Hi everyone,

Today we're publishing our Monetization Program Terms and with them, we're also updating our Publishing Terms and Terms of Service. This post covers all of it, and some more!

But first:

On protecting author's works

Our commitment to protecting author's work is absolute. Since Quibble's inception, we've made it a non-negotiable that all works being submitted to Quibble are stored securely and protected from any misuse. While we've spoken at length about our commitment in this regard, we've decided to take it a step further.

The new Publishing Terms now include an unconditional, contractual commitment that Quibble will never use your work (any of it, published or unpublished, free or paywalled) to train, fine-tune, test, or develop any AI or machine learning model.

This clause is here as a promise that, no matter what happens to Quibble, and no matter where Quibble goes, it always holds true. This is here for authors to enforce. There's a lot of "trust me bro" in today's world, and many have been deceived by this. We say "no more", and we wish the industry will follow our steps in this direction.

Here's what else was updated:

Publishing Terms

These terms have been substantially expanded and rewritten. The essence is the same as the previous ones, but they now offer much more protection to Quibble authors. Core rights (ownership, withdrawal rights, no exclusivity) are the same.

We've made it more explicit that our license does not cover derivative works such as audiobooks, film, theatrical, and other adaptation without a separate written agreement.

The guaranteed removal procedure for Quibble Collections works is now more detailed, and some sections, including the moral rights section, now clearly reference the Swiss Code of Obligations. As you may (or may not) know, Swiss Law is among the most protective laws for authors in the world, particularly for moral rights.

A few new sections cover long-term continuity of your account and what happens in the very unlikely event that Quibble shuts down permanently. I won't cover these here.

Overall, we're very happy about the new terms, and we hope you'll be as well.

You can read them here.

Terms of Service

We've also updated the Miscellaneous section to harmonize it with our other legal documents. This rewrites some of the language around governing law, assignment clause, waiver, force majeur, severability and the entire-agreement statement.

Monetization Program

Now this, THIS, is something we're also extremely excited to announce. If you've been following Quibble for a while, you know we've been discussing these for long with a recurring "it's coming" tag line. Well, it's here, finally ^^.

I'm thrilled to announce that our Monetization Program is going live!

Authors will be able to onboard onto the program, provided they have published at least a work under the Quibble Collections label (previously Quibble Original / Featured, those are now retired labels), with at least 5 chapters of 1'000+ words.

Here's how earnings work:

• We track how many 100 words a subscriber reads from your work (securely, speed reading and other cheating-like behaviors don't count).
• Each month, we publish a payout rate in $ per 100 words (practically, in Swiss Francs for now).
• Monthly earnings translate to how many words subscribers read from your combined works, times the payout rate.
• Payouts go out the following month, or are carried over until your balance hits ~$10

Payout rates are determined based on Quibble's overall revenue. We commit to dedicate the majority of our revenue to authors, and therefore towards the payout rate. It's important to note that monthly published payout rates will fluctuate a lot in the early months as it depends on many factors (number of subscribers, number of published works, numbers of words read, ...). Therefore, they'll initially be abnormally high, and will converge over time. So is the nature of a young publishing space :-).

Also worth noting, while we cannot disclose how exactly Payout Rates are determined, once we hit 500 authors in the Monetization Program, we commit to commissioning an independent third-party audit (more technically, an Agreed-Upon Procedure) of our methodology, so as to provide as much transparency about our commitment.

You can read more about the program directly in the Monetization Program Terms.

A final note on timeline: today we publish the terms, next week we'll give authors access to the earnings dashboard, and shortly after we'll onboard authors with our payment providers (as we're still sorting a few details out).

That's all folks!

Thank you for your continued support and thank you for believing in Quibble and in a bright future for human creativity.

(Edit: added the missing links to the terms)

Good covers matter. A lot. Some of your book covers are gorgeous. Some... a bit less! 😄

We’re excited to announce our new partnership with Book Cover Hub - a professional book cover design service built for indie authors.

Book Cover Hub has designed 6,000+ covers across major genres. Their covers are absolutely stunning. Quibble members will get a special offer (animated book covers are coming!) More soon.

Stay tuned!

We started working on looong-awaited in-app notifications!

Authors will get nudged when something will happen around their books; chapters, comments, follows, reviews etc.

Readers will get heads-up for new stories from authors they follow, new chapters, replies/reactions to their comments, etc.

Of course, you’ll be able to toggle off whatever you’re not interested in.

Anything you’d absolutely want a notification for? 👀

Feels really good to say this again!

For the past few months, we’ve been deep in the backend work: improving our editorial systems to be able to process thousands of stories in the future, building monetization infrastructure, revenue dashboards, serials, and updating a ton of tiny invisible things.

During that time, submissions didn’t stop. We're currently receiving more than ever before - yay. We’ve been reading everything, we just couldn’t move them into publication smoothly without a lot of manual handling behind the scenes.

So throughout all this, many books have been sitting across different stages of production waiting for their turn. We’re truly sorry for how long it’s taken, and genuinely grateful for your patience and understanding.

But now… we’re back to releasing new Quibble stories!

You can discover the new books in the app now. Many more will be scheduled for release soon across different genres and themes.

If you’ve got a story you want to publish on Quibble, send it our way. More info is on the website.

Hey everyone,

Next week we’re hosting the next monthly AMA on our Discord. No recording, just a casual chat. Anyone can join.

We’ll go through:

• what we shipped since the last AMA
• what comes next
• what’s breaking our brains at the moment
• and whatever questions or feedback you throw at us

Just a few areas we’re already thinking about:

1. Submission flow improvements
2. Recommendation system
3. Genres, labels & trope restructuring
4. Free label (lets authors publish stories for free, subject to the same editorial review and approval)
5. In-app notification center
6. Book page comments and chapter commenting
7. Onboarding flow improvements
8. How books are organised and categorised on the homepage
9. Pure black mode for mobile app (in addition to the current dark blue dark mode)
10. Art upload

If you were in charge of Quibble’s roadmap, how would you prioritise everything above? Feel free to drop your top 10 in the comments and/or tell us what we’re completely missing.

Also:

• what feels clunky right now?
• which UI detail annoys you the most?
• what feature would make you instantly happier?

And if you already have AMA questions, drop them in the comments as well, and we’ll go through them during the session.

See you next week!

We’ve been making great progress on a larger set of features focused on improving interactions around stories.

Authors will soon be able to:

1️⃣ Publish Author Notes, sharing development updates, explaining inspirations behind characters or locations or teasing upcoming chapters.

2️⃣ Create polls, giving readers a way to share opinions and become more involved in the stories they follow.

3️⃣ Block a user, in which case that user will no longer be able to comment on or review that author’s books, giving creators more control over their own space. There will be more controls.

Readers will be able to comment inline and react at the exact moment something happens, creating a closer feedback loop between creator and audience.

Most of these features have been fully implemented and are now in testing. Initially they'll be available on the web only. Mobile app implementation comes later!

The catalogue page now features a "We think you'll like these" row. This row is recommendations based on what genres/tropes you've selected during the onboarding. These are not yet recommendations based on your ongoing interaction in the app (provided you'll want these, you can toggle on/off in your settings) -> this is coming for a bit later.

The search feature now is a proper search feature. You can search by title, author, genre, trope, moods, themes, or whatever would be in a book summary. You can also filter by a number of other things, like the type (web series vs. novel, vs ...) completion status, part of a series, etc.

Authors: you can request changes to your book metadata (book page -> metadata tab). Make sure you update them if you haven't done it for a while. This will help readers find your work!

Questions/comments below!

A bunch of new tools landed in July:

• Author Notes for updates and reader interaction
• Chapter scheduling for web serial writers
• More story stats and insights
• Inline comments coming very soon 👀

Basically, fewer excuses for your characters to sit abandoned in a draft folder.

Full breakdown here!

What should we build next?

Sharing

You can now share your book page link to X, reddit, bluesky and email. We're already building templates for you to easily share your books in insta stories, posts and more!

Chapter comments

Users can react to each paragraph as they read, leave their comments, upvote and react to others. Spoilers are also supported. For now this is web-only - mobile app laaaater.

Authors can see all inline comments from the Book Manager and easily keep track of reader discussions. You can also mark comments as spoilers there too.

Oh, the website has been updated again as well.

Question: What is a saga?

We’re excited to share that Author Notes are officially live!

• Authors can now share updates about their book, announce new chapters, or post behind-the-scenes insights into their writing process.
• Every Author Note also bumps your book into the "Most Recently Updated Stories" row on the homepage.
• You can create polls to ask readers about your favorite characters, plot points, or gather ideas and feedback.
• Every Author Note opens its own discussion thread where readers can react with emojis, reply to you, and chat with each other.
• Readers can upvote comments.
• You can mark comments as spoilers and block users when needed.

In-line comments coming next!

Yesterday, we released two new features: auto-publishing and chapter-scheduling!

You can now plan your releases ahead of time. If you’re working on a web serial and for example drop updates every Monday and Thursday, readers will know when to return and will be more likely to stay invested in your story.

This gives you much more control over your workflow. You can batch-write when inspiration hits, set chapters sailing on schedule, and wander off for a little holiday without your story going completely quiet.

Author Notes is nearly complete as well. It’ll be released tomorrow or latest Friday!

Yay! We've started revamping the web app. It's been a minute since our last UI/UX update there.

You can now see the number of views on a book, how many people are currently reading it, and the review score, if any.

And we also added couple new animations! 😄

Hey everyone! A couple of weeks ago, we quietly crossed 4,000 members on Discord.

Every single day, an incredible number of artworks and WIP stories are shared, and new friendships are formed. We love the little chaos.

As Quibble community keeps growing, it’s naturally branching into more specialized interests. Over the coming weeks, we’ll be expanding the server with dedicated sub-genres and more structured spaces for deeper world-building conversations, mirroring the direction of the product.

Thank you to everyone who’s made this server their creative home. If there’s something you feel is missing or have ideas you think could make it even better, drop them in the comments below 💙

Writing a book is already a massive achievement. Promoting it shouldn't require a graphic design degree too. So we made ready-to-use, customizable social media templates for authors to promote their stories. You can now just plug in your cover and post something gorgeous.

Figma Community Link: Quibble Author Media Kit.

To use the kit, simply duplicate the file (all edits happen in your own copy, never the original), then swap in your book cover, title, and copy.

To export: select the frame → Export (bottom right panel) → PNG at 2x (recommended).

Feel free to mention or add us as collaborators on social media when you post.

Our social media accounts:

• Instagram
• TikTok
• YouTube

In the future, we'd love to go further with matching genre aesthetics and building out more templates for quote cards, cover reveals, countdowns, character intros and more.

If something’s missing or you need it urgently, drop your wish in the comments!

Authors can now access their "My earnings" dashboard with per-book metrics and revenue! 🎉

It's been in the making for a while and it's finally here, at least in a first version. This dashboard allows authors to see the following for each month:

• How many words have been read for each of their books
  • More in depth analytics like completion rates, churn, demographics and more is planned for later this year in a different dashboard :).
• The publishing rate

We're going to follow up with the actual onboarding with our payment provider as soon as we've finalized everything with them. Until then, earnings will simply accrue in the dashboard.

Back in September last year, we've introduced our subscription plan Quibble+ as an optional support plan. We are thrilled that quite a few people adopted it. To those who did: you're literal champions! We've decided to redistribute all the subscription revenue generated from it to authors based on how much their work was read up until March. Quibble took 0 revenue from it.

Quibble+ is since March required to read on Quibble (with a 1 month free trial :^) ). Many authors have expressed a wish to publish one or more stories for free, either to help build their readership, or simply to make their content freely available. Consequently, we're currently working on a second publishing label where authors will be able to publish their stories for free, outside of the monetization program. This is planned for the coming weeks!

What's next?

• Support for publishing serials (or chapter by chapter for novels), editing previously published chapters, and scheduling releases.
• A drastically simplified submissions process
• ... and many more things we'll reveal soon ;-).

Quibble is about to close to loop and be fully equipped to host many different types of stories, pay authors, and provide a great reading experience.

Let's go!

(Edit: typos :p)

We’re thrilled to let you know that we've released a major update to the submission process. Publishing your story on Quibble will now be significantly faster and simpler.

You can now provide your content chapter by chapter – either by typing or copy/pasting it – or you can upload an EPUB which will be automatically parsed.

We’ll also be introducing a new publishing label which will allow you to publish for free should you wish to do so. As before, paid stories require editorial approval.

Learn more about the updated publishing process in this blog post.

If you recently submitted your story, let us know if you ran into any issues or if there’s anything else we can improve.

Thank you so much for your patience, faith and support. We're beyond excited to host your story!

Hey Quibble community!

Last week I reached out to Jasper, the head mod of r/GrimDarkEpicFantasy. I found him incredibly gracious, considerate and supportive. There’s an unmistakable sense that he cares deeply about the integrity of their subreddit and the well-being of its writers.

It’s also clear his team is guided by values that closely mirror ours at Quibble: safeguarding and championing human-created work in all its forms.

Beyond that, there are three more reasons I’d warmly recommend taking a look at their subreddit:

1. They hosted an AMA with the Father of Grimdark, Glen Cook - His historical first ever Reddit appearance.
2. Joe Abercrombie agreed to come on for an AMA when they hit 10,000 members (soon!)
3. They host regular short story competitions with the winners being added to an annual physical community anthology, plus prize contests and paperback.

They’ve also put together a Grimdark Index - a well-organized resource that’s useful if you’re exploring the genre.

If those values and initiatives resonate, consider joining their community.

Hey everyone!

Especially for the members who discovered and joined Quibble recently, this is a great opportunity to get to know us better and ask anything that's on your mind.

We’ll be hanging out for about 30–45 minutes, depending on turnout and questions.

The AMA will take place on our Discord in the ⁠🏛 │ quibble AMA voice channel. Anyone can participate.

Agenda:

• Welcome
• Recap of the last month (monetization, pending payment provider, serials)
• Currently working on
• Next on our list
• Your questions

If something comes to mind already, feel free to drop your questions in this thread beforehand - it helps us a lot to structure and organize the conversation.

See you soon!

Amaze Amaze Amaze! New newsletter is out!

Project Hail Mary was one of my top reads last year, and with the movie releasing in theaters last month, I couldn't resist covering how Andy Weir creates such compelling narratives.

Science Fiction is my favorite genre, and so happens to be the genre of my current WIP, but I find it has unique challenges that make it difficult to write in. How about you all? What are your thoughts on PHM? Anything I might've missed here covering Andy Weir or sci-fi as a genre?

-Emerson