How do I start a book?

A book in Proselon is a folder of plain files on your own computer, held in a Proselon folder inside your Documents. There is no cloud manuscript to be shut out of, and nothing to export before you can read your own work. Should you ever stop paying, the book is still on disk, openable in any editor you own. Starting one is a single choice on the launch screen.

A new book, or an old one

When Proselon opens with no book in view, it offers two ways in. Start a new book or series lays down a fresh set of folders for a manuscript that does not exist yet, ready for its first scene. Import an existing story is for work already written elsewhere. Choose it and Proselon opens a picker for the documents or folders you want to bring in, then arranges what you hand it into the shape the rest of the app expects.

Either way, you end with a book the co-writer can work in, its chapters and scenes as separate files, with places beside them for the plot, the characters, the world, and your notes on how the prose should sound.

Where your writing is kept

Each book is its own folder, and inside it the chapters and scenes are ordinary text files rather than rows in some database you cannot reach. You can find them in your Documents folder, read them with Proselon closed, and back them up the way you back up anything else. This holds whether you began the book fresh or imported it, and it is why leaving Proselon would cost you nothing but the app itself. The words were always yours, in a form anything can open.

With the book in place, the next question is usually how to get good writing out of it, which is an article of its own.