Creating Books

The dashboard is your library — it lists every book you’ve created and is where you start new ones. This guide covers creating a book, what each field means, and how to navigate the library.

Creating a new book

1. From the dashboard, click New Book in the top-right corner.
2. A dialog appears titled Create New Book. Fill it in:
   • Title (required) — the book’s title.
   • Author — your name (optional).
   • Description — a short summary of the book (optional).
   • Language — a language code, defaulting to en (examples: en, es, fr, de).
3. Click Create Book.

The dialog reminds you that all details can be changed later in Settings, so don’t worry about getting everything perfect up front.

When you confirm, the app creates the book’s project folder and opens it in the editor right away.

What gets created

A new book isn’t an empty folder — the app scaffolds a working starter structure so you can begin writing immediately:

• A title page and copyright page in the Front Matter section.
• A first chapter file in the Chapters section, with starter frontmatter.
• A book.json with your title, author, language, and description.
• A style.md writing style guide and a styles/custom.css file.

For the complete layout, see project structure.

The folder name is a slug based on your title (for example, “My Amazing Book” → my-amazing-book). If that name already exists, the app adds a number to keep it unique.

The book card

Back on the dashboard, each book appears as a card showing:

• The cover image, or a placeholder if none is set.
• The title, author, and subtitle (if set).
• The file count and the last modified date.
• A short description preview and up to three keywords.
• A series badge in the corner if the book belongs to a series.

Each card has two actions:

• Edit — opens the book in the editor.
• The trash icon — deletes the book. You’ll be asked to confirm, since deleting removes the book and all its content files permanently.

Tip: clicking the cover or title opens the book’s home view; the Edit button takes you straight into the editor.

Sorting and finding books

Above the grid you’ll find a Sort menu. You can order your library by:

• Last Modified (the default — most recently edited first)
• Title (A–Z)
• Author
• Series Order (available once you have books in a series)

A book count next to the sort menu tells you how many books are showing.

Where the files land

Each book lives in its own folder inside the app’s books/ directory, and exports are written to that book’s exports/ folder. Because everything is on disk, you can back up, sync, or version-control your work independently of the app.

Series {#series}

If you write connected titles, you can group them into a series. When any of your books belongs to a series, a Series toggle appears on the dashboard that opens the series panel, and a Series Order sort option becomes available. Selecting a series filters the grid to just that series’ books, and each book card shows a series badge with its position number.

A book joins a series by referencing it from book.json (seriesSlug and seriesPosition); the series itself is defined in a JSON file under series/. See project structure for the underlying files.