Simple Author

A distraction-free desktop app for writing books — from first draft to a Kindle-ready EPUB. Everything works offline: spellcheck, thesaurus, fonts, and your manuscript never leave your machine.

Try it in your browser · Download for Mac, Windows, or Linux

Features

• Plain-markdown manuscripts — sections (#) and chapters (##) build a live outline; your book is a portable .md file, never a proprietary format
• Tabs — several documents open at once, each with its own undo history, cursor position, and writing mode; open tabs are restored on relaunch
• Writing modes — Book, Lyrics, Poetry, and Sermon: the structure buttons, counts (words, lines, stanzas, estimated speaking time), and templates adapt to what you're writing; sermon mode highlights scripture references
• Two views — raw markdown, or a rendered mode that hides the markup except on the line you're editing
• Author notes — [Notes]…[/Notes] blocks stay visible while you write and are stripped from every export
• Live word counts — book, section, and chapter counts that follow your cursor
• Bilingual spellcheck — English + Portuguese, fully offline, with a personal dictionary (right-click a flagged word to fix it or add it)
• Built-in thesaurus — right-click any word for synonyms grouped by sense (WordNet-derived, 145k entries, offline)
• Kindle / KDP ready — one-click EPUB export, KDP front/back-matter templates, and a step-by-step publishing guide
• Writing reminders — a small pinned panel for the notes you want in view while drafting
• Four themes, paragraph/line-break marks, and a focused, chrome-free layout

Install

Warning

Only the macOS build has been tested so far. The Windows and Linux builds are produced by the same CI pipeline but are untested — reports (good or bad) are very welcome in the issues.

Grab the installer for your platform from the latest release:

• macOS — .dmg (universal). The app is not notarized; the first time, right-click the app and choose Open.
• Windows — .msi or -setup.exe. SmartScreen may warn about an unknown publisher; choose More info → Run anyway.
• Linux — .AppImage (portable), .deb, or .rpm.

Or use the web version — same editor, running entirely in your browser (files open/save through the browser's download mechanism instead of native dialogs).

Roadmap

Goals get checked off as they ship. Ideas and votes welcome in the issues.

Artwork & covers (Book mode)

• Attach cover art to a manuscript (kept with the book, shown in-app)
• Embed the cover in EPUB export so Kindle and e-readers display it
• Cover preview with KDP dimension checks (≥ 1600 × 2560 px, 1.6:1 ratio)
• Back-cover art and blurb layout for print editions
• Full-wrap cover template (front + spine + back) sized from page count

Interface translations

• Extract all interface strings into locale files
• Portuguese interface translation
• Language picker with system-language detection
• Translation guide so others can contribute languages

Dictionaries & reference tools

• Dictionary manager: download and enable spelling dictionaries for more languages (Hunspell format)
• Downloadable thesauri for languages beyond English
• Import / export the personal dictionary
• Per-book word lists (character names, places, invented terms)

Print

• Print / PDF export with page setup: trim size, margins, fonts
• Headers, footers, page numbers, and chapter page breaks
• KDP paperback-ready PDF (6×9 in and other trim sizes)
• Print directly from the app

Secure storage

• Password-protected manuscripts, encrypted at rest (AES-256)
• Lock / unlock flow with automatic locking when idle
• Encrypted rotating backups so a bad save never loses a book
• Clear passphrase-loss warning (no recovery without it — by design)

Poetry & lyric tools

• Per-line syllable counts in Poetry mode (CMU Pronouncing Dictionary, with a heuristic fallback for names and invented words) (v1.0.2)
• Rhyme finder in the right-click menu — perfect and near rhymes, offline (v1.0.2)
• Suno integration in Lyrics mode: [Style] prompt block with a live 1000-character budget, [performance tag] styling, and one-click copy of the style prompt or tagged lyrics ready to paste into Suno (v1.0.2)
• Rhyme scheme coloring: line endings that rhyme get matching tags
• Meter and stress-pattern display
• Chord notation in Lyrics mode (ChordPro-style [G] markers) with show/hide and transpose
• Portuguese syllable counting and rhymes

Small improvements

• Keyboard shortcuts for switching and reordering tabs
• Drag to reorder tabs

Shipped

• v1.0.0 — Mac / Windows / Linux builds, browser version, offline spellcheck (English + Portuguese), offline thesaurus, right-click suggestions, personal dictionary, EPUB export, KDP templates
• v1.0.1 — Writing modes: Book, Lyrics, Poetry, and Sermon (speaking time estimate, scripture highlighting)
• v1.0.2 (beta) — Tabs (multiple documents open at once), per-line syllable counts and rhyme finder for poetry, Suno integration for lyrics (style prompt with character budget, performance tags, copy-for-Suno export)
• v1.0.3 — Fixed a tabs bug: switching tabs while a save was in flight (e.g. right after the save dialog) could save to the wrong tab — the tab you meant to save would keep showing as unsaved, and a different tab would pick up the saved file's name without its content actually changing

Building from source

Prerequisites: Node.js 20+, Rust, and the Tauri platform dependencies (on Linux: libwebkit2gtk-4.1-dev and friends).

npm install
npm run tauri:dev     # run the desktop app in development
npm run tauri:build   # build the installer for your platform
npm run dev           # or: just the web version on localhost:5173

Tech

TypeScript + CodeMirror 6 editor in a Tauri 2 shell. Spellcheck via nspell with Hunspell dictionaries, thesaurus from MyThes/WordNet data, EPUB assembly with JSZip. No telemetry, no network calls.

License

GPL-3.0. Bundled fonts, dictionaries, and thesaurus data are under their own licenses — see THIRD-PARTY-LICENSES.md.