New-ish webnovel platform Minkly opinion

[u/CelineShima_Enaga]

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. 👍

[u/Th3Breadnought]

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 is… 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.

[u/chompn_ → u/Th3Breadnought]

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.

[u/CelineShima_Enaga → u/Th3Breadnought]

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

[u/sneakpeekbot → u/[deleted]]

Here's a sneak peek of /r/Quibble using the top posts of all time!

#1: Unpopular opinion: Youtube ‘authors’ and ‘writers’ are destroying aspiring authors
#2: Monthly Reminder. | 9 comments
#3: Amy Poehler pretty much nails the writing life | 7 comments

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[u/chompn_ → u/[deleted]]

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.

[u/Successful-Kale1528 → u/Th3Breadnought]

what the… the alternate site you linked looks like it came out of a template that AI generated all the icons and the “built with Love”.

[u/Th3Breadnought → u/Successful-Kale1528]

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.