The public library
The public library is DragonWriter's shared bookshelf: every story that authors have chosen to publish. Any signed-in member can browse it, read published stories, and download them. You reach it from Library in the main navigation. The whole library is sign-in only.
Browsing the bookshelf
The library page shows published stories as tiles, each with its cover, title, author, rating, status, length, genres, like count, and blurb. The newest and most recently updated stories come first.
To narrow the shelf, use the search box and the filter panel (open it with the funnel icon):
- Search — match by title or author.
- Author — pick an exact author.
- Rating — one or more content ratings.
- Status — Work in progress, Complete, or both.
- Length — buckets from Flash (under 1k words) up to Novel (over 50k).
- Genre — one or more genres (a story matches if it has any of them).
- Tags include and Tags exclude — comma-separated tags a story must all have, or must not have.
A count next to the funnel shows how many filters are active, and Clear resets everything. From the library head you can also jump to Recent activity and My bookmarks.
A story's public page
Selecting a tile opens the story's public page. It shows the cover, title, author, rating, status, length, genres, tags, and the full blurb, along with Start reading and (when the author allows it) a Download menu. Below that are the engagement controls and the story's comment thread — comments here are about the story as a whole; comments on a particular chapter live in the reader. See reader engagement and notifications.
If you are the author, this page also shows a Back to story button that takes you straight to your own story's editing overview. Only you see it on your own published page.
Reading a published story
Choose Start reading to open the reader. If the author set a content disclaimer, you first see a Content notice gate showing the warning text. You must choose It's fine, continue before any story text loads — until then, the reader never receives the content. (Authors skip their own gate.)
The reader shows the frozen snapshot of the story, one page at a time: a front-matter page (if the story has any), then one page per chapter (scenes within a chapter are divided by * * *), then an end-matter page. The chapter drop-down jumps to any page, the previous/next buttons turn one page at a time, and the Left and Right arrow keys do the same. A font-size button cycles the reading size, and your choice is remembered as you turn pages. At the foot of each chapter page is that chapter's comment thread, so you can leave feedback on the chapter you just read (see reader engagement and notifications). Because you're reading a snapshot, the text stays fixed until the author re-publishes — even if they're editing privately in the meantime.
If the author redacted any text, it appears as a black bar; click or tap it (or press Enter or Space when it's focused) to reveal what's underneath, and again to hide it.
The story is shown in whatever fonts its author chose — for the whole story, particular scenes, or individual passages. If a decorative font is hard for you to read, an Aa button in the reader bar switches the whole story to a plain reading font (remembered on your device); press it again to go back.
Downloading a story
When the author has enabled downloads, the Download menu on the story page offers four formats:
- EPUB — for e-readers and reading apps.
- Word — a
.docxdocument. - Text — plain
.txt. - Markdown —
.md.
Every download is built from the same frozen snapshot as the reader, so it matches exactly what you see on screen. Downloads are unavailable for taken-down stories, and when the author has not enabled them. For more on file formats, see import and export.