Help

Getting started

1. Create a free account with an email address and a password, or with Google. No card is needed.
2. In the Library, choose New book and give it a title. If you like, pick a structure (three acts, fifteen beats, the hero's journey, romance beats, nonfiction or memoir) and the chapters arrive laid out, each with a scene that says what it is for. A blank book is the default, and every chapter can be renamed, moved or deleted. Or choose Add the sample book first to look around a short book with chapters, scenes, characters, places and notes already in place; it is yours to keep, rewrite or trash. When you come back, the Today line above your books shows the words written today across every book and your streak, Your writing year opens a calendar of every day you wrote in the last twelve months, and Continue writing opens the scene you were in. Under them sits the day's writing prompt: Start a scene with it adds a scene at the end of the book you edited last with the prompt on its first line. From October to December a card at the top of the Library is about Sweet Fifty, our November challenge: join it and the card counts your November words across every book against 50,000, with a finisher badge on the card and in Account when you reach it.
3. Write in the Manuscript. Chapters and scenes live in the left panel; your words save as you type, and keep saving when the connection drops. The header holds a sprint timer, the book's statistics, your daily goal and a style check that reads the open scene on your device: reading grade, passive voice, adverbs, filler words, clichés, long sentences, dialogue tags that do more than said, the words and phrases you repeat, who speaks how often, and your own words to watch, with marks in the text when you want them. Nothing is sent anywhere. Give the book a word target and a finish date in Book settings, or pick a preset such as a novel in a month, and the statistics, the library card and the Today line say how many words a day keep it on time. Notes you pin in Notes stay under the scene details while you write, and Characters and places sit there too, each with how often the open scene names it; Mark names in the text underlines every mention. Highlight a passage in one of four colours from the toolbar (Ctrl+Shift+H), or choose Note on the selection to leave yourself a note on it: the notes sit under the scene details, each with its passage, and highlights and notes stay out of every export and every shared copy. Copying a passage leaves its note behind; cutting and pasting it or dragging it within the scene keeps it, and a note left empty goes. View options hides them while you read.
4. Open the Outline to see the book as cards you can move, and to add a chapter or a scene without leaving the board. The Plot grid lays the same scenes out by chapter and by point of view, character, place or status, so you can see who carries which chapters and where a thread goes quiet; Characters and Places and Notes keep the facts beside the draft. A note keeps its sources too, under Sources: the work's title, a link and what it says there, each with a citation to copy for your acknowledgements or bibliography, and searching notes finds them. Give a character or a place the other names the text uses for them, under Also known as (a nickname, a title, a maiden name), and Appears in and the Plot grid count those mentions too. Under the summary, Facts keep an age, an eye colour, an allegiance or anything else straight as label and value pairs; the labels the rest of the cast uses are one tap away, and the search finds a character or a place by a fact you have filled in. New character and New place offer a template to start from (a protagonist, an antagonist, a main setting, among others): the facts to fill and the questions the notes open with, or the facts your other characters or places already keep. Relations link two characters or places both ways (parent of and child of, lives in and home of, or your own words); each page lists its own, and the Relations tab draws every pair as a map. A World tab keeps everything else: items, factions, lore, creatures, events, or a kind of your own, each with the same page as a character and grouped by type. The Timeline tab lays the same scenes out in the order they happen: place them all in manuscript order to start, drag each into its place in the story, 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.

Anywhere in the app, press Ctrl+K (⌘K on a Mac) or the Jump to button in the top bar, type a few letters, and go straight to a scene, chapter, character, place, note, book or screen by name, or run what the screen offers: a new scene, focus mode, a sprint, a new book, note, character or place.

The free plan includes one book with as many chapters and scenes as it needs. A second book, Versions and import come with Scribe; see the pricing page for the full list. On every plan the book keeps automatic versions as you write and you can compare them; saving a version yourself and restoring one come with Scribe.

On your phone and offline

Author Sweets runs in any current browser. To use it like an app, open authorsweets.com and choose Install or Add to Home Screen from the browser menu; it then opens in its own window on a phone, tablet or desktop. Books you have opened keep working with no connection, and your changes sync when it returns. Creating a book, copying one and bringing one back from the trash need a connection, because they check your plan's book limit. Press and hold the installed icon on a phone, or right-click it on a desktop, for two shortcuts: Continue writing and New book.

The theme menu at the top of every page switches between light, dark and the device setting. In the app, Account, then Appearance and writing, chooses one of four workspace palettes for the light theme.

Read this scene aloud, in the manuscript's View options, reads the open scene with the voices built into your device, selecting each sentence as it goes, with a speed control, pause and stop. Hearing a scene catches what the eye skips. Nothing is sent anywhere; the voices on offer are whatever your browser and device provide. Dictate into this scene, beside it (or the microphone in the toolbar, Ctrl+Alt+V, which is ⌥⌘V on a Mac), writes what you say at the cursor with your browser's own speech recognition, in your browser's language. In English, say "full stop", "comma", "question mark", "open quote" or "new paragraph" for the marks. After a, the or a possessive a mark is a word, as in "a period of time", and so is "period", "colon" or "dash" after this, that or each when more words follow; "literal" before a mark writes it as a word. In other languages, the marks are the ones your browser writes. The first time, a note says where the audio goes: where the browser can recognise speech on the device it does, and the strip under the toolbar says so; otherwise your browser's maker hears the audio, never Author Sweets. Stop (or Escape) writes the last words the browser was still settling where you stopped (if it never finishes them, a message says which words were lost), and a screen reader hears each piece of text as it is written. Chrome, Edge and Safari have it.

Importing a manuscript

A Word document (.docx) imports with its headings as chapters and its text as scenes; a Scrivener project imports with its binder as the outline; an EPUB imports chapter by chapter; a Markdown or plain-text file imports with its headings or its "Chapter One" lines as chapters. In the Library, Import a book starts a new book from the file; in a book's Publish screen, Add chapters from a file adds the file's chapters to that book. Import is part of the Scribe plan and above.

• From Word, headings become chapter titles and the text between them becomes scenes. Bold, italic, lists and block quotes are kept. Accept any tracked changes before importing.
• From Scrivener, zip the .scriv folder first (on a Mac, right-click it and choose Compress; or use File ▸ Back Up ▸ Back Up To with the zip option) and choose the .zip. The Manuscript folder's folders become chapters and its texts become scenes, with parts kept, synopses carried over, and chapters unticked for Compile left out of exports. Research, notes, labels and the trash stay in Scrivener. Scrivener 2 and 3 projects both work.
• From an EPUB (.epub), each chapter file becomes a chapter and its headings are kept; the cover, title and copyright pages land in "Opening pages", left out of exports. Only unprotected EPUBs can be read, such as the one your own publishing tool exports; a file with DRM is refused.
• From Markdown (.md) or plain text (.txt), headings, "Chapter One" lines or page breaks become chapters and "#" or "* * *" lines become scene breaks. Markdown keeps bold, italic, quotes, lists and links; plain text is kept exactly as typed, one paragraph per line, or per blank-separated block when the file is hard-wrapped.
• The file itself is not stored, so keep your original. If an import needs a second try, delete the imported chapters and import again.

Exporting

Publish exports the whole book, or a selection of chapters, as Word (.docx), EPUB or PDF, with the title page, copyright page, dedication and back matter you fill in once. Exports are part of the Artisan plan and above; every plan can download its own data at any time (see deleting your account).

• Word: for editors, agents and anyone who works in tracked changes.
• Word manuscript: the same text in standard manuscript format (Times New Roman 12, double spaced, your surname, the title and the page number at the top of every page, the word count on the title page), for agents, editors and contests that ask for it.
• EPUB: for e-book stores and e-readers.
• PDF: for printing and proofreading.
• Copy as text: the exported chapters on the clipboard as plain text, with # between scenes and _italics_, for an email or a form that asks for the first pages. Every plan has it.
• Download as Markdown: the same chapters as a .md file with the title, chapter headings, a rule between scenes and *emphasis*, for Obsidian, Ulysses, a static site or a backup. Every plan has it too.
• The outline, from the Export menu on the Outline board: every chapter with its scenes, and each scene's point of view, status, length and synopsis, copied as plain text or saved as Markdown, for a synopsis, a nonfiction proposal or the chapter plan an editor asked for. Every plan has it.

The Word and PDF files open with a contents page when the chapters have titles, parts or front and back matter, and the PDF carries a bookmark for every part and chapter; the EPUB always has its own table of contents, and names the genre and series from the book details. Before you export, Publish lists what the book still needs, from a missing author name to a page count too short for a paperback, and each finished PDF shows its page count. The PDF's book fonts cover Western European letters and punctuation; Publish names any other characters in a chapter or on the title, copyright or dedication page (Chinese, Japanese or Korean writing, emoji, Greek or Cyrillic letters, and signs such as † or ‰) because the PDF prints each as an empty box, and says when the scene-break ornament you chose will print as * * * instead. The EPUB and Word files keep both.

The print PDF is made for upload to KDP, IngramSpark and other print services. Every page carries its trim size, the fonts are embedded, and the inside margin widens with the page count to what those services ask for (0.375 in up to 150 pages, up to 0.875 in past 700). Tick Add bleed when a service asks for it, and pick cream or white paper: each finished PDF lists its trim, margins and the spine width your cover designer needs.

The interior theme on Publish sets how each chapter of the story opens in the print PDF and the EPUB. Classic centres the heading with a short rule under it, Romance sets the title in italics with a flourish, and both open with a drop cap three lines deep and a first line in small capitals. Modern sets the heading flush left and opens with small capitals only. A chapter that starts with a heading or a list keeps the plain opening, and front and back matter always do. The Word file stays plain.

Preview on Publish sets the opening of the book (about 12,000 words and at most 40 chapters, or the whole book when it is shorter) as the print PDF and as e-reader pages, with the settings on the screen whether or not you have saved them, so you can try a trim size, a font or a chapter style before you export. Preview comes with the plans that include exports.

Front and back matter on Publish adds an epigraph, a foreword, a preface, acknowledgements or an About the Author page as a front or back matter chapter you write in the manuscript. Each is set the way a printed book sets it: the epigraph alone on a page before the contents, in italics, with a last line that starts with a dash as its source; the others under their own title. Tick your other books for an Also by page at the end, grouped by series. A Word manuscript leaves the epigraph and the Also by page out.

Sharing with readers

Share makes a read-only link to a book or a set of chapters. Readers open it in any browser, with no account, and can leave comments in the margin if you allow it; the page keeps each reader's chapter and text size, so a return visit opens where they left off. You can set an expiry, turn comments on or off and revoke a link at any time. Each chapter ends with a one-line Author Sweets credit and a sign-up link; nothing else of yours is shown.

For a beta round, create reader codes (Artisan plan and above): each code has a label and a use limit, so you can see which reader said what and close the round when you have enough. Ask up to three questions on the Share screen and readers answer them at the end of every chapter; the answers arrive with the comments, grouped by reader, and again by question and chapter in the Answers section, ready to copy as text. Every link and every reader on a code shows how far they got: the furthest chapter they opened and the chapter they are at; a code says how many of its readers have reached the last chapter, and where they stop: the chapter after which most of them went no further and, chapter by chapter, how many got that far.

Billing

• Paid plans are subscriptions billed monthly or yearly through Stripe. Author Sweets never sees your card number.
• Change plan, switch between monthly and yearly, update the card or cancel from the billing page in your account.
• When a plan offers a free trial, the pricing page says how many days, and on your first subscription the Start button in Account begins it with no card. Account shows the day the trial ends; add a card before then to keep the plan, or it pauses instead of charging. A paused plan has Resume plan in Account: it asks for a card if none is saved, charges it and restarts the plan that day.
• An account has one subscription at a time. To move to a bigger plan, use Change plan in Account or the upgrade offer, which open the plan change on Stripe's billing page.
• Promotion codes go in the field on the Stripe checkout page, and the discount shows before you pay.
• Cancelling keeps the plan active until the end of the period you have paid for, or of the trial, which then ends without turning into a paid plan. Every book stays in your library and open, and Copy as text and Download as Markdown keep working on every one of them; nothing is deleted. Without a paid plan you cannot add a book beyond the first, and the other paid features, such as versions, import and Word, EPUB and PDF exports (Artisan and above), wait for a plan that includes them.
• Refunds follow the terms of use. Write to us and we will sort it out.

Deleting your account

Account, then Delete account. You are asked to sign in again first. Deletion removes your books, files and account record from Author Sweets and cancels any subscription at once, with no further charges. It cannot be undone, so download your data first: Account, then Download my data gives you every book as JSON plus the files you uploaded.

Billing records that tax law requires us to keep survive deletion; see the privacy notice.

Contact

Email [email protected]. Include the email address of your account and, for a problem with a book, its title. We answer every message ourselves.