Author Sweets for nonfiction authors
A nonfiction book is an argument carried over chapters, with the research close at hand. Author Sweets keeps the notes a click from the draft and the deadline in view.
What you get
- A nonfiction structure
- The nonfiction structure lays the chapters out from the opening promise to the close, each with a scene that says what it should do for the reader; rename or reorder them as the argument settles. The structures, beat by beat
- Research beside the draft
- Notes with tags and pins, full-text search across them, and a page for each person and place that lists where they appear in the text.
- Bring in what you have
- On paid plans, import a Word document as a new book, with its headings as chapters and the text between them as scenes, or add its chapters to a book you already have. Markdown and plain text import too.
- A deadline, counted down
- A word target and a finish date for the book. The statistics, the library card and the Today line say how many words a day keep it on time, with sprints and daily goals for the days it is hard. Words a day to a date: the calculator
- Plain prose, checked
- A style check on your device for reading grade, passive voice, filler words, clichés and long sentences, with marks in the text when you want them. Nothing is sent anywhere.
- Every format a publisher or a platform asks for
- Word for an editor, Word in standard manuscript format, EPUB with the metadata stores file a book by, PDF with a contents page and bookmarks, Markdown for a website or a newsletter, and Copy as text for an email.
The path a book takes
- Lay out the argument. Start from the nonfiction structure or your own chapter list, with a synopsis on each card saying what the chapter proves.
- Collect the research as notes. Tag them by chapter or theme, pin the ones you keep returning to, search them in full.
- Draft chapter by chapter. The target and the deadline turn into words a day; the Today line keeps the count.
- Check the prose. Reading grade and passive voice per scene, then a version saved before the big cut.
- Export for the editor or the platform. Word, EPUB, PDF or Markdown, with the front matter you filled in once.
What it costs
The free plan includes one book with the manuscript, the Outline and the Plot grid, characters, places and notes, read-only links for readers, and Copy as text and Download as Markdown, with no card. Scribe adds a second book and Versions, Scribe adds import, Artisan adds the Word, EPUB and PDF exports, and Artisan adds reader codes. The pricing page has the full table.
Read next
- Daily word goals that actually stick
- Scenes and chapters: breaking a book into pieces you can write
- Revising a first draft in three passes
- Standard manuscript format: what agents and contests expect
- Formatting a manuscript for print and ebook: what actually matters
Also for novelists, memoir writers and writers with beta readers.