Release notes

Author Sweets 3: rebuilt from the ground up

Version 3.0 · October 15, 2026

• Versions and import follow the plan: on Free the book still keeps automatic versions you can compare, and Save version, Restore, Import a book and Add chapters from a file offer the Scribe plan instead of starting.
• Creating, copying and restoring a book check the plan's book limit on our server, so a double click or a second tab can't add a second book on Free. They need a connection; writing in a book you have opened still works offline. On Free the library says the sample book counts as your one book and offers to move it to the trash when you start your own, and the scene from the Try page can go into a book you already have.
• A new manuscript editor with parts, chapters and scenes. It saves as you type, keeps working without a connection and syncs when it returns.
• Highlights and your own notes in the text: mark a passage in one of four colours, or leave yourself a note on it from the toolbar; the notes sit under the scene details with their passages, and highlights and notes stay out of every export and every shared copy. View options hides them while you read.
• Publish warns before a PDF prints empty boxes: it names the characters in each chapter and on the title, copyright and dedication pages that the print fonts cannot set, such as Chinese, Japanese or Korean writing, emoji, Greek or Cyrillic, or signs such as † and ‰, and says when the chosen scene-break ornament will print as * * *.
• Focus mode, typewriter scrolling, find and replace across the book, daily word goals, streaks and a 30-day chart.
• Jump anywhere with Ctrl+K (⌘K on a Mac): a palette that goes to any scene, chapter, character, place, note, book or screen by name, switches the theme or signs out, and runs what the screen offers: a new scene, focus mode, a sprint, a new book, note, character or place.
• Share your progress from the book statistics: a picture card with your word count, today's words, your streak and how far along you are to the book's target, drawn on your device for the share sheet or your downloads, and a one-line text to paste.
• A style check in the manuscript header that runs on your device: reading grade, passive voice, adverbs, filler words, clichés, doubled words and long sentences, with marks in the text when you want them. Nothing is sent anywhere.
• The style check lists the words you use most and the phrases that come back in the scene, counts who speaks and with which tags (a tag that does more than said is a note), and keeps your own words to watch: click a word to watch it and every occurrence is counted and marked. Still on your device; nothing is sent anywhere.
• Try the editor on the website before you sign up: a sample scene, the toolbar, the word count and the style check, with what you write kept in your browser and offered as your first book once you have an account.
• Writing prompts on the website: seventy-two original prompts for fiction, memoir and first lines, grouped by genre, each with a link that opens it on the first line of the Try editor, no account needed.
• Name generators on the website: character, fantasy, villain, place and town names, twelve at a time, made in your browser with no account, with advice on choosing each kind of name.
• An editing cost calculator on the website: what editors and proofreaders charge per word from two published surveys, cited and dated, what that comes to for your word count, and what a cover design costs.
• A page on the website for each kind of book: Author Sweets for novelists, for memoir writers, for nonfiction authors and for writers with beta readers, each saying what matters first, the path a book takes through the app, what it costs and what to read next.
• Planning beside the draft: an outline board you can drag, characters and places with their own pages, notes with tags and pins.
• Sources on notes: a note keeps where its facts came from, the work’s title, a link and what it says there, each copied as a citation for your acknowledgements or bibliography, and searching notes finds them too.
• The outline board adds chapters and scenes of its own: New chapter beside the count, New scene at the foot of every column, and both in the palette, so a plan can grow where it is laid out.
• A Plot grid beside the Outline: the same scenes laid out by chapter and by point of view, character, place or status, so you can see who carries which chapters, where a thread goes quiet and what is still to do. Every scene is a link into the manuscript, and a character or place counts in a scene when it is the point of view or the text names it.
• A Timeline beside the Plot grid: the same scenes in the order they happen in the story, beside the order they are told. Place them all in manuscript order to start, drag each into its place, give it a story date in your own words (Day 3, Spring 1887; the same field sits in the scene details beside the manuscript), and a scene told out of its time is marked as a flashback or a flash-forward.
• A World tab in Planning for everything that is not a character or a place: items, factions, lore, creatures, events, or a kind of your own. Each entry has the same page (facts, other names, picture, notes, relations, Appears in), the list groups them by type, and renaming a type renames it on every entry at once.
• Relations between characters and places: link two of them both ways (parent of and child of, rival of, lives in and home of, or your own words), listed on each page with a link to the other, and drawn as a map under a new Relations tab in Planning.
• Templates for a new character or place: a protagonist, an antagonist, a supporting or minor character, a main setting, a home or an institution, each with the facts to fill and the questions its notes open with; or the facts your other characters or places already keep.
• Facts on every character and place: label and value pairs for an age, an eye colour, an allegiance or anything else to keep straight, with the labels the rest of the cast uses one tap away; the search finds them too.
• Also known as, on every character and place: the nicknames, titles and other spellings the text uses for them, so Appears in and the Plot grid count every mention, whatever the name on the page, and the search finds them too.
• Characters and places beside the draft: under the scene details, the book's cast and settings with how often the open scene names each of them (other names counted too), most named first, a search once the cast grows, a link to each page, and a switch that underlines every mention in the text.
• Five one-to-one comparison pages on the website (Author Sweets vs Scrivener, Dabble, Reedsy Studio, Atticus and Novlr), each with which to choose and how to move a book across.
• A Story structures page on the website: the six shapes a new book can start from, every beat and what it is for, as the New book dialog lays them out.
• A word goal calculator on the website: the words a day that finish your book by a date at the days a week you write, the day a pace finishes, common plans and the typical length of a novel by genre.
• Plan a book on the website first: start from a structure on the Story structures page or set a target in the calculator, and after you sign up the Library offers to create that book with the structure, the word target and the finish date already in place.
• Versions: automatic snapshots as you write plus any you save by hand, a word-by-word compare, and restore in one click.
• Writing sprints from the manuscript header, with the words you added and your best sprint kept on the device, and a statistics panel: reading time, pages in print, scenes by status, words by chapter, the longest streak in the book.
• Pinned notes beside the draft: the notes you pin in Notes (a timeline, a rule of the world, the ending) stay under the scene details in the manuscript while you write, each a link back to its page.
• Saving you can count on: words typed just before a reload or a closed tab are kept on your device and saved the next time the page opens, several tabs or devices writing in one scene, even at the same spot, keep every word (and a deletion made in one reaches the other), words written offline join what was saved elsewhere meanwhile, undo takes back only your own typing, a scene too long for one save says so before anything is lost, a scene break goes where the caret is and stays put when you keep typing, and the caret is in the text after Add scene (letters typed at once go into the new scene), scene moves and focus mode. Character, place and note fields keep their last words through a reload, and words written in them offline join what was saved elsewhere meanwhile.
• Start a book from a structure: three acts, fifteen beats, the hero's journey, romance beats, nonfiction or memoir. The chapters arrive laid out, each with a scene that says what it is for.
• A sample book, The Tide Clock, to add on your first visit: three chapters of real prose with characters, places and a note, so every screen has something to show before you have written a line.
• A Getting started card in the library with six first steps (add a book, write 500 words, try a sprint, plan it, save a version, export it) that tick themselves off as you go.
• Import a Word document as a new book, or add its chapters to a book you already have.
• Export to Word, EPUB and PDF with a title page, copyright page, dedication, chapter styles and trim sizes you set once. The PDF has a contents page, bookmarks and a page count; the Word file a contents list; the EPUB the genre, series, rights and accessibility metadata stores file a book by. The readiness list flags a paperback too short or too long for print services, a copyright year in the future, and a missing ISBN or genre. Word also comes in standard manuscript format, the page agents, editors and contests ask for: Times New Roman 12, double spaced, the word count on the title page and your surname, the title and the page number at the top of every page.
• A print-ready PDF to the standard KDP and IngramSpark ask for: the trim marked on every page, bleed when you tick it, a gutter that widens with the page count, the fonts embedded, and with each PDF the spine width your cover needs on cream or white paper.
• Interior themes on Publish: Classic, Modern and Romance dress each chapter of the story in the print PDF and the EPUB with a three-line drop cap, a first line in small capitals and an ornament under the title (Modern sets the headings flush left with no cap). The Word file stays plain.
• A live preview on Publish: see the opening of your book as the print PDF and as e-reader pages, set by the same exporter as the files, with the trim size, font and chapter style on the screen before you save or export.
• Front and back matter pages on Publish: add an epigraph, a foreword, a preface, acknowledgements or an About the Author page in one click, each set the way a printed book sets it in Word, EPUB and PDF (the epigraph alone before the contents, its source to the right), and an Also by page that lists your other books by series.
• Download as Markdown on Publish saves the exported chapters as a .md file with the title block, chapter headings by level, a rule between scenes and *emphasis*, for Obsidian, Ulysses, a static site or a backup, on every plan.
• Copy as text on Publish puts the exported chapters on the clipboard as plain text (a # between scenes, _italics_, no title page) for the agents and contests that want the first pages pasted into an email or a form, on every plan.
• Export the outline from the Outline board: Copy outline as text puts every chapter and its scenes, with each scene's point of view, status, length and synopsis, on the clipboard, and Download outline as Markdown saves the same as a .md file, for a synopsis, a nonfiction proposal or the chapter plan an editor asked for, on every plan.
• Share a read-only link to a book or a few chapters, with margin comments from readers who need no account, and reader codes for a beta round. The reader page keeps each reader's chapter and text size, so a return visit opens where they left off.
• Ask your readers up to three questions from the Share screen. They answer at the end of every chapter, and the answers arrive with their comments, grouped by reader, and again by question and chapter in the Answers section, ready to copy as text.
• How far each reader got, on the Share screen: every link and every reader on a code shows the furthest chapter they opened and the chapter they are at, and a code says how many of its readers have reached the last chapter.
• Where readers stop, on every reader code: the chapter after which most of your beta readers went no further, and a chapter-by-chapter count of how many got that far, so a round tells you where the book loses people before the comments do.
• Each reader on a code keeps a link of their own: a name already on the code is refused, so nobody can open another reader's copy or comment as them, the browser a reader used remembers their link, so entering the same code and name there again goes straight back to it, and New link for this reader on the Share screen sends a reader who lost theirs a fresh one with their comments kept.
• Reading a shared book is easier on everyone: a keyboard reader can comment on any paragraph, Enter sends a comment, Back steps through the chapters read, each reader on a group link has their own hourly allowance of comments, only the links you switched on count toward the 50-link limit, and turning a link or code back on keeps to the same limits as making one.
• A library with series, word counts, duplicate, trash and restore, and a Today line with the words written today across every book, your streak, and a Continue writing button that opens the scene you were in.
• Sweet Fifty, our November novel challenge: join from its page on the website or the card at the top of your Library, and the card counts the words you write in November across every book against 50,000, with the day of the month, how far you are from an even pace and the words a day that still finish. Reach 50,000 and a finisher badge appears on the card and in Account.
• Pricing and Account say when a plan comes with a free trial, how many days and the day it ends, with no card needed; promotion codes work at Checkout; and the promise after cancelling is written down on the website and in Account: every book stays open, and Copy as text and Download as Markdown keep working on every one.
• Safer billing: one subscription per account, even with two tabs open or a double-click; a subscriber choosing a bigger plan from an upgrade offer goes straight to the plan change; a plan paused after a trial without a card has Resume plan in Account, which asks for a card when none is saved; and coming back from the pricing page or Stripe opens Account at the Plan section.
• Your writing year, under the Today line: a calendar of the last twelve months with a square for every day, shaded by how far it got against your daily target, with the days written, the words, the longest streak and the best day.
• Today's prompt on the Library's Today line: one of the seventy-two writing prompts, a new one each day, with Start a scene with it, which opens a fresh scene at the end of the book you edited last with the prompt on the first line, and More prompts for the rest.
• Give a book a word target and a finish date in Book settings, or pick a preset: a novel in a month, a first draft in ninety days, a novella in six weeks. The statistics panel, your library and the Today line then say how many words a day keep it on time, and when you finish at your recent pace.
• Accounts with Google sign-in.
• Download my data (every book as JSON plus your files) and Delete my account.
• Import a zipped Scrivener project too (the binder becomes the outline, parts and chapters stay in order, and every scene keeps its synopsis), an EPUB chapter by chapter, or a Markdown or plain-text file with its headings as chapters.
• Light and dark themes, four workspace palettes, and an install-from-the-browser app for phones, tablets and desktops.
• The website loads faster: a first visit to the home, pricing, compare, guide and help pages downloads about a third less code than before, and the sign-in screens load only when you open them.
• Read this scene aloud, from View options in the manuscript: the voices on your device, a speed control, pause and stop, and each sentence selected as it is read.
• Dictate into this scene: a microphone in the toolbar (Ctrl+Alt+V, ⌥⌘V on a Mac) writes what you say at the cursor with your browser’s own speech recognition, with spoken marks in English (full stop, comma, open quote, new paragraph), on your device where the browser can, and a note before the first use on where the audio goes when it cannot.
• Two shortcuts on the installed app’s icon, Continue writing and New book: press and hold the icon on a phone, or right-click it on a desktop, and go straight to the scene you were in or to a new book.
• New plans: Free for one book, Scribe for unlimited books, versions and import, Artisan for exports and reader codes. Pay monthly or yearly.
• Import and export fixes: books whose title has a curly apostrophe or an accent download under their full name, Scrivener texts unticked for Compile stay out, an EPUB keeps its title and copyright pages in Opening pages so a round trip does not print them twice, a Word subtitle comes with the book, and the Publish settings say what to change and ask before you leave with unsaved changes.
• Upgrade where the plan stops you: the book limit, the export buttons and the reader codes each name the plan that unlocks them, show its price and start checkout right there, and Stripe sends you back to the same screen with a thank-you.
• Comment threads in a shared book: select a passage and choose Comment in the toolbar, and you and your co-authors reply, resolve and reopen threads under the scene details, live as the others write. A beta reader comments from the reading page, on a passage or, from the keyboard, on a paragraph, and sees only their own threads and the replies to them. The chapter list and the scene show who else has which scene open.
• Invite an editor into a shared book: they read a clean copy, comment, and suggest new wording for any passage, or a cut. You and your co-authors see each suggestion under the scene details, the old words struck through and the new ones after them, and Accept puts the change in the text while Reject leaves it alone. The editor sees how each suggestion was decided and can withdraw an open one.