Book Studio
FreeWhat it is
Write a real book three ways. Every book starts as a project: the bookshelf's create tiles open the Create a new book project popup (working title, optional subtitle, the kind of book, an optional book template, and optionally a brand plus whose voice to write in, all changeable later; creating is a free save, no AI). Five templates seed a real chapter scaffold, each heading carrying a guiding outline note the member can rename, reorder, or delete, with bodies honestly empty at zero words: Business How-To (12 chapters), Personal Memoir (10), Children's Storybook (8), Self-Publishing Starter (14), and the Staffing Agency Playbook (12, the Staffingpreneur shape from niche to scale); picking one is plain data, free, no AI, and clicking Write on a book with nothing written yet opens the path chooser at /book/start with three doors. The templates also have their own BOOK TEMPLATES page at /book/templates (the Templates door beside Create New on the bookshelf): search, category pills (Business, Memoir, Children, Publishing), template cards with a Popular badge on the favorites, and a detail panel showing the category, real chapter count, a typical finished length, and exactly what the template includes, with a Use Template door that opens the same 3-step create popup with that template already picked. Every book page carries the BOOK STUDIO double menu at the top of the content area: the Book Studio bar (My Books, Templates) and, when a book is open, the MANAGE BOOK row (Write, Overview, Details, Covers, Files, Orders, Publishing, Settings), each tab a real door to that work. Orders (/book/orders) is the book's sales room: total orders, units, revenue, and refunds, honestly zero with a clear empty state until the book sells through Individual Audacity Publishing. An empty chapter in the Writing Studio shows the Ask Me invitation: Ask Me and Generate Outline open the Build with AI guided questions, Create Chapter Prompts opens the Outline tab, Start from Template opens the Templates page. Door one, I already have a book: upload a finished manuscript at /book/import (drag and drop or browse a Word .docx, PDF, .txt, or Markdown file up to 25MB, or paste/dictate the whole text) and it is split into chapters on its own heading structure with smart chapter-break fallbacks, saved onto that book as a Draft with an import summary (chapters, total words, how it was split); ingestion is pure parsing, not AI, so it is free. Door two, I have material: the 5-step Build From Material wizard at /book/material. Step 1 collects sources five ways (paste with a mic and live word count, upload Word/PDF/text/Markdown files that each become ONE source with free parsing, dictate live, an honest Audio tab that says file transcription is not built yet and points to pasting the transcript, and research links whose pages are fetched and saved as readable text for free, with an honest fallback when a page cannot be read), watched by a live Material health card (words, sources, Not ready yet / Ready to continue / Good to go) that gates Continue at 200 words. Step 2 organizes sources into named groups with arrow reordering and Move to menus (no fake dragging), plus a one-call AI Suggest order & grouping that also flags overlapping themes honestly (uses credits, refunded on failure). Step 3 shapes the brief (audience, promise, tone, genre, POV, estimated length, theme chips, must-include ideas, reader takeaways, mics on the free-text boxes) with a one-call Suggest from my material that fills only empty fields (uses credits, refunded on failure). Step 4 generates the full outline (front matter, introduction, parts, chapters with source-drawn notes, conclusion, back matter) in one AI call, then everything is editable: reorder, retitle, delete, free Add chapter, a Refine instruction box, and Regenerate with a confirm (outline calls use credits, refunded on failure); the right rail shows proposed chapters and an estimated word count. Step 5 is free: outline rows become chapters carrying their notes as editable blurbs plus clearly marked [Outline direction] starters, the material becomes the book's source text, the brief carries into the intake, the book moves to Writing, and the member lands in the Writing Studio at /book/write. The wizard autosaves and resumes. Door three, Starting from scratch: just an idea or topic and the engine invents the content, after a short hybrid intake (a few structured fields plus AI questions tailored to your book) so it is specific, not generic, then it generates a publish-ready book in chapters. Once a book HAS chapters, the words live in the WRITING STUDIO at /book/write: the shelf's Write button, the path chooser, the import and material handoffs, and the Open the Writing Studio door inside the Book Studio all land there. It is a three-panel writing room, all-white with brand type and phone-first responsiveness. The Manuscript rail groups Opening pages (Copyright, Dedication, Epigraph, Table of Contents, Foreword, Preface, Acknowledgments), Chapters (chapters and sections with keyboard up/down reordering, a filter box, and an Add split button), and Closing pages (About the Author, Bibliography/References, Also by the Author), each group foldable with a one-line caption and a count badge, every section row with an honest status glyph and label (Not started, Imported, Editing, In progress, Done), a Manuscript overview card with the live word, chapter, page, and read-time totals at the rail's foot, and a collapse control that tucks the whole rail into a slim strip for a wider canvas (hidden, not removed, one click brings it back); Copyright and Contents build themselves with include toggles, Acknowledgments, About the Author, and Bibliography share one home with the publishing step, and the five new sections (Dedication, Epigraph, Foreword, Preface, Also by the Author) export only when non-empty. The center editor has an inline-editable title with mic, debounced autosave with an honest All changes saved line that never downgrades a Ready to Publish or Published book, a real rich-text editor (a formatting toolbar with paragraph and Heading 1-3, bold, italic, underline, text color, bullet and numbered lists, indent/outdent, quote, and links) whose formatting saves with the words and flows into the Word and EPUB exports, a Focus button that clears both rails and the menus for a full-width writing canvas, a Spell check on/off toggle over the browser's native check, Insert scene break, Split chapter at the cursor, real client-side Find & Replace and Search book across the chapter or whole book, per-chapter AI (Rewrite, Expand, Polish, and Draft this chapter on empty chapters, written from the material and outline direction; credits, never charged on failure), and Write / Outline / Notes / Goals tabs (titles and blurbs; a per-book mic notepad; a word goal with target date, daily pace, and words-written-per-day tracking). The right panel is a live preview paginated at about 300 words a page with real Page N of M numbers, a Paperback / eBook width toggle, and preview controls for Theme, reading Font, Zoom, and Portrait / Landscape, plus a Writing Tools card (today's words, goal progress, statistics, spell-check status); on phones the panels stack behind a Sections / Write / Preview switcher. The publishing side has its own room: PRE-PUBLISHING at /book/publish (the Writing Studio's Publishing & downloads button and the Manage Book publishing door land there), opening on Dee's Publishing Page design and STOPPING where the design stops, at the distribution chooser: an honest Publish Readiness bar with a percent complete (manuscript words, cover art, author, description, ISBN, Published status, all real checks with Fix doors that lead to the right room), a How would you like to publish chooser with two paths (Publish It Yourself, with direct Word and EPUB downloads, or Publish Through Individual Audacity Publishing, ISBN, formatting, and distribution handled under the IAP imprint), and the cover preview with book details at a glance; book details edit in Manage Book, and the cover lives on the Cover Designer's own page. Choosing the IAP path opens the handoff page at /book/publish/iap: what happens next (the team reviews the book, handles ISBN and distribution to Amazon KDP, IngramSpark, Apple Books, Barnes & Noble, and Google Play Books, and the book goes live under the IAP imprint) and a Start the process door that opens the email conversation with the publishing team. Back in the classic Book Studio at /book the manuscript can still be edited like a notepad with a mic on every box plus per-chapter Regenerate, Add to, and AI polish (or one-click Polish whole book, bundle priced per box with a cap), insert a new page between any two (blank is free; AI-drafts it from the surrounding content using credits), and Illustrate this content draws art matching any page's words (uses credits, kept in a per-page gallery, shown beside the words in the preview and included in exports; great for children's books). A Publishing step sets the book details (author, publisher plus address/email/website that flow onto the copyright page, copyright year, ISBN), the trim size, front/back matter in true publishing order (auto table of contents, auto-drafted copyright page, disclaimer, introduction, acknowledgments, references, about the author, CTA page, each with a friendly Write-a-draft button that drafts it from your book using credits), a back cover (AI-drafted blurb or dictate your own, back art generated or uploaded, an ISBN barcode block in publishing exports, and the spine line auto-built from title and author), plus running heads and book-grade page numbering (roman numerals up front, arabic in the body, folios dropped on title, copyright, and chapter openers). The live page-by-page preview is docked beside the editor and clicking any page opens the whole book full screen. The COVER DESIGNER has its OWN page at /book/covers (Dee's law: a tool is never thrown at the bottom of another page; the Writing Studio's Covers button, the Publishing page's Design the cover door, and Manage Book's Open the cover designer all land there), with the book's header (cover thumb, title, status badge, Continue Writing) over three doors as tabs (Dee's design): Design it typesets a clean cover from your real title, subtitle, and author, all three editable right on the page with dictation mics, with a style preset (Minimal, Bold, or Literary, with a style preview strip beside the live preview), a background color (swatches or any custom color or hex), a title font, separate title, subtitle, and author lettering colors (swatches or any custom color), and an optional overlay image (a transparent PNG layered over the background and behind the words, baked into the saved cover), with an auto-updating live preview, a free Save cover that puts the finished PNG on the book and quietly saves the title, subtitle, and author edits onto the book too, and Download preview (pure typesetting, no AI, free); Upload your own takes a JPG or PNG and the typesetting options put your title on it; AI Generate drafts cover copy, a palette, and an art prompt you can steer, then generates real cover art (uses credits). EVERY cover ever designed, generated, uploaded, or typeset is kept in a Your covers gallery on the book, and one click makes any of them the active cover (regenerating adds, never deletes). Smart title typesetting puts the title, subtitle, and author name on textless art: the free scrim typeset with a live preview, or AI typeset (Nano Banana Pro, uses credits, refunded if it fails); free typesets re-render automatically when the title changes, and stale AI typesets get an honest re-typeset nudge. Then download as Word, EPUB (covers, illustrations, and matter included), or Markdown, with true device downloads for every cover and illustration; the Download and publish step then asks the real question: publish it yourself (Amazon KDP accepts the EPUB as is) or have Individual Audacity Publishing, Dee's publishing company, physically publish it (the Yes door starts the email conversation with the publisher, and publish readiness stays one click away). Books save to the account and stand on the My Books bookshelf at /my-stuff/books, and the bookshelf is the Book Studio's front door: a signed-in member opening /book with no book picked lands on their shelf first, the header carries a Create New button that opens the create popup, and an empty shelf greets a first-timer with Start Your First Book at the very top. The shelf is designed as real wooden shelves from the owner's mockups: rustic sawn planks the books stand on, every book a rounded hardback with its spine hinge and the cover art edge to edge (or a designed spine with the title and author until it has art), and a white status bar at the base of each book carrying the colored status chip with its icon plus a three-dot menu (manage, write, status, delete). The statuses are Not Started (a fresh project), Writing (intake underway), Draft (a manuscript exists, generated, imported, or saved), Ready to Publish, and Published; books written before the lifecycle show as Draft. Four switchable views that are remembered (Shelf, Grid, Columns list, and a Kanban with one column per status), search by title plus Status, Type, and Sort filters, a create-a-book spine that opens the create popup, Write to continue that exact book (the path chooser when nothing is written yet, the studio with everything intact once it is), and Manage to open it, change its status with the real status picker (also on every Columns row and Kanban card; Ready to Publish and Published are the member's own moves), or delete it (delete confirms first and is permanent). Members on the Studio plan and up also get a My books / Client books filter; Client books is honestly empty for now because creating a book for a client arrives with a later Book Studio flow. Every book also has a home base: the MANAGE BOOK workspace at /book/manage (the shelf's Manage menu, the Book Studio's Manage door, and the Writing Studio header all open it), a book header (cover, title, author, lifecycle chip, Continue Writing) over six real tabs. Overview shows honest stat cards (publish status, estimated pages at about 300 words a page, the real export formats, last updated), a writing-progress card driven by the book's actual word goal, Recent Activity built only from real stored timestamps (creation, last save, covers, file uploads; nothing invented), and a derived Next Recommended Step (choose a path, design the cover, complete details, or a ready line). Book Details is the full details form saved onto the book itself so both studios and every export read the same data: basic info (title, subtitle, author display name, book type, language, audience), description and positioning boxes with dictation mics (description, elevator summary, target reader, key promise), metadata (up to 3 category chips, keyword chips, a read-only page estimate, trim size, interior type), and goals/production (intended publish date, a writing-goal select that edits the same stored goal as the Writing Studio's Goals tab, production notes with a mic). Files is a real per-book file hub: drag-drop or browse uploads straight to storage with real progress (images, documents, and audio up to 100 MB each; an honest 8 MB server fallback when the direct upload is blocked), file rows with name, type, size, date, download, and delete; audio stores as-is because transcription is not built yet, and there is no Google Docs import. Cover shows the current cover and the full Your covers gallery (plus back covers) with one-click Use as cover; designing stays on the Cover Designer's own page at /book/covers, one home. Settings holds the pen name toggle (when on, every export prints the pen name as the author, copyright page included), a door to the Writing Studio's Goals tab, Duplicate book (a real server copy; uploaded files stay with the original and a copy is never Ready or Published on arrival), Download a backup (.docx), reversible Archive (hides the book behind the bookshelf's View archived toggle; never touches the lifecycle status; restore anytime from the shelf's Manage menu or Settings), and Delete permanently behind a type-the-title confirmation (removes the book, covers, and uploaded files). Publishing explains honestly that books publish through Individual Audacity Publishing (Dee's publishing company), shows a Publish Readiness checklist derived only from real data (manuscript has words, cover art exists, description written, author or pen name set) with honest unchecked states and Fix this doors, opens the Pre-Publishing room, and offers the email door to start the publishing conversation with Individual Audacity Publishing when the book is ready; there is no ISBN, channel, pricing, or orders UI because that waits on the publishing platform.
What it is for
writing and publishing a book to build authority or a lead funnel, whether you have material or only an idea
How to use it
Go to /book (Book Studio) and pick a mode: bring your own material or write from an idea. Run the short intake, generate, then edit it like a notepad, design a cover, and export to Word, EPUB, or Markdown.