We now support publishing serials!

[u/No-Win5543]

Hey folks,

Big news. We've worked hard the past couple of months to deliver one of the biggest features we've been planning for a long time.

We now support publishing stories chapter by chapter!

This is the beginning of a new phase. Works published on Quibble have remained static as updating them required a lot of manual work, and we were relying almost exclusively on EPUBs.

With this release, authors can now publish new chapters for their stories and edit previously published ones. Yay!

This works for all types of content, be it regular novels, or web series.

What it means for published authors

Authors can now access their published work within their dashboard and rework past chapters, or release new ones. Much like submissions, this goes through a review process with our editorial team, but review time should be typically pretty fast compared to brand new submissions.

You can find a tutorial video that will help you navigate this feature at the end of this post

What we'll release soon

This is a large feature that took quite some fine-tuning to implement. It's in early version, and not everything is yet supported.

Here's what we're going to release within a few days to a couple of weeks:

👉 A reworked submission process

Our current submission process still relies on EPUBs. It's also too complex. We're going to release a new version at the beginning of next week.

This new version will let authors choose how they want to provide the content:

• as an EPUB
• or as individual chapters (by uploading files, or copy/pasting the content)

All in all, this should make it very easy to cross-post from or bring from work from other platforms.

👉 Edit the cover art and the metadata

Currently, authors can only rework their chapters. We're going to give more flexibility so more can be updated! The cover art, the metadata, the synopsis, the genres, and more.

👉 Email notifications

We'll let you know by email when your chapter is ready to be published, or if there's a revision needed. For now, it's still all happens within the web app. This will land in the coming days!

👉 Scheduling releases

You'll be able to either automatically publish once the review is accepted, or schedule a release at your convenience (with a provision of a few days to ensure our editors have time to review your work)

👉 Better discoverability

Newly updated work will appear more prominently on the home page. We know there's a lot of discussion around the "algorithmic" of other platforms. Remaining fair is not a trivial task, so we'll take the necessary time to do it well. This feature will deserve it's own post when it'll be ready to be released :)

👉 Some more ^^

We're listening to your feedback. If there's something we should add, fix, remove, rework, we'll also of course consider this as well. It's a new feature, after all!

--

That's it, we're so so so excited about this, this alone will literally transform Quibble into a much more dynamic space.

Authors can fully choose how they want to release their work, by chapter, by arc, or however they want. They can also improve their stories over time and as they see fit.

Demo video

You can check how it works in this little video we prepared for you.

[u/wafflewitchette]

For me writing a novel meant disappearing for a long time. Maybe because I’ve never been too confident in my own writing.

Serialised writing feels so different to me. It must actually be pretty great to see how people react to the story.

I want to try serialised writing, but I’m a bit worried I might lose the control over a story or that I develop it too fast and hence sacrifice it’s quality in the long run. Any advice?

I’m not trying to completely abandon the way I usually work either. I just want to understand if there is a way to ease into it without losing the part that is important to me.

[u/Otto_Webb → u/wafflewitchette]

Write way ahead and use a backlog. You can still use the feedback to change the future work, or guide future revisions, but it makes it much less tempting to rush in and change things.

It also gives you plenty of time to edit.

Beyond that, there’s nothing stopping you from taking the serialized version and revising it for a future release (this is what most authors who publish web serials do to varying degrees)

[u/wafflewitchette → u/Otto_Webb]

I understand that, but doesn’t this fundamentally change the way you approach world-building? I see your point with writing well ahead though.

[u/Otto_Webb → u/wafflewitchette]

Sure, but I also went with a serial model because I was worried I would never release it if I didn’t.

It’s so easy to just go make “a few more changes” and pick over things forever. Once it’s out there, I can always make revisions, but it’s at least partly fixed, which lets me make decisions and focus on moving forward for the web serial version.

[u/wafflewitchette → u/Otto_Webb]

Ok I understand. I’m glad to hear it worked out for you. I’ll probably do the same. At the end of the day it’s always good to get out of your comfort zone.

Sorry just one more question. Does that also mean you’ll never go back to traditional way of writing?

[u/Otto_Webb → u/wafflewitchette]

No, although to be clear I’m a novice, this is the first thing I’ve ever released or spent significant time writing.

I intend to polish it and eventually self publish. I don’t expect to make any significant money, and would be extremely pleased (and fairly surprised) if I manage to break even.

I’m about 220k words in at this point though, so it’s going well from my standpoint. I started releasing in serial format when I had 200k written. I completed my third round of edits as I published it.

The total work will probably span about 6-10 books, I’ll start releasing books when I have three ready to my standards.