
Our team vets all writing and comments before they’re shared with the community. That way, we can ensure everything follows our content rules.If a child submits a story or comment that violates these rules, the child and their parent will be notified via the Notifications section of their dashboards, and their parent will also be notified via email. We’ll share information about what needs to change so the child can make any necessary edits and resubmit for review.We’re committed to building a safe, positive place for kids to write, read, and help each other get even better.
We moderate all writing that kids submit for review. Once a piece of writing passes moderation, we make it available to the Shakespeers community to read; kids can also react to writing with emoji and share comments.From time to time, we select writing to feature on our homepage or on social media so people interested in Shakespeers can get a sense for the type of writing happening on our platform. Before featuring a child’s writing, we reach out to their parent and get permission to do so.
Parents and their children retain full ownership of their writing.
On Shakespeers, you’ll create one account for your whole family. As a parent or guardian, you’ll create an account with your email address and a password. Then, you’ll invite your kids to set up their own profiles. It’s important that each kid has their own profile so they can associate their writing with their username.
Family accounts on Shakespeers are set up to support a parent and up to four kids. If you have more than four kids who want to use Shakespeers, email us at info@shakespeers.com.
We hope you and your child love Shakespeers and want to use it indefinitely, but if you’d like to cancel your subscription, you can do so easily. Simply go to your parent dashboard, where you’ll find a button that says “manage subscription.” When you click that button, you’ll be taken to Stripe, which we use to manage our subscriptions. There, you can cancel your subscription. Your subscription will remain active through the end of your current billing period. If you’re still on your free seven-day trial, your subscription will remain active through the end of the trial.If you change your mind about canceling, you can restart your subscription from the parent dashboard any time. If you have any questions, feel free to reach out to us at info@shakespeers.com, and we’ll be happy to help.
Kids can get started and access many aspects of Shakespeers for free. With a free account, kids can read and comment on all of the stories on Shakespeers. They can also write and save unlimited drafts, but they can't share their stories with the community.To share their writing, kids will need a subscription. We charge a modest fee of $4.99/month for your whole family (up to four siblings); with a paid account, kids can share unlimited stories and receive comments from their peers.Paid accounts start with a seven-day free trial, and you can cancel any time. We process payments through Stripe and don't collect or store any credit card information ourselves.
Paid accounts start with a seven-day free trial. During your free trial, you and your child(ren) have full access to all of the features on Shakespeers. You can add up to four children to your account, and they can share unlimited writing and get feedback from other young writers. After your free trial ends, we’ll charge your credit card $4.99 per month, and you can cancel any time with just a few clicks.
Yes! Families can order beautiful, hardbound books of their young writers' stories through Shakespeers. Celebrate your budding author's creativity by purchasing a printed book of their writing. Our books make wonderful gifts for grandparents, parents, teachers, and young writers, who'll love seeing their stories in print. Learn more here.
Books cost $29 for up to 150 pages and $39 for up to 300 pages. You can ship an unlimited number of books anywhere in the United States for $8.
Books cost $29 for up to 150 pages and $39 for up to 300 pages. You can ship an unlimited number of books anywhere in the United States for $8. Create yours now.
Nope! You'll do everything in whatever web browser you're reading this on. If you've tried using other programs to produce a book of your child's stories, you know those programs require the patience of a tightrope walker and the technical skills of a professional designer. But not when you use Shakespeers! If you know which stories you want to include, you can have your books ordered in a few minutes. Want your kids to write something new? That might take a little longer — creativity can’t be rushed! — but once your young author is done with their magnum opus, you'll have your books ordered in no time flat.If you run into any challenges, just email us at info@shakespeers.com, and we'll be happy to help.Create your book now.
We're excited to give young writers the option to add custom illustrations in the future, but for now, our books are text-only. You can add visual pizzazz to your book by selecting one of our professionally-illustrated, full-color book covers.Create your book now.
After you place your order, it takes 3-4 business days for your books to be printed and bound. Then, they're handed off to FedEx, UPS, or another shipping partner. When you choose your shipping speed, please keep in mind that the time ranges don't include production time. For example, economy shipping takes 5-7 business days, in addition to the time it takes for your book to be produced.
Not yet, but if you’re a teacher who’d like to use Shakespeers with your students, please feel free to reach out to us at info@shakespeers.com. We’d love to hear from you!
Right now, we're focused on writing, but we’re excited to expand to more forms of creative expression over time. If you’d like to see us expand, the best way to help is to spread the word about Shakespeers. The more success we have today, the more we’ll be able to do over time. Thanks so much for your interest and support!
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