One of the first things you'll notice about Author's Forge is that it doesn't treat your novel like a single, sprawling word-processor document. Instead, it organizes your writing into a hierarchy that mirrors how authors actually think about their work—from the big picture of your entire catalog down to the individual chapter you're drafting today.
That hierarchy looks like this:
Library → Bookshelves → Series → Books → Chapters
Understanding these four levels takes about two minutes, and once it clicks, everything else in Author's Forge becomes intuitive. Let's walk through each one.
Libraries
A Library is the top-level container for your writing—think of it as the building that houses everything else. On your computer, a library is simply a folder, which means you can store it anywhere you like: your Documents folder, an external drive, or anywhere your existing backup routine already covers.
Most writers only ever need one library, but you can create as many as you want. Some authors keep separate libraries for completely different bodies of work—say, one for their pen-name romance novels and another for their non-fiction under their real name.
Bookshelves
Within a library, bookshelves group related work together. You might have one for "Fiction," another for "Non-Fiction," or perhaps "Work in Progress" and "Published." Use whatever categories make sense for the way you work.
Bookshelves do something important beyond organization: they define what the AI features can access. When you use AI Chat or AI Spellcheck, the AI can see content within the same bookshelf—so keep related series, notes, and research together on one bookshelf. If your AI assistant ever seems to be missing context about your story, the first thing to check is whether everything it needs lives on the same shelf.
Series
Within each bookshelf, you create series. A series groups related books together—like a trilogy, a collection of standalone novels in the same genre, or the chapters of your life in a memoir.
Even standalone books live in a series, and that's by design. A series of one is perfectly fine, and structuring it this way means that if you ever decide to write a sequel or a companion novel, the home for it already exists.
Books
Each book contains your actual writing: front matter, chapters, and back matter. Books also hold metadata like title, author, ISBN, and publication status—the information that travels with your manuscript when you export it for publishing.
Chapters live inside the book's content section, and you can reorder them freely as your story takes shape. Front and back matter (title pages, dedications, epilogues, author bios, and more) wrap around your chapters and appear in the right places automatically when you export.
Choosing a Structure That Fits You
There's no single "correct" way to set things up. A few examples to get you started:
- Single novel: One bookshelf, one series, one book. Simple.
- Trilogy or series: One bookshelf for the world, one series, three (or more) books that share notes and AI context.
- Prolific author: Separate bookshelves per genre or pen name, each with its own series inside.
- Memoirist or non-fiction writer: A bookshelf for the project, a series of one, and a book whose chapters map to the parts of your story.
Getting Around
- Click an item to open it
- Right-click for actions like rename, delete, or add content
In the sidebar, items shown in orange can be opened (chapters, notes, book settings). Items in grey are containers that hold other items. This color cue is a quick way to tell, at a glance, what you can click into versus what's just holding things together.