Year recap plus our new Inkspired v2.6

Hello there, dear Inkspired community members.

Once again we approach our routine "end of the year" recap at Inkspired, where we look back and see how much we have accomplished in this rollercoaster year. This time though, we will put it together with the announcement of the new Inkspired 2.6 mobile apps available right in time for the holidays, in the App Stores.

I believe this year has brought a lot of new things and changes to the Inkspired world, and we are so proud to have been able to deliver what was long overdue in our mobile experience; especially taking into account how small our product team is. This year we have released major versions of our apps that saw them combine (finally and belated) the writing and reading experience in one single app, plus 3 other major releases with some groundbreaking features for reading and writing online. All of that, without counting what is arriving today as we announce our latest upgrade.

Before continuing, we want to take a minute to thank you all for being part of Inkspired; all of you who are writers, readers, artists, Premium subscribers, BETA readers, ambassadors trainees, seasoned ambassadors, our new Discord community members, writing contests participants (and now topping the leaderboards), our best-sellers and also everyone who have helped along the way, especially Ricardo who have helped me vastly in the app front throughout all previous releases. You guys have made this community grow every day, and also different made it from others in many languages; you have made it Inkspiring. Thank you.

So, without further ado, we will introduce you to what's new in our latest release: The Inkspired 2.6 mobile.

1.- We are introducing Reward Badges & Collectible Cards for the first time. This, by itself, will have a separate blog post with a proper description earlier next year when the website also supports them, but at the moment they are uniquely available in our mobile apps. Reward Badges are cards (badges) that you will earn through your use of our platform. Whenever you achieve a milestone on Inkspired (like increasing your Rewards Level, becoming a BETA reader, or getting a threshold of followers) you will earn a nicely designed badge to show off in your public user profile.

On the other hand, Card Collectibles are artistic cards designed by our community members which can also be available for sale. Authors can create cards about their characters or things related to their stories, and sell them in our new marketplace so their fans can collect them, and some of them could be limited in special editions too! Likewise, readers can also create their own cards to gift to their favorite creators and writers as a token of gratitude; in both cases, the cards gotten by someone will be shown in their Collection on their user profile. Collect 'em all! how cool? We are inviting all artists to start creating their unique ones! We will talk more about this new feature in the following weeks.

2.- We have fixed major bugs from the previous version, which include fixing issues with reading stories offline, occasional interface freezing for Android users when downloading offline stories, and issues when saving super-long chapters in offline mode. Plus, we have added an auto-scrolling feature when writing in the editor, to avoid your text going behind the keyboard.

3.- One of the most important functions of Inkspired, is its BETA readers network, and oh boy, now the 2.6 version supports them! You can easily apply/opt-in to the network from your Library, and then start reading the BETA readers' requests in your language. You can make use of BETA readers by requesting their feedback too, right from the editor.

4.- Redesigned Events and Reading Lists. More than just a visual redesign, we have brought to its design more relevance and utility.

5.- We have added a Leaderboard for the most participating writing contest users.

6.- We have added more subsections to browse around in the Search tab, which include: Stories of the day, Collectible Cards, and browse by Hashtags.

7.- The section "Manage my stories" also known as the dashboard has been moved to your account's menu.

8.- You can now change the content language faster from the main tab when clicking on the Inkspired logo.

9.- In your User Profile, you can now show off your collection of Badges and Collectible Cards, and post announcements right from the top bar. It's also possible now to control what to show/hide from your profile in your Settings.

10.- In your dashboard, when managing any of your stories, you can now sort and rearrange the order of your chapters.

11.- From the same place, you can also generate a promotional image for your story or even for your microfiction; both need to be published to get access to this feature.

12.- We have got a new section called "More about Inkspired" with useful shortcuts. Furthermore, from them, you will also have access to browse through all of Inkspired's self-publishing services and other goods from the Inkspired Store.

13.- Offline stories now work with a different system to get them by exchanging just a few Rewards Credits to download. They also have got now an expiration date to avoid having outdated content. If you are a Premium member, you can avoid exchanging any of your Reward Credits to download Offline Stories and also extend the time limit for expiry.

14.- General improvements in design, performance, and function, including now haptic feel on notifications and certain actions, plus a more connected approach between the website links and the app's screen through deep-linking.

Thanks for using Inkspired again, and I hope you enjoy this new version as much as we do.

Happy New Year to everyone.

Best,

Galo

Inkspired CEO

PS: If you want to keep up to date with other Inkspired news and/or interact with other fellow members of our community, join our brand new Discord Server.