This article covers the basic UI features that are universal to all authors. For information relevant to our AI features, please review the help articles in the Laterpress AI section of the Help Center.
The Top Info Bar — Left Side
The top left corner of the screen provides the publication status of your book, includes the name of the book you have open, and shows what chapter you’re on.
Arrow — takes the user back to the previous page.
Publication Status — represented by the box to the right of the arrow. There are three possible statuses:
- Draft — the book is in an unpublished state.
- Staged — The book is published, but contains unpublished changes.
- Published — The book is live with no unpublished changes. If ANY individual chapter in the book is in Draft or Staged status, the whole book will show as Staged.
In-Editor Table of Contents — Clicking the drop-down menu brings up the table of contents for your book, allowing you to quickly scroll to a specific chapter you wish to edit. If you have custom numbering enabled, the table of contents will display the custom names you entered.
The Top Info Bar — Right Side
Publish — Click this button to publish or unpublish the entire book in one go.
Show / Hide Outline — This button turns on or off the Laterpress AI story tools. With the outline shown, all options are available. With the outline hidden, Beat and Scene cards will be hidden, and all story tools are disabled.
Theme — Click this to open up a menu where you can change the font, font size, line spacing, and background color theme shown in the editor. This UI is identical to the controls readers have to adjust how a book looks while reading.
Full Page — Expands the text editor to fill the whole screen, hiding your browser tabs to help reduce distractions. Leave this mode by clicking the button again, or pressing the Esc key.
Import Epub — If you have a complete book you wish to upload at once, the import epub tool can help with this. Please note that if you’re working on an existing story and import an epub, those chapters will be added starting from the end of your existing chapters.
Settings — Click here to change details about your book, such as its description, price, the size of the free preview, enable custom numbering, or change the cover.
Wiki — This section is home to notes on your story’s idea, characters, and lore. These features can be used with or without AI assistance. If using AI story tools, the cards in these sections provide context to the AI.
Chapter Level UI
The Up / Down arrow — This is used to rearrange the order of chapters in a manuscript. See the Reordering Chapters tutorial for more information.
The Clock icon — Pulls up the version history of the chapter.
The unconnected arrows — Represent expanding or collapsing a chapter. Expand to show all of a chapter’s text, or collapse ones you’re not currently editing for less scrolling.
The three dots — Bring up options that only apply to that specific chapter. Clicking “Add to Wiki” starts the process of adding items from the chapter text to your wiki. Delete a chapter without deleting the rest of the book. Export one chapter’s text as a Word document. Publish one chapter without updating the rest of the book.
Publication Status — Like the book publication status at the top of the screen, each chapter also displays its own chapter status:
- Draft — the chapter is not published.
- Staged — The chapter is published, but the text in the editor now contains unpublished changes.
- Published — The chapter is live with no unpublished changes.