This collection comprises a set of four manuals, or Author Handbooks, each documenting the use of a class of publications based on one of the AMS document classes amsart, amsbook, amsproc and one hybrid, as well as a guide to the generation of the four manuals from a coordinated set of LaTeX source files. The Handbooks comprise the user documentation for the pertinent document classes. As the source for the Handbooks consists of a large number of files, and the intended output is multiple different documents, the principles underlying this collection can be used as a model for similar projects. The manual Compiling the AMS Author Handbooks provides information about the structure of and interaction between the various components.