Editing a book

You can change everything Anansi Studio shows about a book: its details, its chapters and subchapters, its cover art and its lyrics.

Editing is safe. Your changes are saved in the app as you make them and show in the player straight away, but the audio file itself isn't touched until you choose to write the changes into it.

Opening the editor

• In the library: Edit… in the book's menu (⋯ on a tile, right-click on a spine).
• In the player: Edit (the pencil at the top on a wide window; in the More menu on a narrow one).

Books read aloud by the system voice have no audio file and can't be edited.

How the editor is laid out

• Narrow window: one page with the details, then Chapters, Cover art and Lyrics, each opening its own editor, then Write changes into the audio file.
• Wide window: the same list down the left. Choosing Chapters, Cover art, Lyrics or Write changes into the audio file shows that editor on the right, without leaving the page. Each editor keeps what you were doing while you switch between them.

Each row says where things stand: how many chapters there are (or No chapters), Has cover or No cover, Plain lyrics, Timed lyrics or No lyrics, and Unwritten edits are waiting or Nothing to write yet.

Details

Edit the Title, Author, Narrator and Genre fields directly. Each one is saved as soon as you leave it; there's no Save button to forget.

Language is chosen from a list, so the library can group and search by it. Choose Not set to clear it.

The library uses these details everywhere: to sort, group and search, on the tiles and spines, and in the player.

Chapters

The chapter editor lets you build or fix a book's chapter list, including chapters inside chapters (subchapters). It works on a copy: nothing changes until you choose Save, and if you leave with unsaved changes it asks whether to Discard them.

Marking chapters while you listen

The controls along the bottom of the chapter editor play and pause and jump 10 seconds back or forward, so you can listen for the exact moment a chapter begins.

• Add chapter here (0:12:34) adds a chapter at the current playback position. Give it a title and choose Add.
• Add subchapter here (0:12:34) appears when a chapter is selected (tap a chapter to select it). It adds a subchapter inside the selected chapter, at the current position.

Changing a chapter

Each chapter's menu offers:

When you're done, choose Save. The player uses the new chapters straight away.

Subchapters in MP4 and M4B files

MP4 and M4B files can only hold a flat list of chapters. The app keeps your full tree, with its subchapters, for itself, but other players will see one flat list. The editor says so for these books. MP3 files can hold subchapters, so other players see the tree too.

Cover art

1. Open Cover art.
2. Choose Choose image… to pick a JPEG or PNG file, or, on a phone or tablet, From photos.
3. Check the preview and choose Save cover.

Large pictures are scaled down automatically when they are saved. Only JPEG and PNG pictures can go into an audiobook file; another kind of picture is refused.

Remove artwork takes the cover off the book in the app. It stays in the audio file until you write your changes into it.

Lyrics

The lyrics editor has two tabs, both editing the same lyrics.

Plain text

Type or paste the lyrics, one line per line.

Timed lines

Timed lines are highlighted one by one as the book plays; see Lyrics. To time them:

1. Start playing the book (use the controls along the bottom).
2. Each time a line begins, tap Stamp on it. The line gets the current playback time, its button shows that time, and the list moves on to the next line. To restamp a line, tap its time.
3. Add a line with Add line; remove one with its ×.

Other lyrics actions

• Import .lrc / .txt: load lyrics from an .lrc file (which carries times) or a plain text file.
• Copy as LRC: copies the lyrics, with their times, in the LRC format.
• Clear all: removes every line (after asking).

Choose Save to keep your changes. If you leave without saving, the editor asks whether to Discard them.

Timed lyrics are written into the file as LRC text in its lyrics tag. Not every other player reads the times back out of it, but Anansi Studio always does.

Writing changes into the audio file

Until you write them in, your edits live only in Anansi Studio. They're safe there, and they're included in backups and sync, but other apps and devices that read the file won't see them. A book with unwritten edits shows an upload icon in the library.

To write them in:

1. Open Write changes into the audio file.
2. Check the Will write list: the title, author and narrator, the chapter marks, the cover artwork and the lyrics, as they apply.
3. Read any note about the format:
4. Subchapters will be flattened into one chapter list (MP4 and M4B files).
5. Line timings will be written as plain LRC text.
6. The file's format can't be written to at all, so your edits stay in the app only (for example OGG, Opus, FLAC, WAV or AAC files).
7. Choose Write changes. When it says Written to the file., choose Done.

Writing never edits your file in place. The app writes a complete new copy beside it, checks that the copy reads back correctly, and only then puts it in place of the original. If anything goes wrong part way through, your original file is left as it was.

Leaving with unwritten changes

If you leave the editor with edits that aren't in the file yet, it asks:

• Write to file: write them in now.
• Leave anyway: keep them in the app and write them later.
• Cancel: stay in the editor.

Books made of several files

Writing into the file is for a book that is a single file. For a book made of several files, such as a folder imported as one audiobook or a book made from a document, keep your edits in the app. To get one file with everything in it, share the book as an .m4b, which includes its chapters, cover and timed lyrics.

Related pages

• Supported file formats: what can be written to which format.
• Lyrics and reading along
• Sharing audiobooks