Books

Write a book in sections, arranged as front matter, chapters and back matter.

A book in Magpie is a manuscript made of sections. Each section opens in its own editor, which saves as you write and keeps the text from before each sitting. The Contents page arranges the sections, holds writing you have set aside, and counts the words.

Get started free

Front matter, chapters, back matter and Set aside

The Contents page holds the manuscript in four lists. Drag a section within a list or from one list to another, or move it with Move up and Move down. Each list's + menu writes a new section or imports notes into it.

Front matter: Pages before the chapters, such as a foreword or a note to the reader. They are not numbered.
Chapters: The body of the book, numbered in order. A part break groups the chapters after it into Part One, Part Two and so on, and each part can have a title of its own.
Back matter: Pages after the chapters, such as acknowledgments or an author's note. They are not numbered either.
Set aside: Writing that is part of the project but not in the book. It is left out of the preview, the published book and the downloads, and Add to book puts a section back.

Status, synopsis and word count

Cards and List show the same sections two ways. A section's status and synopsis are for planning and do not appear in the book.

Status: Mark a section Outline, Draft, Revised or Done.
Synopsis: A line about a section, shown only to you on the Contents page in place of its opening words.
Word count: Each section shows its words, and the top of the page shows the total for the book, without Set aside. With a word count goal in Book Settings, the total is shown against the goal.
Combine into one: Select several sections in the same list to join them, in order, under the first one's title. A combined section cannot be split again automatically.

The section editor

Select a section to write its title and text. The section saves as you write, and the bar above the text shows Saving…, Saved or Unsaved changes and the section's word count. The bar and the toolbar stay at the top of the window as you scroll down.

Toolbar: Bold, Italic, Heading, Small heading, Quote, Scene break and Image. More tools adds Underline, Strikethrough, a serif or sans Font, a Size and Page break.
Pictures: Image opens the image picker, for pictures from Your images or new uploads. A picture pasted or dropped onto the text is added to Your images and goes in after that paragraph.
Moving a picture: Select a picture to move it up or down one paragraph at a time, replace it, remove it or give it a caption.

Earlier versions of a section

Each time you sit down to edit a section, the text as it was before is kept. History, in the section editor, lists the earlier versions newest first, each with when it was kept, its word count and its first line, and Restore this version puts one back.

The text a restore replaces is kept in History first, so a restore can be undone the same way. Each section keeps its 30 most recent versions.

Find and replace across the book

Find & replace, on the Contents page, searches the title and text of every section, including those set aside. It lists each section with matches and a few words around each match before anything is changed.

Match capitalization: Finds only matches with the same capital letters as the search.
Replace all: Changes every match in titles and text. Each changed section keeps its previous text in History, so one section can be put back without undoing the others.

Notes as sections

Import notes, in each list's + menu, turns notes you wrote in Notes into sections at the end of that list. A section is a copy: editing it does not change the note, and deleting it does not delete the note. Hide notes already in this book leaves out notes you have added before.

Add unused notes in bulk adds the oldest or newest notes that are in none of your books, as chapters or to Set aside, in the order they were written. Book Settings can put each imported note's date at the top of its section, in the format you choose, as text you can edit.

Who can open a book, and plans

A book belongs to your account, not to a team, so Books shows the same books whichever team is selected. Only you can open its Contents, its sections and Book Settings. A book has no public page until you publish it.

The assistant on Dashboard can search your books and the text of their sections, create and change books and sections, publish or unpublish a book, and restore an earlier version of a section.

How many books you can have depends on your own plan, in every team: 1 on the free plan, and as many as you like with Pro. A book holds 400 sections, including those set aside.

Start a book.

Create a Magpie account, open Books and choose New book, then write the first chapter or import notes.

Create account