The bookshelf

The bookshelf is where you land after signing in. It has two library views: Books for browsing and managing the catalog, and Audiobooks for listening and seeing narration production across every book that can be narrated. Books remain three-dimensional volumes built from their own cover designs.

On a wide screen, a library index stays beside the catalog. It carries collections and series in Books, then changes to listening and production states in Audiobooks. On tablets it becomes a drawer; on phones it becomes a touch sheet. The catalog itself remains the same library at every size.

Last edited

Books opens with a compact Last edited shelf. It is a quick way back into recent work, not a replacement for the complete catalog directly below it.

Opening a book

Every book has up to four rooms, and each card shows them with a word on where the book stands in each:

• ✎ Manuscript (🖍 Pages for a layout book) — the premise, the outline, the writing and the release.
• 🎨 Cover — the cover, the spine and the cover files.
• ◉ Audiobook — the narration, for novels and non-fiction.
• 📣 Promo — store copy, product shots and listings.

Tap a room on the card to open the book there, or tap the book itself to choose.

Moving around inside a book

The header always shows which room you are in — ✎ Manuscript ▾ — beside the logo. Tap it to go to another room of the same book, or back to the library.

Each room runs through numbered stages, shown beside it (on a phone, as a second pill). A novel's are:

1. Premise — what the book is and who it is for.
2. Outline — the chapter plan.
3. Write — the chapters themselves.
4. Release — the proof, the files, and the store checks.

A layout book has three: Premise, Design and Release. Its page plan is the Script view inside Design, beside the page designer's views.

You can move between stages freely. The one exception: until the book has an outline (or pages), only the premise is open — there is nothing to write or release yet. Stages show their order, never a tick: going past the premise does not make it finished.

Progress at a glance

Each book shows one tick per chapter, filled as chapters reach a real draft. Twelve chapters and forty look different at a glance, which a percentage bar never showed.

A state chip appears only when it has something to say — 🔒 Read-only, ▶ Playing, Complete. There is no "Draft" chip; the ticks already say that.

Characters

Characters, under the filters, lists every character you have made, in any book: what each is in, their usual narration voice, and how many your plan holds.

• Merge… — for two records of one person (two Fens made in two books). Choose which one to keep: it goes into every book either was in, takes the other's portrait into its history, and fills in a voice or description it lacked. The other is deleted. No picture is deleted.
• Delete — takes the character out of every book and series that uses them; the dialog names each one first. Their pictures stay in your art library.

Shelf, grid and list

The control above the catalog switches between three views. The choice is remembered and applies to the whole library.

• Shelf — the default. Your books stand on wooden shelves at their real relative sizes, so a 6×9 novel looks smaller than an 8.5×11 coloring book. The books of a series stand together on their own shelf, in volume order, with the series name on the shelf's edge. Select a book to open it up below its shelf: its cover laid out flat (back, spine and front), its progress, and its rooms — Manuscript, Cover, Audiobook and Promo — each one click away. A narrated book plays from there. Click the cover to see the book's full progress overview. Press Esc to close it, and the arrow keys to move along the shelf.
• Grid — covers with their rooms underneath, for browsing.
• List — dense rows, for comparing many books at once.

The ⋯ menu

Rename · Start a series (or Series settings) · Export… · Open Narration Studio · Archive · Delete permanently.

• Archive hides a book from the shelf. It does not free a book slot.
• Delete is permanent and takes the chapters, cover design and audio with it. Its pictures stay in your art library unless you tick Also delete the pictures only this book used in the dialog.

Creating and importing

Two surfaced controls sit in the library header:

• Start a new book — asks what kind of book it is. See Choosing a book type.
• ⬆ Import a manuscript — brings in an existing draft. See Importing a manuscript.

Both are capped by your plan. When you are at the cap the card explains it rather than failing silently.

The audiobook player

Audiobooks includes every narratable book, grouped through quiet state filters: Continue listening, Ready, In production, Not started, and Needs attention. These are status and navigation, not a repeated Listen or Narrate banner on every book.

Starting finished audio loads the dock at the bottom of the app. The same dock now opens when you audition a rendered passage in Narration Studio, so the studio and library no longer behave like separate players. A passage audition can follow you between rooms but does not replace the saved position in the assembled audiobook.

Only the ✕ dismisses it. Navigating does not, and neither does opening another book. Your position is remembered per book, so closing the tab and coming back resumes where you stopped.

The Audiobooks index distinguishes narration that is queued or running from a job that needs attention, so a failed run never looks like a book that has not started.

What to watch for

• The spine thickness is an estimate while you draft, floored by the plan you set on the premise screen. It is not the number a cover may be built from — that one has to be measured. See Measuring the interior.
• A read-only book is one that fell outside your plan's cap after a downgrade. Nothing was lost; upgrade and it unlocks.