Documentation

How to write, design, and publish a book with Kvidha.

The Art of Writing

The Elements of Style

Chapter One

The Art of Writing

Every great story begins with a single sentence that draws the reader in. The best openings are both surprising and inevitable, the kind that make you lean forward, curious about what comes next. They feel effortless on the page, but behind each one is a writer who chose every word with care.

The craft of writing is the craft of seeing clearly. You must notice what others pass over, and find the words to make them see it too. A well-placed detail can carry more weight than a full paragraph of explanation.

Revision is where the real work begins. The first draft exists only to be rewritten, and every honest line you keep was earned by cutting three that sounded clever but said nothing at all.

The blank page is not your enemy. Every word you put down is one more than you had before. Progress, not perfection, is the goal of every first draft. Momentum matters more than polish.

Let the words come freely, messy and imperfect. The first draft is a conversation with yourself, an act of discovery, not performance. Nobody else will read this version unless you choose to show it.

Don’t edit as you write. The first draft is for discovering what you actually want to say. Revision is where you learn how to say it well. They are separate skills, and trying to do both at once will slow you down.

Write with reckless honesty. You can always revise later, but you cannot revise a blank page. The only bad draft is the one you never start.

Read your sentences aloud and listen for the music in them. The ear catches what the eye misses, and a line that stumbles when spoken will stumble again when read.

Trim until every word earns its place. Be ruthless with adverbs, generous with verbs, and suspicious of any sentence that exists only to sound impressive.

Ch 1¶ 1Pg 1-2 / 9247 words119,756 totalThe Art of Writing

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Getting Started

Most writing apps give you a document. Kvidha gives you a book. As you type, you see the trim size, the page breaks, the running heads, the page numbers, and the chapter drop, so you feel where a chapter opens and where a line strands at the top of a page while you draft. Kvidha is a desktop app for macOS and Windows. Download it, activate it with your license key, and start writing in under a minute. No account or internet connection is required.

Activate your license

Download Kvidha, then activate it with your license key. A key works on up to three machines. No account or sign-in.

Set your defaults

A short setup picks your appearance, book style, and starting layout. Every new book begins from there, and you can change any of it later.

Explore the samples

Your first launch seeds a Welcome Guide and two finished books, Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice and William Strunk's The Elements of Style. Page through them, build them, and see how a finished book is put together.

Everything lives on this machine

Kvidha runs on your computer. Your books sit in one database file on your own disk. There is no sign-in, nothing is uploaded, and it all works offline. That also means export is how a book leaves Kvidha: to send a manuscript to someone or back it up, you build it into a file. The Publishing chapters cover that.

Creating a book

From the dashboard, click New Book and pick one of six templates to start from. A template sets up a chapter structure, not fonts or paper, which you choose later in the editor. The default Blank template is pre-selected.

Blank: An empty starting point.

Short Story: A single-piece layout for shorter fiction.

Novel: A fiction layout with chapter openers.

Novel with Parts: A novel structured into parts and chapters.

Non-fiction: Structured chapters, preface, and back matter.

Memoir: A personal-narrative layout in parts.

Already have a manuscript elsewhere? Import it from the dashboard or Cmd+Shift+I: Word, EPUB, HTML, RTF, ODT, Markdown, plain text, or a ZIP of Markdown files. Kvidha splits it into chapters and shows you the result before it writes anything.

Workspaces & Layout

Every project opens in one of three workspaces. Switch between them from the control at the top left, a pencil with a small chevron, just past the Back and Forward arrows. The same menu holds Back to dashboard and Trash.

Write

The editor. You will spend almost all your time here, drafting straight onto the book page.

Design

The cover designer, a dedicated canvas for the front, spine, and back of your book.

Publish

Turns the finished manuscript into files and walks you through each store.

The six regions of the editor

Name the parts once and everything becomes easy to find.

Menu bar: every command, grouped by purpose. On macOS it sits in the system menu bar; on Windows it lives in the app's title strip.
Workspace switcher: moves you between Write, Design, and Publish.
Chapter sidebar (left): an icon rail switches it between your chapter list, the Cork Board, the Outline, and your Bookmarks.
Editor (center): where you write. It holds up to four panes side by side and shapes your text like a book page.
Right panel (right): a strip of tools in three groups, Write, Plan, and Analyze.
Status bar (bottom): cursor position, word counts, save status, editor zoom, your daily goal, and the sprint timer.

Two keys worth learning first. Cmd+K opens the command palette; type to jump to any project, chapter, tool, or setting. Cmd+/ opens the keyboard cheatsheet, always current.

Writing Basics

The editor is a visual, word-processor-style surface powered by Tiptap and ProseMirror. There is no markup to learn: type, format, and the paginated book view is the editor itself, not a separate preview.

The toolbar

The formatting bar covers the common shapes, headings, bold, italic, underline, strikethrough, alignment, lists, highlight, and links, with an overflow button for the rarer styles so the bar stays readable on a narrow pane. The full Format menu adds small caps, superscript and subscript, inline code, text color, letter spacing, blockquotes, and callouts.

Markdown as you type

You rarely need the toolbar. Type one of these at the start of a line and press space.

Type	Result
`#`	Heading 1
`##`	Heading 2
`-`	Bulleted list
`1.`	Numbered list
`>`	Blockquote

Inline, **bold**, *italic*, and [text](url) convert as you finish them, and a line of three hyphens becomes a horizontal rule.

Find, replace, and spellcheck

Find and Replace (Cmd+Shift+F) searches the current chapter and can widen to the whole book, with case-sensitive, whole-word, and regular-expression toggles and replace per match, per chapter, or project-wide. Spellcheck is in the Edit menu and can check an ordered list of languages at once, which suits a bilingual book or a quoted passage.

Vim mode

If you edit in Vim, turn on Vim Mode in Preferences > Editor. Normal, insert, and visual modes work in the editor, the command line is there, and the status bar shows the current mode and pending command. Everything else in Kvidha still works alongside it.

Auto-save

Kvidha saves to your local database as you write, near-instantly by default (you can set the interval to Instant, 2 seconds, 10 seconds, or off). The Save status in the status bar shows the state, and Cmd+S forces a save. The Snapshots chapter covers the full history that sits on top of it.

Rich Content

A book is not only prose. From the Insert and Format menus, Kvidha carries each of these through to the exported file.

Tables

Insert a real table with add and remove of rows and columns and an optional header row. Exports as a proper table, not fixed-width text.

Scene breaks & verse

A scene break sets a centered ornament between scenes. A verse block keeps the line breaks and indentation of poetry so a stanza holds its shape.

Pull-quotes & callouts

Lift a line out of the flow and set it large, or box a passage with a colored accent in five kinds: Info, Note, Warning, Tip, and Example.

Two-column regions

Split part of a page into side-by-side columns, which reads better in reference tables and worked examples.

Math

Add a centered equation on its own line or an inline equation mid-sentence, for textbooks and papers that carry real notation.

Diagrams

Turn a few lines of plain text (Mermaid syntax) into a flowchart or sequence diagram that stays editable.

Images

Drop or paste an image. It travels with the project and appears in the exported book. For print, keep images near 300 DPI at their printed size.

Cross-references & wiki-links

Point at a chapter, heading, or figure and resolve to a page number on export, or connect a mention to another chapter or note and see it as a backlink.

Structuring Your Book

Chapters live in the sidebar, each with a type that decides where it lands in the exported book. Right-click any row to rename, duplicate, convert its type, set its editorial status, or move it to Trash.

Front matter

Title page, copyright, dedication, epigraph, table of contents. The opening pages of a book.

Chapter

The body of your book, numbered or named or both.

Folder

A container that groups chapters in the sidebar and prints as a section divider. Nest chapters into Parts.

Back matter

Appendices, glossary, bibliography, index, about the author, and other closing pages.

Notes

Your private workspace, excluded from every export. Keep outlines, scratch scenes, and cut passages here.

Organizing chapters

Drag and drop to reorder, or nest chapters into a Folder to group them into Parts.
Inline rename: click the chapter name to edit it directly.
Duplicate copies content to a new "Copy of" chapter.
Delete moves a chapter to Trash, where it can be restored. Nothing is erased outright.

The sidebar views

The icon rail down the left edge switches what the sidebar shows:

Chapters: your chapter list, with word counts and an optional target and progress bar per chapter.
Cork Board (Cmd+Shift+Alt+B): the whole manuscript as scene cards in chapter lanes, with synopsis and metadata. Reorder beats and see where a chapter slows.
Outline (Cmd+Shift+Alt+O): the manuscript as a tree of headings. Click one to jump to it; the headings feed the book's table of contents on export.
Bookmarks: the jump points you set with Cmd+Shift+D.

Planning & Notes

A long book loses track of itself. Names drift, a thread set up early never pays off. The right panel holds that memory for you, in a set of tools that wait until a book is big enough to need them.

Story

A story bible of notes for characters, places, concepts, and events, a Plot Board of story threads, a chapter-by-chapter structure table, and a research library.

References

The book's reference apparatus: a real back-of-book index, backlinks, footnotes and sidenotes, and citations.

Comments

Attach a comment thread to a passage. Comments stay on your machine, and only the Word export carries them through.

Track Changes

Record every insertion and deletion as a reviewable edit, then accept or reject them one at a time or in bulk.

Inside the Story tools

Notes: a small database of characters, places, concepts, and events, each with a type, color, and description. Link one to any passage, search across them, and see them drawn as a relationship graph. Notes can be shared across a series.
Plot Board: a board of story threads, each a column of beats. Drag cards within and between threads and draw typed connections, a setup and its payoff or a cause and its effect.
Structure: the manuscript as a table, chapter by chapter, with word count, status, target, and notes.
Research: a library of reference material that stays with the project and never prints. Save a link as a snapshot so the reference survives the page changing.

The Scene Browser

The Scene Browser (Cmd+Shift+2) is a two-pane navigator over the active chapter: the chapter's scenes on the left, a preview and inline editor on the right. It is a navigation lens over the one manuscript, not a separate copy.

Checking Your Prose

Revision is where a draft becomes a book. Kvidha reads your prose and shows you what it finds, all on your machine, without sending a word anywhere.

The Check panel

Writing Tools (Cmd+Shift+E) reads the current chapter and marks patterns worth a second look: passive voice, weasel words, hedges, adverb clusters, hard-to-read sentences, repeated openings, cliches, and consistency. Each mark is a prompt, not a change.

Manuscript Scan

Run the same checks across the whole book at once, so you can find every passive construction or overused opener in a single pass.

Insights

The Analyze group (Cmd+Shift+C) offers three readings: Chapter Insights for readability, Manuscript Stats for balance across the book, and Analytics for your writing over time.

Nothing leaves your machine

Every check runs locally. The suggestions are yours to take or ignore; your manuscript is never uploaded for analysis.

Staying in Flow

Writing is a practice, and Kvidha treats it as one. Use the tools that help you; skip the ones that do not.

Zen Mode

Cmd+Enter hides the menus, sidebars, and status bar and leaves the page. It still paginates, so a session feels like filling pages. Press Escape to come back.

Focus

Brightens the current paragraph and fades the rest, for when you are polishing one sentence and the surrounding text distracts you.

Typewriter scroll

Cmd+Shift+. keeps the current line centered while the page scrolls under the cursor, so your eyes stay put through a long session.

Writing Sprint

Cmd+Shift+J sets a timed session with a word target. The status bar counts your progress, and sprints feed your writing history.

Daily Goal

Cmd+Shift+G sets a daily word target. The status bar tracks it and the Analytics view plots the streak.

Background audio

The editor toolbar has a popover of quiet ambient tracks to play while you write. The audio never leaves the app.

Page View & Typography

The page you write on is a real one: a trim size, margins, running heads, page numbers, and a chapter drop, all recomputed as you type. The exported PDF is not a picture of the editor. A separate typesetting engine sets it and does the things the editor only approximates: justified lines, hyphenation, and precise widow and orphan control at print quality. Trust the editor for shape and rhythm, the built PDF for the printed page.

Trim size

A book starts on a trim size, the width and height of the page after the printer cuts it. Kvidha ships 15 standard trims, from Digest (5 x 8) and US Trade (6 x 9) to Textbook (7 x 10), Letter (8.5 x 11), and the A-series, plus your own custom sizes. Set the trim from the typography controls in the editor toolbar and the page reflows at once. Trim is set per project, and each size is flagged for KDP and IngramSpark compatibility.

View modes

The toolbar's view-mode button cycles three layouts:

Single page: one page at a time, focused editing.
Spread: two facing pages with the inner margin by the binding set wider than the outer, the way a printed book reads. Flip between spreads with the on-screen arrows or the status-bar navigator. Spread turns itself off on a narrow window and returns when there is room.
Flow: continuous scroll, for fast drafting.

Type and layout

The typography controls set the font (from a set chosen for book work), the size to the point, line height and paragraph spacing, the chapter drop, the four page margins (top, bottom, inner, outer), and smart quotes, dashes, and ellipses. A set of genre presets, Classic Novel, Modern, Literary, Romance, Thriller, Fantasy, Memoir, Poetry, and more, gets you to publisher-standard defaults in one click.

Running heads and page numbers

By default the running head carries the book title on the left-hand (verso) page and the chapter title on the right-hand (recto) page, the page number sits in the outer bottom corner, and chapters open on a right-hand page. All of it is yours to change.

Zoom

Cmd+= zooms in, Cmd+- zooms out, and Cmd+0 returns to 100%, in 10% steps. A trackpad pinch zooms too, and the zoom button in the status bar offers fit-page, fit-width, and set sizes. This scales the page; Interface Zoom, in the next chapter, scales the whole app.

Appearance & Backgrounds

Two things wear the word look in Kvidha: how the app looks while you work, and how the book looks on the page.

The workspace

The in-editor Appearance panel sets the surface you type on, with a single Style Preset that bundles the three settings below for a coherent look. Save your own presets to reuse across projects.

Color Theme: the app's accent and chrome, 15 to choose from.
Editor Theme: the color of the page you type on, 15 themes from Paper and Vellum to Dracula and Nord.
Editor Desk: the backdrop behind the page, 13 desk companions with optional textures.

Interface Zoom

In Preferences > Appearance you set the app-wide options: light, dark, or system mode, the accent color, whether every project shares one look, and Interface Zoom, which scales the whole app the way VS Code or Obsidian do. It is separate from the editor zoom, which scales only the page.

Backgrounds on the page

Kvidha can draw a decorative border or background on the printed page. The Backgrounds panel, under the Design tools, offers a Page border from a library of line-art frames, along with page and heading backgrounds. These apply to the PDF and print output, not the screen you edit on. One border, chosen well, lifts a gift edition or a book of poems; one on every page overwhelms the text, so use it sparingly.

Panes & Preview

A pane is a slot in the editor workspace. You can open up to four side by side. Each can point at a different chapter, and each can show the editor or a built PDF, EPUB, or HTML preview.

Splitting and focusing

The Pane menu has Split right and Split down; each opens a fresh pane on the same chapter.
Cmd+1 through Cmd+4 focus a pane by number.
Fullscreen pane fills the workspace with one pane; Close pane and Reset panes undo the layout.

Pinning and preview

A pane follows the chapter you click in the sidebar. Pin it to one chapter and it stays there whatever else you click. A few patterns:

Edit one chapter while keeping another open for reference.
Edit the scene in one pane, watch the PDF fill in the other.
Draft in one pane, keep a research note open in the other.

The preview button switches a pane between the editor and a built PDF, EPUB, or HTML file (press Cmd+Opt+B to build). Each pane keeps its own zoom, and Follow editor and Sync scroll tie a preview to the text you are editing.

Cover Designer

Design, from the workspace switcher, opens the canvas-based cover designer, the same project on a dedicated surface. A print cover has three sections, all rendered at print-accurate dimensions: the front (title, author, art), the spine (its width comes from your page count), and the back (description, blurbs, barcode).

Elements

Build every cover from three kinds of element: text (font, size, color, rotation, spacing, shadow, outline, opacity), images (crop, flip, rotate, opacity), and shapes (rectangles, circles, lines, borders).

Templates

A library of 21 designed templates across seven genres (literary, thriller, upmarket, romance, science fiction and fantasy, memoir, and children's). Pick one and tune it, or save your own.

Bleed, guides, and trim marks

Toggle the bleed zone your background must fill and the safe margin for text. Trim marks are added to the print PDF on their own. Neither guide prints.

Layers

The Layers panel stacks every element. Reorder by drag, hide a layer, or lock one so you do not nudge it while you work the next.

Fonts

22 fonts, six always available and the rest loaded on demand, with multi-line wrapping and spine text rotated 90 degrees.

ISBN barcode

Render a valid EAN-13 barcode from an ISBN-13 (978 or 979 prefix). Invalid numbers show a placeholder rather than broken output.

Export

Export the cover as PNG for a store listing, SVG to keep editing in a vector app, or PDF for print-on-demand like KDP Print and IngramSpark. The PDF keeps bleed and trim marks. Before a bulk run, order a proof: screen color never matches ink.

Cover designer shortcuts

Shortcut	Action
`Delete`	Remove selected element
`Cmd+Z / Cmd+Shift+Z`	Undo / Redo
`Arrow keys`	Nudge element
`Shift+Arrow keys`	Nudge element further
`Escape`	Deselect element
`Cmd+S`	Save design
`Cmd+E`	Export cover
`Ctrl+Scroll`	Zoom in / out

Building & Exporting

When the book is ready, Kvidha builds it into files from the one manuscript. Every build runs on your own machine, nothing uploads, and you can keep writing while it processes. Export is also how your writing leaves the app, so it doubles as the way you share a draft or keep a portable backup. Your lifetime license includes all ten formats.

The ten formats

PDF.pdf

Typeset, trim-aware PDF from the full build engine. The finished printed page.

EPUB.epub

Valid EPUB 3, reflowable text that re-wraps to any screen. Kindle accepts it directly.

HTML.html

A standalone single-page web version of the book.

Reading Website.zip

A multi-page browsable site with chapter navigation, ideal for serializing a book online.

Word (DOCX).docx

The round-trip with editors and agents, and the one format that carries your comments.

RTF.rtf

Rich Text Format for a submission portal that asks for it.

Markdown.md

Your source, concatenated. Portable and version-friendly.

Plain Text.txt

UTF-8 with no formatting, for a screen reader or downstream tooling.

Print PDF.pdf

Print-on-demand PDF with bleed and trim marks for physical production.

PDF/A.pdf

Archival PDF (ISO 19005), self-contained and built to stay readable for decades.

How to build

Press Cmd+Opt+B, use Build > Build book, or click Export in the toolbar, then pick a format. The build runs in the background and the file appears in the project's build history and on your disk when it finishes. PDF output is set by Tectonic, a self-contained LaTeX engine; the ebook and editing formats are produced with Pandoc. A new PDF does not discard your last EPUB, each format is its own file, and the latest of each is what a preview pane shows.

When a build fails, the history shows the failure with a summary and the preview keeps the last good build. A missing font, a broken image, or a malformed table is almost always one chapter: set chapters to Notes type until the build passes, then add them back one at a time.

Publishing

The Publish workspace prepares your files and metadata, then guides you through each store step by step. You enter your book details once, and Kvidha hands you ready-to-paste fields, direct links, and platform-specific tips. You keep control: Kvidha never uploads on your behalf.

Supported stores

Amazon KDP

The largest ebook and print marketplace. Kvidha prepares your EPUB and print PDF, then guides you through the KDP upload.

Apple Books

Reach readers on iPhone, iPad, and Mac. EPUB format with a step-by-step publishing guide.

IngramSpark

Global print-on-demand distribution to retailers and libraries. Guided workflow with print-specification reference.

Draft2Digital

Wide ebook distribution to Apple, Kobo, Barnes & Noble, and more from a single upload.

The workflow

Enter metadata: title, author, description, categories, keywords, ISBNs, rights, and pricing, once in the wizard.
Build your formats: EPUB for the ebook stores, Print PDF for print-on-demand. Kindle accepts EPUB directly.
Design your cover with the correct trim size and bleed.
Follow the guide: each store gets a checklist with copy-paste fields and direct links to its upload page.

Note: you will need an account on each store to publish. Kvidha prepares everything up to the upload, then points you to the right page with your details ready to paste.

Snapshots & Recovery

Kvidha keeps a full history of the project on your machine. Nothing you write is lost. Snapshots record your saves, Milestones mark the ones that matter, Drafts hold a separate line of work, and Trash catches whatever you delete.

Snapshots

A snapshot is the whole project at a moment, every chapter and setting. Kvidha takes them automatically as you work (at an interval you set, from one minute to thirty) and before every build. Open the Snapshots panel (Cmd+Shift+H) to browse the timeline. From any snapshot you can view it in a read-only pane, compare it against another snapshot or the present (inline, side-by-side, or paragraph by paragraph), and restore the project, or just one chapter, to it. A restore is itself a change, so you can undo it.

Milestones

A snapshot with a name, like First draft done or Back from the beta readers. Milestones stay pinned even as older auto-snapshots roll off.

Drafts

A parallel line of snapshots to try a different approach without touching the main line. Develop it on its own and keep it or throw it away.

Restore one chapter

Scope the panel to a chapter and restore that chapter alone. It pulls back a lost paragraph without rewinding the rest.

Trash

Deleting soft-deletes. Projects, chapters, and notes land in Trash and restore with a click. Only a permanent delete, run from inside Trash, cannot be undone.

Your history is yours. Snapshots, milestones, and drafts live in the project's database on your disk. Back up that file and you back up the whole history with it.

Preferences

Open Preferences with Cmd+,. There is no account and no sign-in; your license, not an online account, is what unlocks the app. Preferences has eight panes.

General

App behavior and defaults.

Appearance

App mode (light, dark, or system), accent color, one-look-everywhere, and Interface Zoom.

Editor

Editing behavior, including Vim Mode and your ordered spellcheck languages.

Preview

Reading comfort for the preview panes and EPUB.

Data

Where your files live, how long Trash keeps items, build-output storage, and the sample starter projects.

Updates

The update channel, the changelog, and Manage License, which opens the license dialog.

Hotkeys

Every shortcut, searchable and remappable.

About

Version, build, and third-party licenses.

Your license

Kvidha unlocks with a license key that activates on up to three machines, and it runs offline for thirty days before it checks in again. If the app reports a problem, open Preferences > Updates and use Manage License: the usual cause is reaching the machine limit, which you fix by deactivating an old machine from the dialog.

Keyboard Shortcuts

Press Cmd+/ anywhere for the live, always-current list, and remap any chord in Preferences > Hotkeys. The handful below earn a place in memory. On Windows, use Ctrl in place of Cmd.

Shortcut	Action
`Cmd+K`	Command palette
`Cmd+/`	Keyboard shortcuts
`Cmd+Opt+B`	Build book
`Cmd+S`	Save now
`Cmd+Shift+F`	Find and replace
`Cmd+\`	Toggle sidebar
`Cmd+Enter`	Zen mode
`Cmd+Shift+H`	Snapshots
`Cmd+Shift+I`	Import manuscript
`Cmd+Opt+Down / Up`	Next / previous chapter
`Cmd+1 to Cmd+4`	Focus a pane
`Cmd+Shift+S`	Story tools
`Cmd+Shift+2`	Scene Browser

Type

Result

#

Heading 1

##

Heading 2

-

Bulleted list

1.

Numbered list

>

Blockquote

Shortcut

Action

Delete

Remove selected element

Cmd+Z / Cmd+Shift+Z

Undo / Redo

Arrow keys

Nudge element

Shift+Arrow keys

Nudge element further

Escape

Deselect element

Cmd+S

Save design

Cmd+E

Export cover

Ctrl+Scroll

Zoom in / out

Shortcut

Action

Cmd+K

Command palette

Cmd+/

Keyboard shortcuts

Cmd+Opt+B

Build book

Cmd+S

Save now

Cmd+Shift+F

Find and replace

Cmd+\

Toggle sidebar

Cmd+Enter

Zen mode

Cmd+Shift+H

Snapshots

Cmd+Shift+I

Import manuscript

Cmd+Opt+Down / Up

Next / previous chapter

Cmd+1 to Cmd+4

Focus a pane

Cmd+Shift+S

Story tools

Cmd+Shift+2

Scene Browser