Generating a book, comic or audiobook runs in the background rather than in your browser, so you can close the tab and come back. Most of the time it just finishes. This article covers what to do when it does not.

Where to check progress

The Creations In Progress panel on your profile shows every job that is still running, with the stage it has reached and a progress bar.

The stages run roughly in this order:

Init → Outline → Beats → Chapters → Images → HTML → PDF → EPUB → Audio → Email → Completed

Knowing the stage tells you a lot. A job sitting on Images is doing the slowest part of the process and usually just needs more time. A job that never got past Outline has a different problem.

How long is normal

It depends on the size of the job. A short story is quick. A full illustrated novel with images for every chapter, plus a PDF, an EPUB and audio, is many separate AI calls in sequence and takes substantially longer.

The useful signal is not elapsed time, it is movement. If the stage has changed in the last half hour, it is working. Leave it.

When a job is stuck or failed

After 30 minutes with no movement, the panel flags the job automatically: the card turns red, the status reads "Failed at" with the stage it stopped on, and two buttons appear.

• Retry Generation picks the job back up from where it stopped. It does not start over from scratch, and it does not recharge you for the work already completed. This is the right first move almost every time.
• Cancel & Delete removes the stuck creation entirely. Use it when you no longer want the book, not as a fix.

If a retry stops at the same stage twice, something specific to that project is failing rather than a passing glitch. Contact support with the story title and the stage it stops on.

What happens to your Creation Points

Failed generations are refunded. Work is charged up front, and if the job fails the points are returned to your bonus balance automatically. You do not have to ask.

Two consequences worth knowing:

• Refunds land in your bonus point balance, not your monthly allotment. They do not expire at the end of the month, so a refund is never lost to a reset.
• Retrying a failed job is not double-charged. The refund already happened.

If your balance looks wrong after a failure, check it again after a few minutes and then contact support if it still does not add up. Every charge and refund is logged. See Understanding Creation Points.

Common causes and fixes

"Insufficient points" stopped the job partway. Long jobs charge per stage. If you run out mid-generation, top up or upgrade and hit Retry, and it continues from where it stopped.

A prompt tripped the content filters. Generated content passes safety checks, and a premise that reads as prohibited will stop the job. Rewording the story description and retrying usually clears it. See BookZeta's role and your responsibilities.

Images failed but the text is fine. Image generation is the most failure-prone stage because it is the heaviest. You can usually keep the text and regenerate individual images from the editor rather than rerunning the whole book.

The page looks stale. Progress updates when the page loads. Refresh before concluding anything is wrong, particularly in the mobile apps, which cache aggressively.

Nothing appears in the panel at all. If a creation vanished rather than failing, check the Creations list on your profile. Finished stories move out of the in-progress panel as soon as they complete.

Exports and audiobooks

Exports and audiobook generation are queued jobs too, and they behave the same way: request it, leave the page, come back. Large print-ready PDFs and long audiobooks take the longest, because both are generated at full quality rather than previewed.

If an export link fails or the file will not download, request the export again. Download links are generated fresh each time and old ones expire.

When to contact support

Get in touch from the help page if:

• The same job fails at the same stage twice after retrying.
• Points were charged and not refunded after a clear failure.
• A finished story is missing from your creations.
• A file exports but will not open.

Include the story title and the stage it stopped at. That is usually enough to find the job in the logs without any back and forth.