Writing.Com 101

A Book item is an organizational item that offers a convenient way to keep related things in one place. A Book item can group all your blog entries in one place. A Book item makes it easier to manage all the chapters of your novel. The Book item itself is similar to a book cover or looseleaf binder without any pages. The Body text box of the Book item is where you put the back cover blurb, not the content of the Book. The entries, which are added separately, are like pages within the cover or binder. 1

Your paid membership level determines how much total space is available in a Book item. Upgraded members have a limit of 5 MB of space; Premium members have a limit of 10 MB of space, and PremiumPlus members have a limit of 15 MB of space. Each individual entry has a limit of 150KB.

A Book item becomes full when the content uses up the total space in the book, or when the maximum number of entries allowed by the Subtype has been reached, whichever comes first. This information can be monitored at the top of the Manage Book page.

When creating a book, you have several options for the type of book you are creating. The Subtype you select determines how many entries a Book can contain. The Subtype can be changed by editing the setting at any time.


Formatting the Main Page of a Book Item
You can choose from several options for how the entries of a Book item are displayed on its main page. This setting can be changed at any time, and you might need to experiment to find the best combination of settings to fit your needs. You can also create a custom format for your Book. For more information about creating a custom format, see "Manage a Book" .
  For regular Book items, the main page functions as a table of contents.
  If you are using a Book item as a Blog, there are options that display a number of entries on the main page below the Body text of the Book item, with the remaining entries displayed via a paging bar.
  If you use a Book item in your Blog tab, the tab's settings override some of the Book item's setting options. For more information, see "Blog Tab" .

Display Order for Entries
Pending additional programming, all Books, whether used as Blogs or as regular Book items, use the default entry order for Blogs: most recent entry at the top, first entry at the bottom of the list or listing. Book items allow you to change the order of the entries on the Manage Book page at any time. After doing so, new entries are still assigned a zero sort number and appear in the listing at that location. When two entries have the same sort number, the entries' create date-time stamps are used as the secondary sorting rule: the older entry is listed below the newer entry. For more information, see "Manage a Book" .

Content Rating a Book Item
Since content is added to the item over time, and if Comments are enabled, can be added by other members, Book owners need to monitor the added content for its content rating. The assigned content rating of a Book item must account for the content rating of the Book item itself and each individual entry, plus the content rating of any comments made to the entries, and the content rating of anything embedded or displayed in the Book. For example, if only one entry requires an 18+ content rating, and the rest of the entries, comments, etc. and the Book item itself each require a rating between E and 13+, then the entire Book requires the 18+ content rating. Book owners can delete comments made to a Book entry to maintain its content rating, or change the content rating to include the comment.

Reviewing a Book Item
A Book item without any entries cannot be reviewed. Be sure to put the content of the Book into entries, rather than into the Body text box of the Book item.

A Book item can be reviewed as a whole from the main page where the table of contents is displayed, or if the main page is set up in a blog format, from the page where multiple entries are displayed. In addition, each entry in a Book item may be reviewed separately from the page where it is displayed by itself. Reviewers can use either the Review box located under the entry on that page, or use the Review Tool when opened from that page. The review notification email and Reviews listing include the information about which individual entry was reviewed.

All reviews of the main page and individual entries are attached to the Book item and listed together. Entries do not have their own Reviews listing, but the Reviews listing can be searched for entry ID numbers. If an entry is deleted, any reviews sent for that entry will still be shown in the Reviews listing, but they will be missing the title and entry ID number information.

Reviews can be requested for the main page by using the item ID number in the form, or for an individual entry by using the entry ID number in the form. To fulfill the request, the reviewer must send the review from the specified page. For more information, see "Review Requests" .

If you set the AutoReward function for a Book item, the AutoReward applies to qualifying reviews of the Book item as a whole, as well as qualifying reviews of individual entries. A reviewer can earn an AutoReward for each entry as well as for the Book item as a whole. For more information, see "Reviewing On Writing.Com"  and "Auto-Rewards" .

Frequently Asked Questions

How do I move my Static items into a Book item?
Static items cannot be automatically converted into entries in a Book item. Ratings, reviews, and AwardIcons cannot be transferred from one item to another.

You can manually move the content. Copy/paste the content of a Static item's Body text box into the Body text box of an Add an Entry page, and save the entry.

You can save the Static item's reviews to your computer from the Static item's Reviews listing. The fastest method is to use the browser's Save As option for each page of the Reviews listing. If a review contains a dropnote, it must be opened for its content to be included in the Save As copy; use the browser find and the dropnote down-arrow character ▼ to find and open any dropnotes.

Pending additional programming, when an item is deleted, its AwardIcons (if any) currently become not visible.

Reviewers tell me my Book item does not have a Review area under it. Why?
Your Book item is broken. When you created the Book item, you put the content in the Body text box of the Book item itself, rather than putting it into one or more entries after the Book item was created. To fix it, move that content to an entry.

I need to know the original creation date of an entry. How do I find that information?
Normally an entry will display only the last edited date. For a book set to the Journal/Blog subtype, using the Blog Format: 10 entries per page or the Blog Format: 20 entries per pageoption, the entry as shown in the list will show the original creation date, and the individual entry page will show the last edited date.

Several entries in my Book item are suddenly missing. What happened to them?
If you change the Subtype of your Book item and the Book item contains more entries than the new Subtype allows, those excess entries will exist but will not be displayed in the table of contents. To fix the problem, change the Subtype of the Book item to one that allows at least as many entries as your Book contains already.

If you are using a Custom format, you may have forgotten to add the newest entries to the custom TOC.

Another possibility is that your Book item now has enough entries to need to paginate the table of contents. Look for the paging bar above and below the list of entries. If you don't want to have the TOC paginated, choose a different TOC option that displays all the entries on one page, such as Table of Contents:Numbers Only.

I accidentally deleted an entry. How do I get it back?
If you delete an entry, it is immediately and permanently deleted, and cannot be retrieved.