Publishing a story
Publishing turns one of your private stories into a public entry in the shared public library, where any signed-in reader can find, read, and engage with it. You publish from your story's overview screen, under the Sharing tab, in the Publish panel.
Publishing to the library
Open your story, switch to the Sharing tab, and expand Publish. Fill in the publish settings, then choose Publish to the library. Your story appears on the public bookshelf straight away.
The publish settings are:
- Blurb — a short description shown on the bookshelf tile and the story's public page.
- Rating — a content rating for the story.
- Status — whether the story is a Work in progress or Complete.
- Tags — comma-separated free-text tags that readers can filter by.
- Genres — one or more genres, also used for filtering.
- Which scenes to publish — share only the scenes at the statuses you choose (see below).
- Comments — how reader comments are handled: Disabled (no comments), Moderated (comments appear only after you approve them), or Open (comments appear immediately).
- Allow readers to download this story — when ticked, readers can download your story as EPUB, Word, text, or Markdown.
- The disclaimer (see below).
The blurb, rating, tags, genres, and other choices are remembered, so if you unpublish and later publish again you don't start from a blank form.
Choosing which scenes to publish
Every scene carries a status — Plan, Draft, Edit, or Done — and you can publish only the scenes at the statuses you choose. By default all four are ticked, so the whole story is published. Untick a status to leave those scenes out of the published copy: for example, leave Plan and Draft unticked to publish only your more finished Edit and Done scenes. At least one status must stay selected. When a status is excluded, its scenes are left out of the published snapshot, and any chapter or part that ends up with no published scenes is left out too, so readers never see empty headings — and the published word count reflects only the scenes you shared. This choice is remembered like the other publish settings, and you can change it whenever you Update published version.
The content disclaimer
If your story contains mature or sensitive material, tick Show a disclaimer readers must accept before reading and write the warning in Disclaimer text (for example, "This story contains mature themes."). Readers then see this notice as a gate before the reader opens, and they must accept it before any of the story text is shown. The author is never shown their own gate.
If you change the disclaimer text later and re-publish, readers who already accepted the old wording are asked to accept the new version.
Publishing freezes a snapshot
A publication is a frozen copy of your story taken at the moment you publish. Readers, and every download, only ever see that snapshot — never your live, private draft. This means you can keep editing, restructuring, and revising your story privately without changing what readers see.
When you're ready to share your latest changes, return to the Publish panel and choose Update published version. This re-takes the snapshot from your current draft and notifies anyone who subscribed to the story. Until you do that, the published copy stays exactly as it was.
Notes and scene notes are never included in the published snapshot — only your actual manuscript content is.
Unpublishing
To take your story out of the library, choose Unpublish. It disappears from the public bookshelf and readers lose access to it, but nothing is thrown away: its likes, bookmarks, subscribers, and comments are all kept, and its Publish panel shows an Unpublished state. When you publish it again later, everything comes back exactly as it was — the same readers' likes and bookmarks, the same comment threads. Your private story is untouched throughout, and your publish settings (including which scene statuses to include) are remembered for the re-publish.
If a moderator takes your story down
A moderator can take a published story down if it breaks the rules. A taken-down story is hidden from readers, and its Publish panel shows a notice with the reason. Re-publishing does not restore a taken-down story — you must contact a moderator.