Are we allowed to talk about LE alternatives here?

[ElectricBlue]

As for other alternatives, there is Theo Reads. They seem more focused on longer works (i.e., novels or thereabouts) and monetization, straddling the line between Lit and D2D/Smashwords.

I'm copying content across to there, to suss it out. So far it's given me a set of covers with a brand style, working directly with their cover artist, and several intelligent comments. I've not seen the sales side of things yet, mainly because the on-boarding requires bank details and I'm reluctant to have that information sitting on an American server, potentially linked into US tax law. If suddenly something takes off and makes thousands, I'll address that at the time. Not likely. Meanwhile, if people are buying content, I'll consider it my contribution to the site's costs.

They have a scheme for authors to bowdlerise their content for Tik-Tok, but I can't see how that would ever work for my stuff, where explicit sexual content (four spice, in their scheme of things) is the entire point of my writing.

At this point, I have no sense as to how many have read my free offerings, other than their in house staff, and no idea re the pay for content. It's a work in progress, a way of recycling, but I can't ever see myself on a romantasy hamster wheel, which is what the owner would like. Her heart's in it, for sure, but the business model, getting people to pay for content, that's always going to be a tough one.

 

[PennyThompson]

I'm copying content across to there, to suss it out. So far it's given me a set of covers with a brand style, working directly with their cover artist, and several intelligent comments. I've not seen the sales side of things yet, mainly because the on-boarding requires bank details and I'm reluctant to have that information sitting on an American server, potentially linked into US tax law. If suddenly something takes off and makes thousands, I'll address that at the time. Not likely. Meanwhile, if people are buying content, I'll consider it my contribution to the site's costs.

They have a scheme for authors to bowdlerise their content for Tik-Tok, but I can't see how that would ever work for my stuff, where explicit sexual content (four spice, in their scheme of things) is the entire point of my writing.

At this point, I have no sense as to how many have read my free offerings, other than their in house staff, and no idea re the pay for content. It's a work in progress, a way of recycling, but I can't ever see myself on a romantasy hamster wheel, which is what the owner would like. Her heart's in it, for sure, but the business model, getting people to pay for content, that's always going to be a tough one.

This is my experience there as well, it looks like potentially a good venue for a certain kind of writer making a certain kind of content, but I don't think I'm the right fit for it

 

[Katie_Mae]

I also post on inkitt. There's pros and cons compared to lit, and if something is a pro or con will depend on what's important to you.

A story is a story, which contains chapters. Unlike here on lit where each chapter is its own story.


Inkit favours short chapters, lit longer ones or complete stories.

There's no rating in the way lit has, but the stats give you information about how many people started reading, how many people finished that chapter and, of them, how many went straight on to start the next chapter.

Readers can post reviews, which are aimed at other readers.
Readers can post comments on the chapter or on a paragraph.
Readers have a bunch of different reactions, like emojiis they can use to react to a paragraph or chapter. Things like "spicy" or "good writing" but there isn't any negative ones.

While there aren't any avenues for Readers to downvote works, because there's no voting, they do seem more open to leaving paragraph comments telling you what is wrong, eg flagging typos or whatever.

Stopping reading also works, because authors have some visibility of read rates

Your cover is much more visible, and required

They have a clear AI policy with examples of what counts as AI assisted and what doesn't.
They allow AI but users must tag it as AI assisted.

Approvals are usually instant and you can edit your own work.

You can delete your own work.

 

[Katie_Mae]

Oh, also there's some options to monetise your work, but I know nothing about the details as that's a hard "no" boundary for me.

Edit: inkitt is also very buggy, but they do seem to make updates based on feedback.

They also have readership stats so you can see the percentage break down of your readers age, gender and country. These are currently broken for me (see above) but it was nice when they worked.

 

[Erozetta]

I'm copying content across to there, to suss it out. So far it's given me a set of covers with a brand style, working directly with their cover artist, and several intelligent comments. I've not seen the sales side of things yet, mainly because the on-boarding requires bank details and I'm reluctant to have that information sitting on an American server, potentially linked into US tax law. If suddenly something takes off and makes thousands, I'll address that at the time. Not likely. Meanwhile, if people are buying content, I'll consider it my contribution to the site's costs.

They have a scheme for authors to bowdlerise their content for Tik-Tok, but I can't see how that would ever work for my stuff, where explicit sexual content (four spice, in their scheme of things) is the entire point of my writing.

At this point, I have no sense as to how many have read my free offerings, other than their in house staff, and no idea re the pay for content. It's a work in progress, a way of recycling, but I can't ever see myself on a romantasy hamster wheel, which is what the owner would like. Her heart's in it, for sure, but the business model, getting people to pay for content, that's always going to be a tough one.

Go to Author analytics and click onto story details. You can see how many reads, how many people click out at what points, and how many views your story got in comparison to reads. (Full read analytics aren't live yet, but they are planned)

 

[dirk2024]

Also, I do see that every story there has a cover. Is this mandatory? Did you just use AI to generate yours?

I made mine in Canva using public domain and free licensed photos from Unsplash.

I'm using the free version of Canva as well. Canva does has an AI assisted version, which costs money. Their images all have gold crowns in the lower right corners, so you just have to avoid those.

 

[RocketGrunt]

Also note that CHOYA reacted to the political developments in the United Kingdom by essentially banning all the IPs from there. British people can still read it with a VPN, but they do have to use a VPN to read it.

 

[metropolinational]

I also post on inkitt. There's pros and cons compared to lit, and if something is a pro or con will depend on what's important to you.

A story is a story, which contains chapters. Unlike here on lit where each chapter is its own story.

Inkitt looks amazing! I'm loving the chapter structure and feedback features over there!

 

[Katie_Mae]

Inkitt looks amazing! I'm loving the chapter structure and feedback features over there!

Yeah. It's not perfect, there's absolutely things I don't like about it and areas Lit does better, but I do enjoy posting there. If you have any questions feel free to DM me if you prefer.