Creating your first book, end to end

A book moves through five steps: Configure → Outline → Write → Cover → Preview. The stepper at the top of each page shows where you are, and you can click back to any step you've already completed.

Nothing is charged until you press a Generate button, and every button tells you its cost first.

1. Configure

Start from New Book (or the sidebar's Generate).

You'll first see suggested ideas. Pick one to pre-fill the form (everything stays editable), or choose Start from scratch.

Then fill in the form:

• Fiction or non-fiction — this changes the rest of the fields and how the outline is built.
• Title and author — the author name is what appears on the cover and title page.
• Chapter count — between 5 and 30, default 10.
• Chapter length — Short (~1,000 words), Medium (~1,700) or Long (~2,800). Multiply by your chapter count to estimate the finished book.
• Genre and tone (fiction) or category, audience and thesis (non-fiction).
• Premise — the more specific this is, the more the book sounds like the one you had in mind. A paragraph beats a sentence.
• Characters and setting (fiction) — named characters carry through the whole book.
• Dedication and acknowledgements (optional) — these are rendered into the exported book's front matter.

Fast or Quality

Fast writes each chapter's scenes independently. Quality feeds a running summary between scenes, which keeps continuity tighter across a long book — and costs more per chapter.

Fiction with plot threads to keep straight is the case for Quality. A how-to book of self-contained chapters is fine on Fast.

The cost breakdown card shows the exact total for your configuration against your current balance before you commit.

Press Generate Outline (3 credits on Fast, 5 on Quality) when the form is right.

2. Outline

You get a chapter-by-chapter outline: a title and summary per chapter, plus scene beats (fiction) or key points (non-fiction).

This is the cheapest place to fix a book. Editing here changes what gets written; editing after the prose is written means regenerating chapters.

You can:

• Edit any text directly — chapter titles, summaries, individual beats.
• Regenerate a single chapter's outline (1 credit) if one chapter is off but the rest is good.
• Reorder your thinking by rewriting summaries — the writer follows the outline it's given.

When you're happy, press Generate Full Book. The outline is saved to your book at this point.

3. Write

Chapters are generated in batches and appear as they finish. You'll see a live word count, a progress bar, an estimated finish time, and a paragraph from the most recently completed chapter.

While this runs:

• Everything autosaves. Your book exists in your library as a draft from this step onwards. If you close the tab, lose the connection, or come back tomorrow, open the draft from My Library → Continue and it picks up at the first chapter that hasn't been written.
• A failed chapter can be retried or skipped. Failed chapters are not charged; retry the single chapter, or use Retry all failed when the run finishes.
• You can cancel. Chapters already written are kept and paid for; the remaining ones are never started.
• Up to 3 generations run at once per account. Start a fourth and you'll be asked to wait — this protects your credits from a runaway run as much as it protects the queue.

When the last chapter lands you're offered two ways forward: Design cover or View book.

4. Cover

The Cover Designer generates cover art from your title, subtitle and genre (30 credits per generation), then lets you place the text on top: fonts, sizes, colours, and drag-to-position for title, subtitle and author.

You can skip this step and add a cover later from the Library, and you can regenerate the art if the first attempt isn't right. The Cover Designer here handles the eBook cover; paperback covers (with a spine sized to your page count) are edited in Cover Creator from your library.

5. Preview and export

The Preview page is your finished book, and where the last round of editing happens:

• Read it. Chapter navigation on the left, full prose on the right, with word count and reading time.
• Edit any chapter in the built-in editor. Edits save to your book.
• Regenerate a chapter you don't like (costs the same as writing it did). Previous versions are kept and can be restored.
• Reorder chapters by dragging, with a reset if you change your mind.
• Export — PDF (choose the body font), DOCX, Markdown. EPUB and the ZIP bundles are available from your library.

Press Save to Library to finish. Your book — chapters, cover, blurb — is already saved; this simply marks it complete and takes you to your library.

After the book

• Amazon listing — the Listing Creator turns the finished book into title variations, keywords and a description.
• Print files — download the paperback ZIP (interior PDF at print resolution plus the wrap cover) from your library.
• Everything is re-downloadable. Exports that carry a credit cost (EPUB, print-resolution cover images) are charged once per book; after that, re-downloading is free.