Do I need a subscription to publish to Amazon KDP?
KDP itself is free to publish on, and it has nothing to do with us. But the free plan has no download at all and is licensed for personal use only, so there is no file to put up for sale. To publish, you need the interior and cover files, and those are paid.
Two things worth knowing either way. There is no KDP publishing API — not for us, not for anyone — so no tool can upload a title on your behalf. You download the files and upload them yourself, which takes a few minutes. And KDP requires you to disclose AI-generated text, images and translations in their publishing form; extensive editing does not change that answer. That is your checkbox — we do not fill Amazon’s form. For a Shadow Writer book the truthful text answer is usually entire work, with minimal or no editing, plus the model name.How to answer KDP’s AI questions →The long-form guide covers picture books, comics and editing.
What happens to my book if I cancel?
The book stays. Every book you have written remains in your library, your account stays open, and any files you have already downloaded are simply yours — cancelling does not reach onto your hard drive, and it does not un-publish anything you have already put on a store.
Credits you bought outright stay on your account while it is active. What stops is the monthly top-up, so once the balance runs down you cannot start another book, export a new file or re-render a cover until you buy credits again or resubscribe. Nothing you have already made is taken away.
Can I download my free book?
No. The free plan is a reading copy of your own book: every word of it, in the browser, for as long as you like. There is no PDF or EPUB, and no print, until you upgrade. We would rather say that here than have you find it out after a thirty-minute wait.
When you do upgrade, it is this book that unlocks — the same text you have already read — not a fresh one written from the same prompt. The free book also carries a single line on its copyright page saying it is licensed for personal use. Once, on one page.
Can I edit what it writes?
Yes, and it matters more than you would expect. You can rewrite any sentence directly, and you can send a whole chapter back to be written again — regeneration deliberately preserves that chapter's outcomes, because the chapters after it were written against them.
Every edit you make and every choice you approve is recorded as it happens, and the book shows you your edit share as a percentage. That record is what makes the book legally yours, which is the next question.
What if I do not like the cover?
On a paid plan you are shown four drafts before anything is rendered properly. You pick one, edit the brief if the idea is close but not right, and only then is your choice rendered at full quality. Studio can re-render as often as the cover needs.
The title and your name are painted by our cover image service as part of the cover (DESIGN typography), then checked against the exact strings from that book's Story Bible. A near-miss or extra invented words is rejected, not shipped. Changing a title means a new render. On free there is one cover and no alternates, which is the plainest way we can put it.
Do I own the book?
Partly — and we would rather say so than sell you a slogan. Work that is purely machine-generated is not copyrightable in the United States. There is no copyright in it for anyone to hold, us included. What isprotectable is your contribution: the premise, the answers you gave, the choices you approved, the lines you rewrote.
That is exactly why every one of those is recorded as it happens rather than reconstructed afterwards, and why your edit share is shown on the book. A paid plan licenses you to publish and sell what you made. It does not hand you a copyright that does not exist, and any tool telling you otherwise is overselling. If this matters to your plans, speak to a lawyer about your specific book rather than taking a pricing page's word for it.
Can anyone else see my book?
On free, the book is public: the cover can appear in the showcase, with the pen name on the book, and signed-in members can read it. The text is never public to the open web. Free books cannot be made private. That is the honest trade for the book costing nothing.
Paid books are private by default, cover and text both, and appearing in the gallery is something you opt into rather than out of. If you wrote a free book and later regret its cover being public, upgrading unlocks privacy on it retroactively. Privacy and deletion are separate things and you get both: private hides a book from the gallery and keeps it in your library, delete removes it.
What if the book comes out badly?
Then you have not spent anything, which is the reason the order works the way it does: you write the book, read every chapter of it, and see the quality report before you decide whether the files are worth paying for.
Two caveats we would rather you heard from us. A run that stops partway does not use up your free book. And the quality report tells you what was checked and what was changed — continuity, timeline, cast, setups and payoffs, print layout — not that the prose is good. That judgement is yours, which is precisely why you get to read all of it first.
Can it make comics?
Yes, on a paid plan. A comic is either one finished page — a grid of four to seven panels — or a full 24-page issue. Either way the panels are drawn one at a time so the same characters look the same in every panel, with the dialogue lettered over the art.
Pages are composed at 7 × 10 inches, the shape of a comic book, and the lettering is kept on its own layer so a word can be fixed without redrawing a panel. A single page is a Kindle edition; a full issue also exports a print file KDP accepts. Comics are not part of the free plan — your free book is a novella, and if you like how it reads, upgrading opens comics and every other kind of book.
What is the Hero plan for?
Illustrated books. Pictures cost far more to make than words, so a comic, a picture book or a coloring book uses credits much faster than a novel does. Hero is $39 a month for 350,000 credits — two and a half times Studio — for authors who mostly make illustrated books.
It is everything in Studio with a bigger balance, nothing hidden behind it. Coloring books run on the same credits as everything else, and the price of each is on the pricing page. If you mostly write prose, Author or Studio is the better buy.
Is there a yearly price?
Yes. Every paid plan can be paid once a year at ten times the monthly price, which is two months free: Author is $90 a year, Studio $190 and Hero $390.
It is the same plan either way — the yearly price is simply the discount for paying ahead. Switch the pricing page to yearly to see each plan side by side.