Add a book
Go to Catalogue → Books and press New book. The form is in sections, and only the title is required; the rest can be filled in whenever you have it.
- The book: the Title, the Slug (the book’s part of its web address, filled in from the title), the Blurb, and the Cover.
- Availability: the Status, Draft or Published, and the Reading mode, which chapters explains.
- Release: the Release date, the ISBN (ISBN-10 or ISBN-13; hyphens and spaces are fine), and the Formats: Ebook, Paperback, Hardcover and Audiobook.
- Series: which series the book is Part of, and its Number in series. Leave it empty for a standalone.
- Where to buy: the shops that sell it. Press Add a retailer, then type the shop’s name (any shop: Amazon, Kobo, your local bookshop) and paste the link to the book there. Drag them into the order you want them shown.
- Praise: quotes from reviews and readers, each with its source, shown on the book’s page. Press Add a quote for each.
A Draft book does not appear anywhere on your site. Set it to Published when you are ready. While it is a draft, the Preview button at the top of the book’s page opens it as readers will see it, through a private link that works for an hour.
Covers
Upload the cover as an image of up to 4 MB; a JPEG around 1,600 pixels tall is plenty. Once it is uploaded, the image editor lets you crop it. Your site makes the smaller copies it needs for phones and for sharing on social networks, and uses the cover as the picture when someone shares the book’s link.
Changing a book’s address
If you change a book’s slug, links to the old address still lead to it, so links already shared keep working. The same is true of chapters, series, posts and pages.
Release dates and preorders
Give a Published book a Release date in the future and it becomes your next release:
- your home page leads with it, saying when it is coming, and “Out in 12 days” or “Out tomorrow” as the day nears;
- its buy buttons read “Preorder at” the shop, under the heading Preorder rather than Where to buy;
- its page and the series page say when it is coming.
On the release day the book counts as out, and the buttons become ordinary buy buttons by themselves. If more than one book has a date ahead, the nearest is the one your home page leads with. A book with no release date counts as already out.
Series
Go to Catalogue → Series and press New series. A series has a Title, a Slug and a Description. To put a book in it, open the book and choose the series under Part of, with its Number in series.
Your site gives each series its own page, listing its Published books in number order, each marked “Book 2 of” the series, with the cover and the start of the blurb. A book’s page links to the others in the same series. A series with no Published book yet is not shown. Give every book a number: that is what keeps the reading order right.
Offering a PDF or ePub
You can let readers download a book you have made as a PDF or an ePub. Open the book, choose the Downloads tab, and press Add a download.
- The File is a PDF or an ePub you made yourself, up to 20 MB. A book can have one of each.
- Access is Open to everyone or Members only. Members only files are for readers who join your site, while the book is in Full reading mode; in Sample mode they are hidden. See Members.
A reader who downloads gets a link that works for an hour, so a Members file never sits at a public address. The tab shows how many Members have downloaded each file. Downloads count towards your site’s 100 MB of storage, along with your images.
On your site
A book’s page shows its cover, its place in its series, its title, when it is coming or the formats it is available in, the blurb, the buy or preorder buttons, any downloads, the praise, your newsletter signup, and its chapters, if you publish any. It also tells search engines that it is a book, with its ISBN, series and shops, so they can show it properly; see visits and search engines.
Each book has its own feed, at its address followed by /feed, which readers can follow in a feed reader to hear about new Open chapters.
Limits
A site can hold 50 books, and 100 MB of images and downloads in all. When you reach one, the button to add another turns grey and says why. These limits are there to stop spam, not to sell anything, and they are raised on request: see safety limits.
Still stuck, or found something wrong on this page? Contact support.