From a private manuscript to a public book
Kanonara is where your manuscript lives, and it is also where readers find it. This page walks the whole path as it works today: a private workspace, two publish decisions, a public library anyone can browse, and the protections that travel with your text. Nothing here is a roadmap; every step described is built.
Private until you publish
You write in the story workspace: chapters on one side, and the story bible that grows as you write on the other. None of it is public. On the reader side, an unpublished book is indistinguishable from a book that was never created: a draft has no page, no listing, nothing to find. The reading page also lives entirely outside the writer’s workspace, so a reader never sees the tools you write with, only the book.
Publishing happens twice
First, the book. In its settings you set the status to Published, which puts the book in the public library. Until you do, nothing of it is visible to anyone.
Then, each chapter. From the chapter’s header you publish it now, or schedule it for a date and time you choose. A scheduled chapter can be cancelled before it goes live, and a published chapter can be unpublished again. The rule on the reader side is one sentence: a chapter is visible when you have published it and its release time, if it has one, has passed.
Chapter-by-chapter publishing is how web serials run. If that is your shape, two of our guides are written for exactly that rhythm: planning a release schedule and writing chapter endings that carry readers to the next one.
The library, and the page a reader opens
Published books appear in the public library with their cover, title, synopsis, genre, chapter count and author name. Anyone can browse it and start reading without an account: the opening chapters of every book are open to all, and the rest asks the reader for a free account.
Each book gets one stable address, kanonara.com/read/ plus the book’s id, and each chapter has its own link beneath it that carries the chapter’s title. When a reader opens the book, the pages they turn are the pages you wrote: the same fixed A6 bunko page with locked type, laid out the same way on every device. Page 42 is page 42 everywhere.
Reading is not a dead end. Readers can react to a book, comment on it, and follow it to be emailed when a new chapter is published. A signed-in reader’s place, bookmarks and highlights sync to their account, so the book opens where they left it, on any device. Reads are counted per chapter (a reader can opt out), and the resulting reader analytics come back to you as the author.
What search engines see, and what they never get
A published book can be found. Search engines may index its title, author, genre, synopsis and chapter titles, and every book and chapter has its own address to list. The text itself is never handed over: book pages carry titles, never chapter text, and a reader’s browser fetches the text separately, through responses that ask crawlers not to index, follow or archive anything. In plain words, your title and synopsis can circulate in search results; your chapters cannot be collected from us by a crawler.
Your text stays yours
You keep the copyright in what you publish. Every book page says so plainly, and states that the book may not be copied, republished or used to train AI without your permission.
Copying is made harder, not just discouraged. Printing is turned off in the reader. Every page a reader sees carries a faint code unique to that copy, so a leaked screenshot can be traced back to its source. Opening books is rate-limited per reader, and later chapters require an account, so bulk copying is tied to an account rather than an anonymous address. And if your work does turn up copied somewhere, there is a report link on every book page, with a copyright report behind it.
See the path from the reader’s side
The shortest way to understand publishing here is to walk it as a reader: open the library and read a book. When you want your own name on that shelf, Kanonara is in early access: create an account and we’ll let you in as soon as we can.