01
Today
Know the one move
See what changed, how strong the evidence is, what to leave alone, and the single career move worth your attention.
Dated market evidence. One next move.
Every author deserves a genius in their corner.
Author Desk is your personal book-career strategist. It watches the real Amazon bestseller charts every day, reads your books and your sales reports, and hands you one clear move at a time — its only job is elevating your career.
Start freeNo cardUnlimited booksFull export
Urban fiction · observed 2026-08-21
Production lane sample
The evidence
$7.99 median across 15 priced titles.
The current chart contained 20 slots across 13 observed days. That is enough to state today's lane price—not enough, by itself, to tell an author to reprice.
What it cannot prove
A lane median cannot prove that your cover, price, or ad budget should change.
Add next
Your price, format, listing, and sales evidence—then compare like with like.
20 chart slots13 observed days15 priced titles
Real production lane sampleDenominator attached
Lane evidence · Catalogue strategy · Listings · Launches · Advertising · Career memory
One decision trail
Five rooms carry the work from evidence to verdict.
Today names the move. Build prepares it. Run records the test. Learn keeps the verdict. Library preserves the evidence and work behind it.
02
Build
Create the work
Turn the move into a listing direction, launch plan, title set, cover brief, campaign, reader-growth asset, or action packet.
03
Run
Keep the experiment honest
Carry a hypothesis, budget ceiling, review date, and exact stop or success conditions into a durable Operation.
04
Learn
Retain the verdict
Compare the result with the baseline and preserve what worked, what failed, and where the lesson is safe to reuse.
05
Library
Build career memory
Keep every book, report, campaign, decision, asset, and lesson in one living Author File that belongs to you.
Notes from the Desk
The useful parts of publishing, in your inbox.
Get a note when a meaningful Author Desk improvement goes live, plus occasional field notes grounded in publishing evidence—not generic motivation.
No daily dripConfirm before joiningLeave anytime
Conversation first
Ask for the outcome. Your Desk builds the path.
You should not have to know which feature, form, report, or advertising metric to open. Start with the real problem in your own words.
Author question 01
“My ads are getting clicks, but the book is not selling. What should I test next?”
Author question 02
“I have six books and no idea which one deserves the next ninety days.”
Author question 03
“Readers love the found-family angle. Turn that into a launch campaign without changing the cover.”
Author question 04
“Book 1 is quiet. Should I write Book 2, relaunch Book 1, or move to a new idea?”
The response contract
What happenedHow strong the evidence isWhat not to changeThe next controlled move
From evidence to prepared work
The portfolio, the decision, and the result stay connected.
The Desk sees the portfolio, prepares the work, records the decision, and measures the result. You retain final authority over every public change and every dollar.
Catalogue strategy
Reconstruct books, series, reading order, formats, release state, and the role each title plays in the business.
Listings and launches
Diagnose the promise, prepare stronger directions, build launch assets, and define what success should look like before changing anything.
Advertising intelligence
Understand reports in plain language, find the leak, build one controlled test, and preserve the lesson for the next campaign.
Sales and reader evidence
Combine KDP reports, read-through, reviews, formats, and author-supplied economics without pretending unknown numbers are facts.
Creative production
Turn the evidence and reader language you provide into titles, hooks, cover briefs, campaign families, social batches, and precise action packets.
Career direction
Choose the highest-leverage move across a whole catalogue instead of treating every book, launch, and problem as equally urgent.
The Book 1 doctrine
Do not use a sequel to avoid proving the first book.
A second book enters a smaller bucket than the first. Author Desk treats Book 1 as the acquisition engine: make its expected reader bucket materially larger before series value is allowed to raise break-even.
If Book 1 is already a hit and observed read-through supports the series, the economics can expand responsibly. If it is not, the Desk will not use imagined downstream value to make a losing campaign look healthy.
Book 1 · acquisition
Grow this bucket first.
Promise, conversion, reader proof, economics, and repeatable acquisition.
Book 2 · continuation
Earn the expansion.
Use only observed demand and read-through.
Desk rule
Market Book 1 until the expected bucket is meaningfully larger—or the evidence says a different direction deserves your time.
Truth before confidence
Every important number says where it came from.
Author Desk is useful because it knows the difference between evidence and a plausible story. Missing data makes a recommendation narrower—not more imaginative.
Observed
A result present in a report, listing, review set, or recorded Operation.
Author supplied
A price, royalty, cost, goal, or business fact you entered yourself.
Inferred
A cautious conclusion derived from available evidence and shown as an inference.
Unknown
A missing number the Desk will not quietly guess or use to rescue a weak decision.
Limits you can read before paying
Start free. Upgrade for higher enforced limits.
Free keeps the Author File, daily move, export, and a focused production allowance. Unlimited raises the published limits below and opens the full career audit.
Author Desk Free
$0
- One evidence-backed career move every day
- Unlimited books, durable history, and full export
- 1 Advertising Truth report and 4 controlled ad drafts per month
- 1 saved campaign, 5 title directions, and 10 action packets
- A guided Launch Pack and one active advertising Operation
Higher monthly limits
Desk Unlimited
$9.99/month
- 20 saved campaigns and 100 action packets
- 20 Advertising Truth reports and 20 controlled ad drafts per month
- 3 full-book reviews per month
- Saved reader evidence remains readable; live review retrieval is not sold yet
- Catalogue-wide Deep Audit and 90-Day Plan work
Advertising spend is never included. Connected ad-account actions are not currently available on Free or Unlimited.
“The author should understand the decision, own the approval, and keep the lesson.”
David Weaver
National bestselling author · Award-winning publisher
Built from publishing experience
Software with a publisher’s discipline.
Author Desk was designed around the decisions working authors face after the manuscript: where to focus, what not to touch, how much evidence is enough, and how to stop repeating expensive lessons.
No silent public changes. The author remains the decision authority.
No retailer password. Upload only the evidence you choose to use.
Questions · Updated 2026-08-22
What authors should know before they start
What is Author Desk?+
Author Desk is the publishing-career side of BookWriter. It keeps a living Author File, reads evidence across your catalogue, recommends one high-leverage move, helps you build the work, and preserves the result so your next decision starts smarter.
Is Author Desk really free?+
Yes. Free includes a daily career move, unlimited books in your Author File, 1 Advertising Truth report per month, 4 controlled ad drafts per month, a guided Launch Pack, and durable history. No card or trial countdown is required.
Do I need to have written my books with BookWriter?+
No. Bring books written in Word, Scrivener, Google Docs, another writing app, or BookWriter. Author Desk is designed around the author and the publishing evidence, not where the manuscript was drafted.
Does Author Desk need my Amazon password?+
No. Public catalogue information can be imported from links you provide, and sales evidence comes from reports you choose to upload. Never give your retailer password to Author Desk.
Can it run advertising campaigns for me?+
Today, Author Desk can diagnose advertising reports, calculate book-aware economics, build a controlled campaign and creative family, prepare a guided Launch Pack, and manage the learning loop with you. It does not yet connect to, publish, change, pause, or spend through your Meta or other advertising account.
Why does it recommend only one move?+
Because a publishing business rarely needs more noise. Author Desk ranks the available work, names what matters now, explains what not to change, and turns that decision into a measurable Operation instead of another endless checklist.
What does Desk Unlimited add for $9.99 a month?+
Unlimited adds deeper and more frequent production: 20 saved campaigns, 20 Advertising Truth reports per month, 20 controlled ad drafts per month, 3 full-book reviews per month, and catalogue-wide Deep Audit and 90-Day Plan work.
Start with evidence, not a profile form
Pick your genre. See today's chart. Add your books when you're ready.
Start with a book link, a catalogue, or simply your genre and goal. Your first Author File takes about a minute.
Start my free Author DeskNo card · No retailer password · Your history remains exportable