Access levels: who can do what

Working alone? Skip this page. You are the Owner and can do everything. Access levels only matter once you invite someone else into your workspace.

Every member of your workspace has one access level: Editor, Administrator, or Owner. The level decides which pages, files and buttons that person sees. This page explains the idea behind the levels. To invite someone or change their level, see the Team & Guest Management guide.

The one idea behind the levels

Editors work on the books: manuscripts, covers, metadata, marketing files. Administrators run the business: money, contracts, personal records, the team itself. Almost every rule on this page follows from that split.

The three levels

Level What it means
Editor Creates and edits content. Cannot delete content, change settings, or see confidential business files.
Administrator Everything an editor can do, plus running the workspace: settings, team, billing, deleting content, royalties, and confidential files.
Owner Everything an administrator can do, plus adding and removing administrators. Only one owner per workspace.

Each level includes everything below it. There is no read-only level: everyone in a workspace is there to work on it. To show someone a title without giving them the workspace, invite them as a guest instead — see Team & Guest Management.

What editors do not see

Three kinds of thing are hidden from editors, not just locked:

  • The full person record. A person’s page holds their legal name, home address, phone number, personal email and private notes. Editors see people as names in lists and pickers, without a link to the page. Contributor profiles stay open to editors: the pen name and biography that appear on a book. That is book work.
  • Business files. Editors never see files in the Contract, Tax Forms, Banking or Correspondence categories — not on the Assets page, not on a person’s page, not in downloads.
  • Royalty figures. Editors cannot see royalty pages or the royalties tile on the Dashboard.

An editor who needs one of these asks an administrator.

Two protections on files, not one

A confidential category stops a file leaving the workspace. Pubblish will not attach a confidential file to anything that goes out. That includes a beta-reader invitation and a reader magnet (a free book offered for a mailing-list signup). Manuscript and Uncategorized are confidential categories, and so are the four business categories above.

The four business categories carry a second protection: only administrators and the owner see them at all.

A manuscript has the first protection but not the second. An editor works on it every day. Nobody can send it outside the workspace by accident.

If a button is missing

If a guide describes a button or page you can’t find, your access level does not include it. Ask your workspace owner to change your access level if you need it.