Pricing — Shadow Writer AI

Write for free. Pay when you want to publish.

Books are paid for in credits, not in seats or in words. A subscription is simply credits at a discount, and it is optional — you can buy credits on their own and never hold a plan at all.

Your first book is free to write and to read in full. Everything on this page, including what each plan does not do, is stated as plainly as we can manage.

Three of them, and one of them is free forever

Free

No card, ever

One complete book, start to finishA novella of about 24,000 words across 12 chapters. One book, not one a month. If a run stops partway it does not use it up.
A cover built from your storyGenerated from your book's own characters rather than a stock template. One cover, no alternates, no re-render.
Read every chapter in the browserThe whole book. Nothing is held back behind the paywall to make you buy it.
Read online, not downloadedDownload, print and the licence to sell unlock when you upgrade — and they unlock this book, not a rewrite.
Your cover appears in the public galleryThe text stays behind your login. Free books cannot be made private. That is the trade.
Personal use while it's freeThis book is licensed for your own reading, not for sale — until you upgrade. Upgrading licences this book for commercial publication: download it, print it, sell it. Not a rewrite, the same book.

Start writing

Author

$9 / month

For finishing your book

60,000 credits a monthAbout two novels' worth of writing. Bought on their own the same credits are $12, so the plan is the discount.
Your files — PDF and EPUBDownload, print and publish. The EPUB is validated before it reaches you.
KDP-ready at any trim sizeEvery trim size KDP accepts. The gutter is computed from your final page count rather than guessed, so the interior uploads without adjustment.
All four kinds of bookStories, non-fiction, collections and picture books — each built the way that kind of book is built.
Full quality reportContinuity, timeline, cast, setup and payoff, and print layout — including the checks that needed fixing.
Better writing modelPaid books draft on a stronger model, pinned for the whole book so the voice never seams mid-way.
Private by defaultCover and text both. Appearing in the gallery is opt-in, and upgrading unlocks privacy on the free book you already wrote.
Four cover drafts, then one full renderChoose from four, edit the brief, and only the one you picked is rendered at full quality.

Choose Author

Studio

$19 / month

For more than one book

Everything in AuthorEvery file format, every trim size, the full report, privacy by default.
140,000 credits a monthAbout five novels' worth. Bought on their own the same credits are $28.
Illustrated books with consistent artYou approve the reference sheets before a single spread is drawn. Character, location, style and palette are then held across the whole book.
Series continuity across titlesBook three knows what book one established, rather than starting from an empty page.
Cover re-renders at full qualityChange the brief and render again, as many times as the cover needs.
Priority generationYour books go to the front of the queue when the system is busy.

Choose Studio

Books are paid for in credits

A credit is the unit of writing. Every plan includes a monthly balance of them, and you can buy more at any time without holding a plan. Extra credits are $0.20 per 1,000, in whatever amount you want. A novel runs about 25,000 credits.

Approximate cost by kind of book
What you are writing	Roughly	At $0.20 / 1,000
One chapter, on its own	650 credits	$0.13
Poetry collection — about 8,000 words	~3,000 credits	~$0.60
Novella — 35,000–40,000 words, ~18 chapters	~13,000 credits	~$2.60
Novel — 70,000–80,000 words	~25,000 credits	~$5.00
Business or ideas book	About the same as a novel of the same length	—
Picture book — 32 spreads	Priced from the art, not the word count	—

Text books scale with length, at around 650 credits a chapter. Illustrated books do not — the art is most of the cost, so a picture book runs well above a novel despite being a fraction of the words. Every figure above is an approximation.

You always see what an action costs before you spend it — the price is on the button. Not in a settings page, not in an invoice a month later, and not after the fact. Writing a chapter, re-rendering a cover, exporting a file: each one shows its own price where you click it, and a book that stops partway is not charged for.

What each plan actually gives you

Feature	Free	Author	Studio
Writing included	One novella, ever	60,000 credits / month	140,000 credits / month
Buy extra credits	$0.20 / 1,000	$0.20 / 1,000	$0.20 / 1,000
Kinds of book	Novel only	All four families	All four families
Read the whole book in the browser	✓	✓	✓
Print-ready PDF	—	✓	✓
Kindle EPUB	—	✓	✓
Trim sizes	Default only	Any size KDP accepts	Any size KDP accepts
Cover	One, no alternates	Four drafts, one full render	Re-render at full quality
Full quality report	—	✓	✓
Writing model	Standard	Stronger, pinned per book	Stronger, pinned per book
Picture books with consistent art	—	✓	✓ plus full-quality re-renders
Series continuity across titles	—	—	✓
Priority generation	—	—	✓
Privacy	Cover public, text behind login	Private by default	Private by default
KDP AI disclosure guide	✓	✓	✓
Licence	Personal use only	Commercial use	Commercial use

The things self-publishers actually ask

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 →

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 Ideogram 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. Whatis protectable 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 cover is public — it appears in the gallery, with the pen name on the book — and the text sits behind your login. 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.