Book settings

You can find Book settings on the icon rail to the left of the editor: it's the gear icon, near the top.

Almost everything here saves the moment you change it, so there's no Save button to look for. The one exception is the title, which saves when you click away from it or press Enter.

The title here is the same one the publish flow asks for, and the cover is the same card, so you can drag the picture to choose which part of it readers see.

Both are fixed once you publish an expansion. Readers who bought a release keep the book they bought, so the title and the picture stay as they were. You can still reframe the cover you have, though, and every new expansion can carry a cover of its own.

Every font in the list is shown in its own face, so you can get a feel for each one before you choose. Further down the page, the preview shows a heading and a line of story text in whichever font you've picked.

Your choice covers the story itself: paragraphs, headings, and the glossary mentions inside them. A reader's menus and toolbar keep the platform's own type, so they stay out of the way of the words. In your own editor, you'll also see the face in the chapter and glossary lists, which makes it easy to tell at a glance which book you're working in.

Reading direction is which way your story moves as a reader goes on.

• From top to bottom is one continuous scroll, a section at a time. Every book reads this way unless you say otherwise.
• From left to right slides the same sections in from the side, like turning a page. It applies on phones and narrow windows, where turning a page is the natural gesture; on a wider screen the story reads from top to bottom whichever you pick.

You can choose between Compact, Default and Airy. Line spacing is the air between the lines of a paragraph, not the gap between paragraphs. Airier text reads a little more slowly, which suits some books better than others.

You can colour six things: the paper, the story text, the headings, the small headings, the mentions readers tap to open a glossary entry, and the header band on a Glossary Item page. Any colour you leave alone follows the reader's own light or dark mode, so a book with no colours set still reads well either way.

Two of them reach a little further than their names suggest:

• Headings covers your two larger heading sizes, and bold words inside your story text.
• Small headings covers the smallest heading on its own. Left alone, it follows your story text.
• You will find the Entry Header section further down because it only colors the top band of the Glossary Item, not the story itself. If left untouched, it simply defaults to your paper theme.

The preview under the pickers is built from the same pieces the reader uses, so what it shows is what your readers will see. If two colours end up too close to read comfortably, a note appears underneath. It's there to help, and it won't stop you.

• A section with a Background keeps that Background's own colours. A Background is part of the story you wrote, so it comes first.

Further down the page, the windows your Dynamic Components open in have a set of their own: the window surface, its text, its titles, the choice panels, the accent, and the two kinds of line. Component edges is the outline around the window and around the buttons and fields in it; Component rules is the line under a window's title and the dividers inside it. Each can also be switched off, so a window can sit on the page with no outline at all. Success and failure colours are not yours to change: readers rely on those meaning the same thing in every book.

If you ever want to start fresh, Reset to the standard look clears the whole look at once: the font, every colour, the edges, the line spacing and the reading direction go back to the platform default. Your cover stays as it is, framing and all.

• Your drafts and Reading Simulation pick up changes straight away.
• A published book picks them up the next time you publish an update. A release carries a frozen copy of your book, and its look travels with it.
• Readers have a say too. Whenever a book's look changes anything, their sidebar offers a Book's own look switch that shows the story in the standard type, colours, spacing and direction instead. It starts on, and it's their choice for each book. Backgrounds aren't part of the switch, for the same reason they come first above.