Galo Vargas
The official product blog of Inkspired, with all the news, perks, changes and releases we make.
Hello everybody!
As we enter the last quarter of the year, we have got a new exciting announcement to all our Inkspired writers and readers. As of today, we are premiering a new writing format that will change the way you write and read online fiction. We are introducing the "Interactive storytelling" format.
When creating a story, you will need to choose the new "Interactive story" type. If you are already familiar with writing and publishing on Inkspired, most of it will remain the same although with a few changes. Now, when you are writing a chapter, you will be able to let your readers choose where the story continues next. To do so, from the right panel on the editor, you will have the chance to connect other chapters (up to 3) with decisions that your readers will need to take when they finish the chapter.
Each decision is either connected with another chapter of your story (that has not been previously connected to another decision before) or the option to "mark as the end of the story". Apart of choosing the destination, you will need to enter a text called "decision's text" which will be shown to your readers so they can choose what's the path of the plotline they will follow.
As a writer, on your dashboard's story profile, you will not only see the list of your chapters with the information of what was the previous chapter for each chapter, plus the decisions entered on each one. We have added a fantastic feature that will show you, visually, all the developed plotlines of your story, with the information of: where the story ends, the name of the chapters involved with its decisions, and even the color of each chapter's status (if it's unpublished, on draft, or published). It's a beautiful well to keep your story's plotline visually organized and help you craft a magnificent story. If a chapter does not include any decision, then the story will automatically end on that chapter in that given plotline path.
As a reader, on the other hand, you will enjoy fully engaging stories where depending on what action/decision you make at the end of each, the story will unfold in a different way.
Interactive stories BETA launches today, and it's available to all users, across all languages and genres on the Inkspired's website. Support for reading on the Inkspired Mobile apps (iOS/Android) and writing in the Inkspired Writer Apps (Mac/Windows) will soon follow before the end of the year.
If you a writer, welcome to a new way of writing. Get creative, and create unique interactive stories for your readers to enjoy. Oh, and by the way, the Interactive Stories are also compatible with our new Payment services ;-)
See you around the community!
Best wishes to all,
Galo
Inkspired's CEO
2 de Octubre de 2019 a las 14:24 3 Reporte Insertar 13
Hello everybody!
It's already the second half of the year, and we keep working hard to bring you the best experience and features for online reading, writing, and publishing. So we have got 2 big announcements today.
The first one is the wrapping up of The Authors' Cup First Edition 2019. After 3 long months, 64 challenges, 1.000+ new stories, 500+ new micro stories, 149 participants from 35 different countries, 500k of interactions, and a lot of good memories, The Authors' Cup reaches an end; And 3 amazing writers will be crowned champions. The official announcement is due next Monday, 5th of August 2019! You can check the latest competition's ranking here.
We wanted to deeply thank everyone that participated with great passion, commitment, and talent. This is just the beginning, and the new The Authors' Cup Second Edition 2020 will be announced soon. For now, we all need to enjoy a well-deserved break ;)
Today we are proud to announce a big game changer on the Inkspired ecosystem. We introduce a revamped payment system to support the best and most committed authors on Inkspired. With this new system you will be able to accept payments from your readers and followers under 3 modalities:
In order to activate this service on your stories, you will need to comply with a few requirements, and then apply. As this service is still under "BETA" it may take a few days until we review your application and accept it. Successful applicants will get their payment options enabled right away to start receiving funds. Among the most important requirements are:
Enabling the service is free to all users whenever they comply with the requirements, and Inkspired will only charge a 25% administration fee (15% for Premium members) on every transaction. It's all also plain and simple, as the website will walk you through every single step and let you know what you need to progress.
To read more, please check our FAQs. To activate the service, you can do it via your Dashboard > My Stories > Story Profile of your story > Options. It's only possible to activate it via the web browser, not the mobile or desktop apps. But let us know what you think about this in the comments section! We are very happy to know your thoughts and answer your questions!
New surprises and services will be added very soon.
See you around the community :-)
Best wishes to all,
Galo
Inkspired's CEO
2 de Agosto de 2019 a las 18:05 0 Reporte Insertar 3
April went by really fast, and it left us a few wonderful stories to read in our platform, plus some exciting updates to announce. In summary we will talk about the imminent arrival of The Authors' Cup 2019 due to start tomorrow May 2nd, the introduction of our NEW homepage, and the (long-awaited) official release of our revamped Inkspired Mobile app for Android. Let's break it down:
It's happening. After announcing it back in March, tomorrow, the 2nd of May, we are running for the first time what is Inkspired's signature writing/publishing competition. If you don't know what it is about, you can read all the details here. You can sign up on the competition until tomorrow for only US $3.99 and get the chance to compete for up to US $1,000 in prizes.
From the 3rd of May until the 19th of May, you will be able to register for a late-registration fee of US $6.99.
We have designed a "New Home" for all of our users. Whenever you log in to your account, you will see a homepage different to the public homepage for visitors. On this newly designed page, you will find your "recently seen" content, recommendations of what to read, and the new releases on your favorite categories; everything tailored to you and your interests.
Also, now is possible to see all the progress you are making with your "in-progress" stories, announcements of the new writing contests, and if you are participating in The Authors' Cup, you will have quick access to the list of all your current active challenges.
More stuff will be added here from time to time to make your experience using the vast tools and services available of Inkspired as simple as possible.
Yes! We know we got a bit delayed, but our Inkspired Mobile 3 is finally out there at the Google Play Store! iPhone users knows what it brings since January, but in case you haven't checked our detailed mobile's information page, here is a brief summary of what you can expect:
NEW Design
Easier to use, cleaner, and much more practical and user-friendly than ever.
Fantastic new reading experience
The best and simplest experience to read chapters of your favorite novels, book series, and visual stories. Send and reply comments easily on every chapter. Submit your review. Adjust the reading screen with your preferred reading format, font, background color, and much more.
New ways to search stories, browse by categories, filter by hashtags and languages
It has never been easier to find and discover the stories you may want to read on Inkspired. Filter and sort your search results at your convenience, and see relevant content especially tailored to you.
A new and exclusive mobile-only writing format!
Become a star publishing microfiction stories of 500 characters. Direct, simple, and fast to read and write. Discover all the microfictions being posted on Inkspired, or filter them by the author's you are following. This is an exclusive option only available on Inkspired Mobile (on iPhone and Android).
Interact on community groups and create discussions
Join the on-going discussions and conversations happening in the groups of your interest. Participate in the community, start discussions, send and reply comments on the conversations that matter to you.
Organized notifications
Get all your notifications conveniently organized by 'My Account', 'My Stories', and 'Communities'. Easy and quick access to what you want to see from the push notifications on your phone's home screen.
More control in your hands
Post announcements directly from your User Profile. Also, the much improved 'Settings' sections will let you edit your profile conveniently from the app, manage your push notifications preferences, the content language you want to see, and stay up to date with the balance of your Rewards Credits.
New ways to stay updated with the latest news on the platform
Now the app will let you know what's happening currently on Inkspired! The main screen will show a News Bar with the latest news, and it also has a section to browse across all active Writing Contests.
Improved Pocket library and Offline reading
Follow your favorite stories and authors, and see their latest updates conveniently organized on your own library. Your library also lets you access all saved chapters and read them offline wherever you are.
Plus
That's all for now as we are ready to kickstart May firmly.
See you around the community :-)
Best wishes to all,
Galo
Inkspired' CEO
1 de Mayo de 2019 a las 23:59 3 Reporte Insertar 8
February is finally over, and this 2019 has just started with amazing things. Today we are finally announcing Inkspired's signature writing competition: The Authors' Cup.
The Authors' Cup is Inkspired's annual creative writing competition made by authors for all authors. On Inkspired we want to motivate all writers and aspiring authors of different literary genres.
This first edition will last 3 months, and it is scheduled to start on May 2, 2019. The Authors' Cup will be open to all countries, languages, literary genres whether is a short story or novel published on Inkspired!
Want to read more? Check The Authors' Cup official page, and register today to benefit from a very special early-bird pricing. If you are a writer or an aspiring author, this is your chance to compete and win up to US $1,000 in prizes.
Within the competition, we also have a special challenge for "The Best Story" with additional awards. We will have a jury reviewing stories in 6 categories in English and Spanish - and who knows, maybe Portuguese as well ;)
Microfictions are getting popular in our new iOS app! And now, you can search, browse, and read them from the website too. We have an entire listing on a microfiction category here. Oh, and did I mentioned that you can also filter them by your preferred language?
By the way, our revamped Android app has had some delays shipping, but it's finally launching shortly and, yes, you can publish your microfictions from there too, in case you were wondering ;)
We were aware that for the past few weeks some of you had some troubles copy/pasting your texts into our web editor. We got reports from random "characters" appearing in the text from time to time, to some delays when saving your chapters. Well, all of those are things of the past now as we have massively improved the performance and fixed those "little tricky bugs" in our editor, to make your stay on Inkspired even more pleasant and trustworthy :)
Since we are working hard improving our technology and growing community every day, we are also expanding our story catalog to 2 new categories: Historical Fiction (actually, "the return of"), and Scripts/Screenplay. The former was very much missed when we took it out early last year, but we have listened to you, and it has now come back to stay! The latter, Scripts/Screenplay, also comes in with a new writing format that you can experiment with from now on in Inkspired. Be creative, and have fun reading and writing in a new genre and style :-)
The Rewards Program has been a massive success since its introduction last year. Since then, we have had dozens of thousands of users adopting it, earning Rewards Credits, and exchanging them for perks and benefits on our Self-Publishing page. Since it has become like the internal currency of Inkspired "kind-of", now we are going to let you purchase packages of Rewards Credits which, by the way (spoiler alert), might be very handy when competing on The Authors' Cup in the near future.
Also, talking about the Self-Publishing services, we have updated our price list.
Last but not least. Having a fancy platform is not enough in today's world, it also has to perform well and bring the best user experience to everyone. We have invested efforts in making things faster for you, and we are sure you can notice the difference now. When it comes to helping you achieve things, faster is always better ;)
On Inkspired we are constantly improving on all fronts, but we can't do by ourselves. Listening and trusting our community has always been our best way to do things, and here we still are with open ears eager to listen to any feedback or comments you may have.
Best wishes,
Galo A. Vargas
Inkspired' CEO
1 de Marzo de 2019 a las 13:48 5 Reporte Insertar 15
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