BUILT FOR NOVELISTS|The All-in-One Publishing Engine for Authors
The dedicated publishing engine for novelists.
Write your manuscript, keep a story bible beside it, collect feedback from beta readers, publish your author website, send a newsletter and sell your books directly, all from one workspace.
Your own payment link — we never take a cut
Autosave with version history
14-Day Free Trial, No Card
The Complete Author Toolkit
Every tool an author needs. None of the chaos.
Stop stitching together generic business software. PenCanvas is purpose-engineered around the craft, revision cycle, reader community, and direct monetization of books.
Writing Core
Manuscript & Chapter Editor
A clutter-free drafting interface with chapters and folders, a focus mode, a word-count target, autosave and a revision history you can restore from.
Worldbuilding
Story Bible & World Wiki
Keep characters, lore entries (locations, factions, magic, items) and a story timeline for each book in a panel beside your chapters, and search them as you write.
Audience Feedback
Gated Beta Reader Portal
Share a private reading link, with a watermark. Readers highlight text to comment and tag it, and you see how far each reader got in every chapter.
Web Presence
Visual Author Website Builder
Start from one of 8 templates and edit it by drag and drop. Your site includes a blog and book pages, and the Creator and Studio plans add your own domain with SSL.
Monetization
Direct Book Sales
Sell books, bundles and chapters directly with your own payment link. Paperbacks link out to the retailers you choose. PenCanvas never takes a cut.
Audience Growth
Newsletters with double opt-in
Sent through Amazon SES. Subscribers confirm by email, you can tag and segment them, schedule campaigns and build automations. You can send from your own domain once its DKIM records are verified.
FEATURE 01 · CORE WRITING ENGINE
A distraction-free manuscript editor that respects your focus.
Built for long-form fiction. PenCanvas keeps your chapters and story bible side by side, imports DOCX, EPUB, PDF, Markdown and text files, and exports a whole book as DOCX, EPUB or HTML.
Distraction-Free Focus Mode
A focus mode that hides the side panels, plus typography and layout settings, so the page is all you see.
Autosave that retries
Changes save in the background. If a save fails, the editor shows the error and keeps retrying. If your session expires, a copy of the unsaved text is kept in this browser.
Revision History
Open an earlier revision of a chapter, see what changed compared with the current text, and restore it.
Chapters, Folders & Targets
Organise chapters in folders, give each chapter a status (draft, beta, published) and set a word-count target for the session.
Private to your workspace•Autosave
FEATURE 02 · WORLD KNOWLEDGE BASE
A living Story Bible that keeps your universe consistent.
Keep characters, places and events for each book in a searchable panel right beside your chapters.
Character Profiles
Record each character’s role, age, appearance and biography.
Timeline of Events
Add story events with an in-story date, so you can check the sequence of what happens when.
Lore Wiki
Write entries for locations, factions, magic, items, history and culture, and find any entry with the panel’s search or the global search.
FEATURE 03 · READER FEEDBACK HUB
A private beta reader portal. Real feedback before launch.
No more emailing Word files. Invite readers by email or link, choose which chapters they can read, and collect their feedback in your console.
Inline Feedback
Readers highlight text to leave a comment and tag it as loved, confusing, pacing, typo or plot hole. You can reply and mark notes resolved.
Private Links & Watermark
Each reader gets a unique private link. The reading page carries a watermark and blocks copy and print shortcuts. These are deterrents, not a guarantee against leaks.
Reading Progress
See how far each reader got and how many opened and finished each chapter.
FEATURE 04 · NO-CODE SITE BUILDER
A website without writing code.
Pick a template, edit it on a drag-and-drop canvas and publish. Your site gets book pages, a blog and per-page SEO settings, with no code.
8 TEMPLATES INCLUDEDDRAG-AND-DROP EDITOR
Kayla Griffith
Literary suspense
Neon Orbit
Science fiction
Rose & Rue
Contemporary romance
Cold Open
Thriller
Realm & Ruin
Epic fantasy
Clear Path
Non-fiction & business
Custom domain on Creator and Studio: add your domain, copy the DNS records we show you, and SSL is issued once they resolve
A built-in blog with categories, tags and scheduled posts
Pages you can preview and adjust for mobile and tablet
FEATURE 05 · DIRECT MONETIZATION
Sell direct. Keep every dollar.
Drop in your own payment link — Stripe Payment Links, Gumroad, Ko-fi, whatever you already use — on any page, chapter or bio block. Buyers check out there, the money lands straight in your account, and PenCanvas never takes a cut.
One link block, anywhere: your site, a chapter, a post, your bio page
Bundle several items behind a single link, with gated chapters for each
Retailer links for paperbacks and anywhere else you already sell
FEATURE 08 · MOBILE READER HUB
Link-in-bio for every creator.
Give your Instagram and TikTok followers one page for your books, newsletter and links, at your own handle on PenCanvas.
Books & Store Links
Feature your latest release at the top with a product block for your own store, or retailer links such as Amazon, Apple Books and Kobo.
Newsletter Sign-up & Lead Magnets
Add a newsletter sign-up block or a lead-magnet block that links to a free download, and see the clicks on every link.
Included in every plan•Themes & layout options
FEATURE 09 · DIGITAL ASSET ENGINE
One media library for everything you publish.
Upload book covers, character art, videos and downloads once and use them in the editor, your website, your blog and your link-in-bio page. Files are stored on Cloudflare R2.
Cloud Storage with Folders
Covers, character art and downloads live in one library with folders, search, a trash you can restore from, and a storage meter.
Crop & Resize
Crop and resize images before you use them. Smaller preview versions are generated for you.
Focal Point
Pick the focal point of an image so banners crop around what matters.
Import from a URL or Unsplash
Paste an image address, or search Unsplash, and import it into your library.
FEATURE 10 · BLOG & PUBLISHING
Publish serialized fiction and essays on your own terms.
Write posts in a block editor, schedule them, and publish them on your site. Add SEO fields to each post, keep revisions, and email a post to your subscribers.
SEO Fields & Clean URLs
Set a meta title and description, a canonical URL and a social image for each post. Posts live on your site at clean URLs.
Categories, Tags & Reader Access
Organise posts with categories and tags, make a post subscriber-only, and moderate reader comments.
No separate blog subscription•Custom canonical URLs
FEATURE 11 · VISITOR ANALYTICS
See how readers find you.
Page views, top pages, referrers, countries, devices and campaign sources for your site, plus early-access, direct sales and newsletter numbers in the same place.
Privacy-Friendly Tracking
Visits are counted without cookies or advertising trackers; visitors are identified only by a hash that changes daily.
Book Performance
See orders and revenue for each of your published books.
TRACKING
No cookies
Daily-rotating visitor hash
INCLUDED
Every plan
Console analytics page
BUILT FOR LAUNCH DAY
How PenCanvas is built.
A few practical details of how your site and manuscript are handled:
Served From the Edge
Your site is delivered through Cloudflare, and media is stored on Cloudflare R2.
Your Own Domain
On the Creator and Studio plans, connect yourname.com by adding the DNS records we show you. The SSL certificate is issued through Cloudflare once they resolve.
Your Manuscript Keeps a History
Changes save automatically and chapters keep revisions you can restore, so a bad edit is not final.
Take Your Work With You
Export a book as DOCX, EPUB or HTML, chapters as Markdown, text or HTML, and your subscribers as CSV.
FOR EVERY CREATOR
Ready to put your whole workflow in one place?
Publish your site, send your first email, and list your first thing for sale today. 14-day free trial, no credit card required.
✓ 14-Day Free Trial, No Card✓ Free address on pencanvas.com✓ Export as DOCX / EPUB / HTML
Plan and schedule your book posts in one place.
Connect your social accounts, write a post once with options for each network, preview it, and queue it on a calendar. PenCanvas publishes it for you at the scheduled time.
Per-network options and a live preview
Posts go out at the time you pick
Keep ideas, replies and results together