Many writers, one house name, one manuscript.
For book packagers and IP studios that develop long children’s and YA series. Every book in the series lives in one manuscript that belongs to your studio, so canon survives a change of writer and your licensor approves the page itself.
Book a 20-minute walkthrough What it costs
Book twelve, from a new writer to licensor sign-off
Here is one book in a long series. Fieldfare Story Studio is an invented packager, and everyone and everything named below is made up too. Fieldfare develops Otter Point Adventures, a chapter-book series based on an animated show that Glimmerline Animation owns, and publishes it under the house name Hattie Quill. June Albrecht runs editorial. Book twelve has a new freelance writer, Rosa Lindqvist, and every book goes to Greta Hollins at Glimmerline for approval before the publisher sees it.
Keep all twelve books in one manuscript.
Otter Point Adventures isn’t twelve files in twelve folders. The whole series is one manuscript, and each book in it has its own title page with Hattie Quill’s name on it. The outline runs from the first book to the last, down to the chapters.
That pays off the day someone asks a canon question. Search reaches every book at once, so finding what Grandpa Ezra said about the boathouse takes seconds, though three different freelancers wrote the books he says it in.
How books sit in a series
Rosa picks up a thread from book three.
Book twelve is where the green door in the boathouse finally opens. The key that fits it turned up in book three, written by someone Rosa has never met, and it surfaced again in books seven and ten.
Fieldfare keeps a timeline for every thread that runs longer than one book. Rosa pins the brass key’s, and the page shows only the passages on it, in order, with everything between them folded out of the way. Ten minutes later she knows what the key looks like, what is scratched on it, and who has held it.
Follow a thread with a timeline
Share the series with Glimmerline, on a deadline.
Greta checks every Otter Point book against the show’s brand rules. Rosa invites her to the series to edit, and Greta pays nothing and installs nothing. She makes a free account with the address on the invitation and reads the books in her browser.
The share ends on the date the approval window closes, and Greta’s access ends with it. She can copy no more than three paragraphs in a row, and export is switched off, so an unpublished book stays something she reads rather than something she forwards.
Set limits on a share
Greta’s notes come back as changes Rosa can take.
Two lines in book twelve break Glimmerline’s rules. Pip calls the lock stupid, a word the show never lets him use, and Wren pushes off in the canoe without a life jacket. Greta fixes both in her own copy and sends it back.
None of it has touched the manuscript yet. Rosa opens the merge, finds “silly” standing where “stupid” was, and accepts it; the life jacket goes in the same way. The approval round happened inside the series, not in a thread of attachments named final, final two, and approved.
Accept or reject a reviewer’s changes
When a writer leaves in the middle of a series
Callum Reyes wrote books eight through eleven, then took a staff job before book twelve began. Nothing went with him. The series belongs to Fieldfare, so its drafts, its timelines, and Greta’s earlier approvals stayed exactly where they were. June opened the team page and named Rosa Lead Author in one step.
Joining the team doesn’t hand a freelancer your whole catalog. Each writer sees the books they’re given, the team decides who may share and export, and the audit history records who was given access to what. A manuscript moved into the team stays in it. The house name was always the studio’s, and now the files are too.
Questions you’ll have
Can a licensor see one book without the rest of the series?
Yes. An invitation can cover a single book or the whole series. Greta can approve book twelve on its own, or check canon across all twelve when the show’s writers ask her to.
Can we make picture books, graphic novels, or activity books in it?
No. Tabularia sets prose as a typeset book and can place a picture in the text, but it doesn’t do the page-by-page art layout those formats are built from. If your list mixes formats, use it for the chapter books and novels and keep the rest where they are.
Do share limits stop a leak?
Not on their own, and I’d rather say so now. An end date, a three-paragraph copy limit, and no export make lifting a whole book slow and obvious. Nothing stops a screenshot.
Can we hand the publisher a file?
Yes. Export the series as one Word file per book for the publisher’s copyeditor, or send a PDF or EPUB, whenever you need one. The manuscript stays in your team account either way. How export works.
A pilot first, then seats
I’m Allen, and I built Tabularia. I set up each team by hand. Choose one series with its next book in draft and we’ll run it in Tabularia together for 14 days, at no charge, with the people who already work on it.
After the pilot, a seat is $35 a month on a yearly plan or $40 month to month, from 3 seats. Seats are for the people who write and edit. A client, an author, or any other outside reviewer joins as a guest and pays nothing.
Book a 20-minute walkthrough How team accounts work Every plan and price