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

Tap a book — the volume or its title — and you are asked which room you want:

• ✎ Write — the manuscript, or the page designer for a layout book.
• 🎨 Cover Studio — the cover, the spine, and the release board.
• 📣 Promotion Studio — store copy, product shots and listings.

There is no single "open" button, because naming one of the three as the action is what made the other two feel like settings. A book is a manuscript, a cover and a set of listings; the shelf says so.

Once you are inside a book you can move between the three rooms from the header — as pills on a wide screen, or from the ⋯ menu on a narrow one.

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.

Grid and list

The control above the catalog switches between the grid (covers, for browsing) and the list (dense rows for comparison). The choice is remembered and applies to Books and Audiobooks.

The ⋯ menu

Rename · Export… · Narrate · Archive · Delete.

• Archive hides a book from the shelf. It does not free a book slot.
• Delete is permanent and takes the chapters, cover and audio with it.

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.