About Inkbound. A Five Line Studio app.

Who makes Inkbound

Inkbound is made by Five Line Studio, LLC, a Florida limited liability company at 2290 Queens Way, Naples, FL 34112, United States. Five Line Studio is the “we” in our Terms of Service and our Privacy Policy.

That is why you see the line “A Five Line Studio app” across this site. Five Line Studio is the studio, and Inkbound is its app for authors. The studio's own site is fiveline.studio.

What Inkbound is

Inkbound is one Mac app that carries a book from a blank page to the files you upload to Amazon KDP. You write the book, plan it in a Story Bible, ask an AI staff for help, typeset the interior, build the full cover wrap and export your files, all in a single project.

We make it for authors who self-publish on a Mac, including authors on a first book with no design or typesetting training. Once the manuscript is done, a wall of production work is waiting: trim sizes, margins and gutter, bleed, spine width, EPUB files and the KDP listing. Inkbound keeps that work in the same project as the manuscript.

It is one app because the numbers about a book should agree. Your manuscript, interior and cover share one project, so the page count and paper set the spine width, and the cover wrap is fitted to it. If the page count moves a little, the spine is refitted. If it moves a lot, Inkbound tells you to repaint. There is no page count to copy from one program into another.

Here is what the one project holds:

• Write. Your chapters with their word counts, find and replace across the whole book, and Word import for a draft you already have.
• Story Bible. Your characters, a cast map of the ties between them, and a map of your world.
• AI staff. Six specialists in one chat, powered by Claude, from a Co-Writer to a Book Designer. Meet the AI writing staff.
• Interior. 13 Looks, all 16 of KDP's paperback trim sizes and all 5 hardcover sizes, plus custom paperback sizes from 4 × 6 in to 8.5 × 11.69 in. See how book formatting works.
• Cover lab. The back, spine and front painted in one piece, or set in type, shown as a 3D book and exported as one print PDF. See the cover design page.
• Publish. A readiness check for the whole book, Kindle and Kobo device previews, and EPUB 3, print PDF and Word export, plus narrated chapters. See publishing.
• Library. Every book on one shelf, each with its own checklist of what is left to publish.

To see each screen with what goes in and what comes out, read how Inkbound works, step by step.

How we work

Each of these commitments already appears in our terms, our privacy policy, our pricing or elsewhere on this site. This page puts them in one place.

Your books stay yours

Inkbound saves your books on your Mac. We do not receive a copy of your books, except the parts you choose to send to an AI feature. Whatever your plan status, the books on your Mac can always be opened read-only and exported as a plain manuscript backup, such as a .docx file. Because your books live on your own computer, keep your own backups too.

The author keeps the pen

The AI staff is staff. It answers and suggests when you ask, and the book stays yours. AI only runs when you start an AI action, and you can write, typeset the interior, set a cover in type and export your files without it. When you do use it, your request goes through our server to our AI providers: Anthropic for text, and OpenAI for images and narration. We do not use your writing to train AI models, and the AI staff questions explain what the AI sees. Selling a book you wrote with AI help? Read what KDP asks you to disclose.

Prices, stated plainly

Monthly is $1 for your first 7 days, then $14.99 a month until you cancel. Lifetime is $129 once, with every future version included, for as long as we offer Inkbound. AI credits are separate and pay as you go, from $9.99, and every new account includes 50 AI credits. We email you a reminder at least 2 days before your first $14.99 charge. Payments are non-refundable, except where the law requires. You can cancel anytime. Billing mistakes and duplicate charges are always fixed. Every detail is on Inkbound pricing.

We say what is not built

Inkbound runs on Apple Silicon Macs with macOS 12 or later. You download it from inkbound.design, not the Mac App Store, and it updates itself. It does not run on Intel Macs, iPad or in a browser. A Windows version is on the way, and it is not available yet. Plans are sold in the US only for now, including Puerto Rico and the other US territories.

Facts you can check

Our comparison pages take every fact about another app from its maker's own website or help pages, and each one says when we checked. Our KDP cover calculator and KDP royalty calculator list the KDP help pages behind their numbers. Our guide to book writing software for Mac says up front that we make Inkbound. If something has changed since, tell us at hello@inkbound.design and we will fix it.