Publishing Platforms

You might have noticed I pushed out Amauga onto some platforms, and then removed it from some platforms again. I think details about the platforms should be interesting enough for a blog post. Why would I cross-post? People have their favourite platform, so they can read wherever they like. I should not take too much of my time to get it over there… and some platforms can be a nightmare to work on… I will not be giving any scores since everyone has their own needs. My needs are certainly different ones than other authors' needs.

Custom Homepage

As you can see, I have my homepage where I publish all my stuff. When running your own homepage, you have a lot of freedom, you can add whatever feature you like, provided you can find that feature in the software you use or code it yourself. The more specialized your need, the more work it will need. But the sky is the limit. I'm currently using Jekyll, which is more useful for blogging, for everything I do with this site. I basically wrote a custom theme to support publishing a web serial. While I think I made very generalized, I haven't tried it yet. So far, though I offered, nobody has gotten in touch with me about setting up their own page.

A big drawback is there's almost no way to get people to look at your page if you don't already have an audience.

DeviantArt

DeviantArt is for all kinds of art, even literature. I tried to push Amauga chapters onto DeviantArt and… I don't like it.

Well, you do have your typical text-production tools. But it doesn't feel like it's made for serials at all. You have to manually add navigation to your works, and the literature forums feel… a bit dead. Maybe I'm just not looking at the right places…

Anyway, the missing built-in navigation, was the first thing I built in the theme for my homepage. It took several weeks to get it working properly, and it's a feature you will surely miss when you don't have it.

On the plus side, you can choose from All Right Reserved and multiple Creative Commons licenses, but they are all version 3.0. There's no option to put your work into public domain.

In the end, I decided to remove my story from the site, it wasn't worth the hassle.

Wattpad

At first glance, Wattpad seems to be a good place to start. Text-production tools exist, and for some reason, it replaces all typographical quotation marks (“”) with ambidextrous ones (""). I personally hate that, but it only happens to those two characters, even if you change the language. If you write in German and use typographical quotation marks („“) you end up with typographical ones for opening („) and ambidextrous ones for closing ("), and it looks… shite.

Text-alignment never works correctly. It just keeps aligning everything to the right if I choose to align the last paragraph to the right.

I publish my work with a Creative Commons license. Many platforms don't give you the choice what Creative Commons license it actually is, but in Wattpad you can actually choose what Creative Commons license you want. Although they don't say which version is meant. What made me remove my work from the page is that goddamn bug, that insists on putting my work to “All Rights Reserved” every so often.

I also had to DMCA one of my works off that platform, it's kinda sad, since that work seemed to be doing well over there. But they didn't give proper attribution, so I had to nuke it. I mean, I would have been fine, if they added the missing attribution, but they weren't reachable. And given how it keeps changing to “All Rights Reserved” I'd like to believe the uploader tried to select the correct license.

ScribbleHub

ScribbleHub is where I first cross-posted my stories. Text-production tools exist and work rather well, the only quirk being cascaded quotation blocks. They look fine in the end product, but the preview looks busted. Navigation for chapters is built-in. And the community is very open.

You can choose between All Rights Reserved, Public Domain and Creative Commons, without any distinction which one you want. I just put the proper license at the end of each chapter, and call it a day, but I do wish, I could properly choose what license I mean. It kinda inflates my word count.

RoyalRoad

There's nothing much to say about RoyalRoad. Text-production tools exist and work rather well. And if you really need to, there's even an HTML code editor. Navigation for chapters is built-in.

So far, I haven't seen any field to select a license, so here too, put the proper license at the end of each chapter, and call it a day, but I do wish, I could properly pick what license I want.

Tapas

The latest platform I've tried is Tapas.

So far, it seems it's more a platform for comics than for novels, but we'll see how this will turn out. Text-production tools exist and work rather well, albeit they are rather limited. There's no HTML code editor. Navigation for chapters is built-in.

Just like most other platforms, I haven't seen any field to select a license, so here too, put the proper license at the end of each chapter, and call it a day.

other Platforms

I did try myself at Kindle Direct Publishing, but it has since changed a lot. I might put something on there again, but until then, I'll refrain on writing about it. Surely, there are other platforms out there I haven't used yet. Feel free to suggest a platform or share your own experiences below.