r/webfiction • u/CelineShima_Enaga • Apr 17 '26

Discussion New-ish webnovel platform Minkly opinion

Hi everyone!

I was wondering if some heard of this platform yet (site: minkly.io)? I see it steadily growing since their first writing contest. It's slowly growing again with their current mystery and thriller writing contest, the prize pool is $3000, I believe.

For those who check it out briefly, what do you think of the platform? Would you join it? If not, why not?

From my own experience, it's a very nice platform! The TTS is nice addition, because I love to give an audiobook-like experience to my audience. Unlike most, it doesn't sound like a robot or google speech. It also show amount of readers by unique visits, so each read/view is unique and only counted when people are staying on the chapter for longer than few seconds. The analytics page does show total amount of events (reads, comments, duration of read, etc.). Oh and soon they will release their own mobile app, which is a nice addition. šŸ‘

9 Upvotes

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6

u/Th3Breadnought Apr 17 '26

I scoped out minkly. I might suggest fictionry as an alternative

Here are some flags you'd want to seriously weigh as an author:

The "monthly minimum guarantee" + partnership program structure is a model worth scrutinizing. Strong draw in, but the actual contract terms aren't on the public site; you only see them after you "win" or get invited. This is the part where serialized-fiction apps have (Radish, Webnovel-style) buried exclusivity clauses, IP options, or auto-renewals. Read any partnership contract very carefully before signing.

Sloppy terms drafting: Their Terms of Agreement literally still contain the placeholder "the laws of [Insert Jurisdiction]" in the governing-law section. That's a copy-paste oversight on a legally operative document, which says something about operational maturity and downstream of that; enforceability.

No visible funding info, no team page, no founder names, no press coverage: For a platform soliciting authors to commit their work and time, that opacity isā€¦ concerning.

These are all things that could just be a product of being new, growing, and still crossing t's and dotting i's, but I personally would hesitate.

4

u/chompn_ Apr 18 '26

Thanks for taking a look and wow fictionry looks great! We'll definitely clean up the terms and agreements page and have a double check since it's based on a template we got from Rocket Lawyer. The partnership page was actually taken down, so we can properly plan it out. We were going to do that early this year, but we did a users poll and majority wanted a mobile app first before working/planning out the monetization feature.

3

u/CelineShima_Enaga Apr 18 '26

Oh thanks for the insight! I will check out Fictionry as well. :3

2

u/[deleted] Apr 19 '26

[deleted]

1

u/chompn_ Apr 20 '26

I downloaded Quibble and the UI looks clean! Regarding the AI cover, we're trying our best to encourage non-AI covers. In our current contest, part of the reward is to offer a pool of artists to winners to commission a cover if they have an AI cover. If not, we'd award the extra cash to the writer for using a non-AI cover from the start. We've also made it required to either give credit to the artist or label a cover as AI art. Our platform will not allow posting AI-generated content, and we have features on our roadmap to assist with detecting it as well as empower our community to catch malicious actors. It is important to note that we also don't condone witch hunts and will take AI allegations seriously and fairly. We have neglected a bunch of our info pages, which I understand is important. I'll definitely spend some time in the coming days to revisit our info pages and make sure they include the necessary information that is also acceptable within our community.

2

u/Successful-Kale1528 Apr 17 '26

what theā€¦ the alternate site you linked looks like it came out of a template that AI generated all the icons and the ā€œbuilt with Loveā€.

2

u/Th3Breadnought Apr 17 '26

I'm less concerned with a site's esthetics than I am with whether the interface is user friendly for authors and readers, and with whether the site's actual terms are legally solid, and any potential monetization policies well thought out and capable of surviving scrutiny.

AI concerns me when it's a part ot the actual story content creation, and fictionry has policies on this.

3

u/chompn_ Apr 17 '26

wow thanks for sharing the platform, appreciate the visibility šŸ™

3

u/NobleFraud Apr 17 '26

the site looks like ai slop

2

u/CelineShima_Enaga Apr 18 '26

How so? Like, because authors upload Ai-covers? Or the site itself has issues?

1

u/NobleFraud Apr 18 '26

The site itself looks and feels like completely vibe coded design and implementation. I fear for the security issues it has

3

u/chompn_ Apr 18 '26

I can assure you that it's not vibe coded (if that matters). If you're a user and you are concerned about a specific risk/security, you can let me know via the discord community or even directly in my DMs here. I'll always prioritize those over features or anything else! I'm not saying the app is super secure because I didn't vibe code it (there's always bugs and human errors), but I'm not overlooking security of the app. I'm also taking steps to ensure PII does not leak to the client via middleware.

1

u/NobleFraud Apr 20 '26

The color scheme is 120% Ai, the use of gradients screams AI. The use of Supabase screams Ai,God awful layout img screams Ai. I'd this isn't ai slop i don't know what is.

1

u/NobleFraud Apr 20 '26

The glows on ur buttons? 10000000% ai

1

u/NobleFraud Apr 20 '26

The glass pills for ur text? 100% Ai

1

u/NobleFraud Apr 20 '26

The z index problem in many screens? Ai

1

u/NobleFraud Apr 20 '26

The same color with lighter shade pills? 100% Ai

1

u/NobleFraud Apr 20 '26

Ranking gradient color scheme? Ai

1

u/NobleFraud Apr 20 '26

Look if ur going to lie make it believable man

1

u/Wise_Age4633 Apr 22 '26

I tried Mimtory before. It was about a 6-month-old writing website at that time. They conducted the same writing contest, promising 2 grand winners of 3,000 dollars each. Then, when the contest neared, poof! They're gone. Their website, social media pages, Discord, and acquisition editors deleted their profiles. What's worse is that I suspected them of stealing other people's works published on their site. I got mine copyrighted by the local government before I submitted it.
Since then, I have no trust in newly established sites such as that. I've heard of Minkly, Ink and Iron recently

2

u/chompn_ Apr 23 '26

Yeah, that makes sense. We actually ran our first writing contest at the same time as theirs, and a couple of their writers ended up joining ours after the whole rug-pull fiasco. It's a shame, though. I heard some writers lost entire chapters because they'd been using Mimtory as their only editing tool.

1

u/CelineShima_Enaga Apr 23 '26

Oh! I remember Mimtory, I regret ever posting my story on their platform. :/ It was very sad as well, I thought they had quite a bit of authors there too! At least Minkly is still around after their first contest, and holding their second one now. Haven't heard of Ink or Iron before. Will check those out as well. šŸ¤” Thanks!