Bring in a book you've already written

Exaratio checks the file first and tells you what it contains: how many headings and paragraphs, and whether anything won't come in as it is, such as a table, a drawing or a formula.

Under Chapters you choose:

• One chapter for each heading in the file: each heading in the file starts a chapter. The usual choice for a book.
• Everything in a single chapter: for a short story or a single piece.

Exaratio uses the file's headings. In Word, paragraphs with a heading style (Heading 1, Heading 2…), including your own styles based on them. In an EPUB, the book's headings, even if they're spread over several internal files. The first level starts chapters and the next one, scenes.

Each heading's text becomes the chapter's name; a heading that's just a number, like "7", becomes "Chapter 7". Whatever comes before the first heading is kept as Front matter, and sections called Prologue, Dedication or Epilogue are recognized as such.

If the file has no headings but has lines like "Chapter 1", Exaratio uses them. If there's none of that, the book comes in as a single chapter and you can split it later (Split a chapter in two).

Without changing a single word, Exaratio:

• puts the chapter title at the top of the page, if it didn't have one;
• gives inner headings their style, and turns lines like "* * *" into scene breaks;
• joins lines the file broke mid-sentence;
• fixes the typography of the work's language: spaces, dialogue dashes, quotes and ellipses;
• sets the prose justified and indented, except the first paragraph after a heading or a break.

• Links, quotes, lists, strikethrough and underline come along too.
• From Word you also get footnotes and endnotes, numbered lists and tracked changes, already accepted.
• Tables come in as text, cell by cell.
• In a PDF, repeated headers and page numbers are removed.
• An EPUB's cover becomes your work's cover, if it doesn't have one yet.

On its own, Exaratio imports the text but doesn't create the cards for characters, places, objects or organizations. As soon as you create one, it recognizes its name and aliases throughout the book.

If you ask your AI assistant to import the book, it creates the cards itself, with their aliases and relationships, in the same conversation (Import a book with your assistant).

• Books with copy protection (DRM), like many bought in stores.
• Files over 8 MB, or over 96 MB for a PDF.
• A scanned PDF, which is only a picture of each page: run it through a text-recognition program (OCR) first.
• .doc, .odt or .txt files: save them as Word (.docx) first.
• A Word file with macros or objects from other programs: save it without them.

If a file can't be imported, Exaratio tells you why. Often it's enough to open it in the program you wrote it in, or in Calibre, and save it again as EPUB or Word.

The import goes into the work's history, like any other change (Undo and redo).