How to approve a chapter submitted to your book

Approving a chapter is the action that formally includes it in a book. This process applies to community books and private group books, where multiple people are involved and submitted chapters affect the work of others.

When a chapter is submitted to your book, it enters a pending state and appears in your dashboard task list. You will also see an active alert in your main navigation indicating that there is a chapter waiting for review. These indicators exist so submitted chapters are not overlooked.

To review a submitted chapter, open it from the book itself or directly from your task list. The chapter will open in review mode, allowing you to read the full text and see any reports or checks that were run at the time of submission.

As the book owner or an approved manager, you have three options when reviewing a submitted chapter. You can approve the chapter as written, reject it, or return it with edits and notes. Approving a chapter means you are accepting the chapter in its current form.

When you approve a chapter, it is included in the book and becomes part of the official chapter sequence. Approved chapters are treated as stable reference points. Other contributors may rely on approved content when writing their own chapters, and approved chapters may become visible to readers depending on the book’s settings.

If there are multiple submissions for the same chapter number, approving one submission resolves the conflict. The approved chapter becomes the accepted version, and any other pending submissions for that chapter number are automatically rejected. This prevents duplicate or conflicting chapters from being included.

Approval is final for that submission. If changes are needed after approval, they must follow the book’s revision rules. In collaborative books, this ensures that changes do not silently disrupt other contributors’ work.

Personal books do not use this approval process. In a personal book, submitting a chapter runs platform checks and reports, but the author can edit submitted chapters at any time. There is no separate approval step because no other contributors are affected.

Approving a chapter is the final step that moves it from review into the book itself. Until a chapter is approved, it remains pending and does not count as part of the finalized book.