Frequently Asked Questions

EBookFactory is an AI-powered manuscript generation platform. It uses advanced AI to write full-length books from a simple idea. You provide the concept, and EBookFactory handles everything: outlining, drafting, editing, quality checks, cover art, and packaging for publishing.

Sign in using your Replit account. EBookFactory supports Google, GitHub, Apple, X, and email login through Replit Auth. On your first login, you'll be asked to choose a unique username and accept the Terms of Service before you can start using the platform.

A unique username is required for your account identity on EBookFactory. It must be 3-30 characters long and can contain lowercase letters, numbers, and underscores only. Your username is checked for availability in real time as you type.

From the dashboard, click "Generate Book Now" or "New Manuscript." You'll be prompted for a genre, title idea, target length, and other preferences. Once you start generation, EBookFactory will automatically outline, draft, edit, quality-check, generate covers, and package your book.

Yes. Every user has their own isolated workspace. Your books, settings, credit balance, and transaction history are only visible to you (and the platform owner for support purposes). Other users cannot see or access your content.

EBookFactory supports four categories: Novel (approximately 20 chapters), Novella (10 chapters), Short Story Collection (8 chapters), and Non-Fiction (12 chapters). Each category has different target word counts and chapter structures.

Credits are the internal currency used to pay for AI generation. You purchase credit packs with real money via Stripe. When you generate a book, credits are consumed based on the actual cost of AI processing, multiplied by a platform billing rate. Your dashboard shows your available balance, reserved credits, and total credits at all times.

Each AI call (drafting, editing, quality checks, cover generation) uses tokens, which have a base cost from the AI provider. A billing multiplier is applied to cover platform costs. The formula is: credits charged = base AI cost multiplied by the billing multiplier multiplied by the credits-per-dollar rate. You can see a detailed per-chapter cost breakdown on each book's detail page.

Sometimes chapters need to be rewritten during quality checks. When the AI detects issues like grammar problems, placeholder text, or inconsistencies, it automatically rewrites the chapter. Each rewrite uses additional API calls and credits, so your total charges may be higher than what you'd expect based on the final word count alone.

EBookFactory offers five credit packs: 500 credits ($5), 1,000 credits ($9), 2,500 credits ($20), 5,000 credits ($35), and 10,000 credits ($60). You can purchase credits from your Settings page under "Credit Balance."

Any books currently being generated will be paused automatically. You can purchase more credits from your Settings page to resume generation. If you have Auto Top-Up enabled, credits will be purchased automatically when your balance drops below your configured threshold.

Auto Top-Up automatically purchases a credit pack of your choice when your available balance drops below a threshold you set. This ensures uninterrupted generation. You can configure the threshold amount, which credit pack to purchase, and enable or disable the feature in your Settings under "Auto Top-Up." Charges go through Stripe using your saved payment method.

When a book is being generated, credits are reserved upfront for the current step (e.g., drafting a chapter). This prevents you from accidentally spending credits that are needed for an in-progress job. Once the step completes, reserved credits are converted to spent credits. If a step fails, reserved credits are automatically returned to your available balance. Your dashboard shows available, reserved, and total credit amounts.

If a generation process fails or is interrupted unexpectedly, credits can sometimes remain in reserved status. EBookFactory has an automated recovery system that runs every 15 minutes and detects orphaned reservations. It only releases credits when there are no active processes for your account and the reservation is older than 2 hours, ensuring nothing in progress is affected. If you believe credits are stuck, contact the platform owner who can also trigger a manual recovery.

You can configure a personal daily spending limit and daily credit cap in your Settings under "Daily Limits." These prevent unexpected high charges in a single day. Once reached, new generation will pause until the next day when limits reset. By default, spending is unlimited unless you explicitly set a cap.

Credits are generally non-refundable. However, the platform owner may process refunds in cases of service outages, technical errors, or other exceptional circumstances. If you believe you were incorrectly charged, contact the platform owner. See our Terms of Service for the full refund policy.

Each book goes through a multi-stage pipeline: Outline (creates chapter structure and subtitle), Drafting (writes each chapter), Editing (polishes prose and fixes issues), Quality Check (validates content quality), Cover Generation (creates AI cover art), Packaging (bundles everything for download), and Completion. You can monitor progress in real time on the book's detail page, including per-chapter progress and word counts.

Generation time varies based on the book's target word count and the number of chapters. A typical novel (20 chapters) can take 15-45 minutes. Shorter works like novellas and short story collections are faster. You can monitor progress in real time on the book's detail page.

Yes. You can pause any book that's currently being generated using the pause button on the book's detail page. When you resume, it picks up right where it left off. This is useful if you want to conserve credits or review progress before continuing.

The quality check stage reviews each chapter for issues like placeholder text, thin content, or excessive repetition. If issues are found, the system automatically attempts to fix them (up to 3 times per chapter). If issues persist after all attempts, the book will be marked as "Needs Review" with a detailed explanation of which chapters had problems.

This means the automated quality checks found issues that couldn't be automatically resolved after multiple attempts. The error message on the book will explain which chapters had problems and why. You can try resuming the book to attempt the fixes again.

"Error" means the generation process encountered an unexpected problem. "Stalled" means the system detected that progress stopped for an extended period. In both cases, you can try resuming the book. The book detail page shows diagnostic information including the last API result to help understand what went wrong.

The quality assurance system checks every chapter for placeholder text (like [Author Name] or TODO), content that's too short relative to target word count, and excessive repetition. When issues are found, the AI rewrites only the problematic sections while preserving the storyline, characters, and narrative flow.

Yes. EBookFactory automatically generates a subtitle for your book during the outline phase, based on the genre, theme, and content of your manuscript. The subtitle appears on the front cover and in the book's metadata.

EBookFactory analyzes your book's content to understand its atmosphere: seasons, mood, weather, setting, time of day, color palette, and genre. It then generates imagery using DALL-E 3 and overlays professional typography including the title, subtitle, and author name on the front cover, and an AI-generated summary on the back cover.

Three types: Front Cover (title, subtitle, and author name overlaid on atmosphere-matched imagery), Back Cover (AI-generated book summary overlaid on complementary imagery, no ISBN or barcode), and Spine Image (title and author name on a narrow vertical image). You can enable or disable each type independently.

Cover generation uses DALL-E 3 for image creation, which is more expensive than text generation. The estimated cost is shown next to the cover generation buttons on the book detail page. Front and back covers each cost roughly the same amount. Spine images cost slightly less.

Yes. In your Settings under "Export Preferences," you can toggle front cover, back cover, and spine image generation independently. You can enable any combination of the three. These preferences apply to all new books generated.

Yes. If a book was created before cover generation was available or if covers are missing, you can use the "Generate Covers" button on the book's detail page to create them on demand. There's also a bulk cover generation feature to generate missing covers across multiple books at once.

Covers are atmosphere-aware: the AI reads your book's actual content (not just the title) to create imagery that matches the story's mood, setting, seasons, and genre. This means a winter thriller will get a cold, dark cover, while a summer romance will get warm, bright imagery. The text overlay uses professional typography.

Auto Loop is a background automation feature that continuously generates new books based on your preferences. It runs automatically, creating books one after another without manual intervention. You can configure category mix (novel, novella, short stories, non-fiction), genre preferences, and resource limits.

Two modes are available: "Keep Ready Count" maintains a target number of completed books (e.g., always have 5 ready), and "Weekly Target" generates a set number of books per week. Choose the mode that best fits your production needs.

Auto Loop pauses for several reasons: running out of credits, reaching your daily book limit, reaching your daily spending limit, having too many unacknowledged (unread) books, or if the admin kill switch is enabled. Check your dashboard for the specific reason displayed in the Auto Loop status card.

Continuous Mode skips the unacknowledged book limit and keeps generating until your credits are exhausted. This is useful for bulk generation but should be used carefully as it can consume credits quickly. Enable it from your Auto Loop settings.

When Auto Loop completes a book, it shows a "New" badge on your book list. Until you open the book (acknowledging it), it counts toward the unacknowledged limit. By default, Auto Loop pauses after 2 unacknowledged books to give you time to review before generating more. Continuous Mode bypasses this limit.

Serial Mode ensures only one book is generated at a time in Auto Loop. This can be useful to reduce resource usage or to keep generation predictable. When disabled, the system may start new books while others are still in progress.

Dry Run Mode creates book records and generates ideas without actually running the AI generation pipeline. This is useful for testing your Auto Loop configuration (category mix, genre rotation) without consuming credits.

EBookFactory supports PDF, DOCX, EPUB, RTF, Markdown, and Plain Text formats. You can export any completed book in any of these formats from the book's detail page. You can also set your preferred default format in your Settings under "Export Preferences."

KDP-Ready is a special packaging option that creates a folder structure optimized for uploading to Amazon Kindle Direct Publishing. It includes your manuscript in EPUB, DOCX, and PDF formats, cover images, metadata files with title, keywords, categories, and pricing info, plus step-by-step upload instructions. Enable it in your Settings under "Export Preferences."

The download package is a ZIP file containing your manuscript in your preferred format, a metadata file (JSON), cover images (front, back, spine as available), and optionally a KDP-Ready folder with everything needed for Amazon publishing. Packages are stored in cloud storage so you can re-download them anytime.

Completed books, their cover images, and download packages are stored securely in cloud storage (Google Cloud Storage via Replit Object Storage). You can download them anytime from the book's detail page. Legacy books stored locally are automatically migrated to cloud storage when you access them.

Yes. If FTP export destinations are configured in the export settings, completed books can be automatically uploaded to a remote FTP or FTPS server upon completion.

Yes. If a book's package needs to be rebuilt (for example, after generating new covers or changing your preferred export format), you can use the "Repackage" button on the book's detail page. This creates a fresh download package with the latest content and settings.

Your display name can be updated in your Settings under "Profile." Your author name (used on book covers and title pages) can be set under "Export Preferences." Note that changing your author name only affects future books; existing covers keep the name they were generated with.

You can set three daily limits in your Settings: a Daily Credit Cap (maximum credits consumed per day), a Daily Spending Limit (maximum dollar amount spent per day), and a Books Per Day limit. All default to unlimited unless you explicitly set them. Limits reset automatically at midnight each day.

In your Settings under "Export Preferences," you can control: whether covers are generated at all, and which types (front cover, back cover, spine image) to include. You can enable any combination. These preferences apply to all newly generated books.

You can delete individual books from the books list page. This removes the book data, generated chapter content, cover images, and associated files from cloud storage. This action cannot be undone.

EBookFactory has five roles: Owner (full administrative access including pricing, user management, and accounting; the first user to sign up), Admin, Moderator, and Support (intermediate roles assigned by the owner), and User (standard access for book generation, purchases, and personal settings). Only the owner can access admin features like pricing controls, user management, and accounting dashboards.

All data is transmitted over encrypted connections (HTTPS/TLS). Authentication is handled via Replit's secure OpenID Connect system, so EBookFactory never stores your password. Database access is restricted and credentials are managed securely through environment secrets. Each user's data is fully isolated from other users.

All credit operations (purchases, spending, reservations, releases) use atomic database transactions. This means credits can never be lost due to partial failures. If any step in a credit operation fails, the entire operation is rolled back to its previous state. Reserved credits are automatically recovered if they become orphaned.

We store your account information (Replit user ID, username, email), generated book content and cover images, generation history with per-chapter cost breakdowns, credit transactions and balance history, and account settings. Payment processing is handled entirely by Stripe; we do not store your full credit card details. See our Privacy Policy for full details.

Yes. You can delete individual books at any time, which removes all associated content and files. For full account deletion, contact the platform owner. Upon receiving a deletion request, your personal data, generated content, and associated cloud storage files will be removed within a reasonable timeframe.

Accepting the Terms of Service is mandatory before you can use any generation features. This ensures you understand the terms of using AI-generated content, credit policies, and your responsibilities. The acceptance prompt appears as a non-dismissable overlay until you agree.