Inkspired Product Blog

Inkspired Product Blog -

Inkspired Writer Mobile for Android and iOS is here!

The long (very long) wait is over. We finally bring you a native writing experience on your mobile phone and your tablets!

Long since we started on Inkspired, we launched an iOS app (and later Android app) that wanted to focus entirely on the reading experience, while leaving the creative side limited to our website where, we believed, we offer a better and more reliable experience. We had many reasons for limiting writing to the website and therefore not bringing it to mobile, but as our platform evolved, our technology matured, our processes got better, and our users demanded, we have finally heard your pleas. So from today, we want to welcome you to the new Inkspired Writer Mobile.

Today, we are officially unveiling one of the biggest projects of Inkspired, not only because it amplifies our offering, but because it represents our intent to evolve at a quicker pace and open new horizons.

In less than 24 hours, we saw more than 1,000 stories bring created with it, surpassing the record of the Inkspired Writer app for Mac and Windows when it was launched back at the end of 2017. So now, yes, we have 2 mobile apps on each App Store (Apple and Google Play), plus 1 app for Mac and another one for Windows. What's the deal with this?

Here is a brief recap of what Inkspired Writer Mobile brings to you

On the day of its launch, the app is fully available in 5 languages: English, Spanish, Portuguese, French, and German. You can control not only the content language but the interface language too.
You can write stories using a rich-editor and apply the styling you need.
You can manage the publishing status of your stories on Inkspired.
You can manage the information of your stories and upload their cover pictures.
You can access your settings, including the whole set of notifications and service orders, plus modifying your account preferences and edit your profile.
You can sign in with Apple now.
It's completely adapted to work on iPads and tablets (we will even have further improvements on this).
It's very stable, as we have reduced the number of crashes to almost zero on day launch.

Go to the Inkspired Writer Mobile app download page

The two-app situation

We are aware that is not convenient to have 2 apps on your phone (one for writing and one for reading). The reason why we have 2 apps is that our new Inkspired Writer app uses a newer and different technology. Eventually, both up will become 1 app again under the new technology, but that will be a migration that will happen throughout this year. What you can indeed expect is that this new app will be updated regularly and faster than its predecessor. For a long time, the mobile experience has been the weakest point of our platform (compared to our ever-fast-evolving website), but that will change from now on. There will be even more unique features for mobile, just like the microfictions.

What's coming

2021 will be the year we finally may move to a mobile-first approach, so you can keep your expectations high for what we are going to do with our brand new Inkspired Writer mobile app; eventually, it will include all the most important features that you can find on the website, plus all the reading features of the Inkspired Mobile Reader. But for now, we want to invite you to try it. And if you enjoy it so much, please leave as a review or a comment : - ) We will appreciate it a lot! The objective, at the end of the day, has always been to keep you, our beloved writer and reader, happy.

Going always onwards and upwards,

Best wishes,

Galo

Inkspired CEO

18 de Enero de 2021 a las 11:27 2 Reporte Insertar 3

Product update - Brief 2020 recap and what's coming on 2021

Happy New Year everybody!

A wild year is gone and dusted, and it has not been easy for anybody. Everyone had to face many different challenges, and Inkspired was not the exception. But as we continued to grow, (and taking advantage of the hard lockdowns of this new world), we tried to move as fast we could by focusing on what matters: you.

We made so many new updates on our platform to help you, as a writer or reader, to feel more at home while browsing throughout our platform: on our website and mobile. We enabled new payments systems to help our authors make some money from their talent, and we finally (and infamously) included Ads in our site (something that was necessary to make up for the hard-hit we are suffering because of the pandemic).

The following is just a brief list of major releases:

We created Rewards Levels, to provide even more benefits to our most committed users, and we introduced new avatars to make them more friendly.

New multicurrency support for all payments (USD, EUR, GBP).

We released Reading Lists on the web and mobile to help you organize your reads, and also let you know what chapters you have already read to keep track of your progress.

We included many new Self-publishing services, including external professionals' services such as translations and copyediting. Gift cards are also available now!

We premiered 2 new mascots: Inka and Katze, in addition to Inko; and they might start new adventures together soon :-)

Authors can now accept one-off payments, pre-sales, and donations from their readership.

We revamped and premiered a fully customizable homepage and the pocket library!

Turkish is a new fully-supported language on the Inkspired's website.

Co-authoring, one of the biggest requests from our writers, is now possible!

We hosted The Authors' Cup 2020 which, after 3 hard-working months, crowned 3 new champions in @andypfrench (Colombia), @mazzaro (Argentina), @asteriabridget (Mexico). Congrats to the winners!

We released the Inkspired Wallet which serves as an additional payment method, and will soon allow you to top up using your local payments in Latin America. More about this in a separate blog post coming soon.

We added a few new benefits to our Writer Premium Subscription.

Better and faster server performance, alongside a more integrated experience on notifications on-site, push, and by e-mail.

And many more minor details, tweaks across the website and the mobile apps, and massive improvements behind the scenes.

But there are 2 special releases that are even bigger than those ones, and they will totally change Inkspired for what is coming in this 2021 and beyond:

We created a program called Inkspired Initiatives, and through it, we have launched our Worldbuilding tool called: Universes. This is huge because it widens the scope of all the storytelling offering that Inkspired provides today and will provide tomorrow. It's a way to link all your stories to one world. One of the core aspects of Universes is that we reintroduced a revamped concept of the Smart Glossaries, which were originally introduced (and still available) in our Inkspired Writer Desktop app for Mac and Windows.

Talking about a "Writer App": the second and the biggest project we worked on this past year has to do with an app for writing. For almost 8 months, we worked and pre-released the brand new Inkspired Writer Mobile app for iOS and Android, which finally concludes this one "huge" thing we were owing every single writer in our platform: the ability to natively write and publish from their smartphones without having to go to the website. This is massive because it will change the pace at we release new things on mobile from now on, as we are on our way to switch to a "mobile-first" approach. More about this major release in this blog post.

Last but not least, we want to thank everyone involved with making this community bigger and better, especially to all the teams of our Ambassadors in Latin America and Brazil lead by Gin and Karimy (previously Alice and Camy) respectively; we couldn't have made it as far without any of you. For that, a big Thank You.

2021, let's roll!

15 de Enero de 2021 a las 19:53 1 Reporte Insertar 7

The Authors' Cup 2020 is starting soon!

Inkspired's signature annual writing competition is finally back! After such a long waiting and a slight delay because of the current global challenges we are all facing, we are glad to get started with a new edition to spark your creativity and put all your talent to craft the next potential best-seller. Made by authors for all authors, The Authors' Cup 2020 is the ideal writing and publishing competition to start, get challenged, level up, and have fun while doing what you love the most: storytelling.

Last year's edition 2019, we saw more than 150 competitors challenge for the Champion's Trophy, with the wonderful @khbaker (Spain) claiming the top prize, while @anneliberton (Brazil) came as runner-up. It was an intense battle for the top of the table as we saw a few participants come from behind to claim the Top 3, and it went all down to the wire on the last day with only 1 point separating the 3rd and 4th spot. It was a fierce friendly competition, that resulted in many incredible friendships formed at the end.

Back then, we hosted 64 challenges across all literary genres, and all of them language-agnostic, without mentioning the Challenge for "The Best Story" in 6 different categories with a few all other talented authors picking up the prizes.

This second edition will be no exception, with more challenges, improved prizes, more The Best Story categories, more tools, and more resources to play with. And it all begins this next Friday, October 2nd, 2020, running until December 20th; almost 3 intense months that will see a new champion get crowned before the holidays with many surprises throughout the way.

Do you want to know 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. Are you up for the challenge?

27 de Septiembre de 2020 a las 12:25 0 Reporte Insertar 9

Product update 2020

Hi, everyone:

We continue to face a global situation that is both fast-moving and unpredictable. This is a challenge that humanity hasn't faced in generations, and we encourage you to stay safe and take care of your dear ones.

In the midst of quarantine times, Inkspired has continuously been working for you and to help you maximize your writing talent or reading appetite while you #StayHome. Today we are compiling a brief list (or maybe not that brief) of all the new releases we have been rolling in the past few weeks.

One last thing before starting, we would love to hear your feedback, so feel free to reply to this post and let us know with all honesty :-)

Improvements for reading

You have now the possibility the see which chapters you have already read in both, the mobile apps and the website. Furthermore, if you are following a story, when you visit the story profile you will get a notification to take you right where you left off last time.

Reading lists have arrived at Inkspired! Create them from your Library, either public or private. Add all your favorite stories, and get users to vote for them and get a higher ranking.

We have created a new section called #StayHome (Day and Night). This section is aimed to readers and we offer recommendations for new reads, give you tools to participate in reading and writing challenges, we provide free monthly downloads, and also the chance to subscribe to an amazing new newsletter (no registration on Inkspired required) that will bring you new free stories to read every Friday right on your mailbox.

Your new Inkspired Homepage now feels more like home, especially because you can personalize it according to what you will like to see and read. Add all your favorite categories for quick access, or enable and disable widgets at your convenience, everything right on the spot.

You can now upvote and downvote any comment! Plus, you can now manage your own comments across all pages.

New Social challenges appear! Set a yearly goal for new books to read or write, and keep track of your progress during the year. If you make it by December 31st, we will reward you! ;-)

Improvements for writing and publishing

We are announcing a great new Self-publishing service! From today, you can request a professional Copyediting for your story. It includes way more than just spelling and grammar checks. It is a professional work that will see all editorial aspects of your manuscript, and provide corrections. Your story does not need to be published on Inkspired to submit it. For now, this service is only available for stories in Spanish and Portuguese, but English and German will follow soon. We have some unique rates, try it today!

We have for you a second brand new Self-publishing service: Translate your stories to another language. We have grouped professional translators to help us work with translations from English to Spanish, from Spanish to English, from Portuguese to English, from English to Portuguese, from English to German, and Spanish to German. Your story does not need to be published on Inkspired to submit it. We have amazing rates, try it today!

You can now apply to receive payments for your stories in 3 different ways: sell with a one-off price, let your readers subscribe with a monthly fee, or let it public and request donations.

New Premium benefits

Get rid of all Ads, and read ad-free.

Create unlimited Reading lists, and unlock the ability to make them private.

Enable weekly back-ups for all of your stories and chapters! If you happened to make any mistake by chance, you can restore a back-up up to 4 weeks back in time!

Get an exclusive 50% discount on the service fees for Self-publishing services and Payment transactions for your stories.

Get smart in writing and publishing online, Go Writer Premium today.

General improvements and new releases

We are introducing the Rewards Levels: now, getting a certain amount of Rewards Credits will get you upgraded to a new level. Each level will unlock accesses and benefits throughout the platform. We have even designed artistic new characters to represent each level. Yay! You can learn more about Rewards Levels here.

In relation to the announcement above, we have updated the Rewards Credits table with more actions and new values for each one of them.

European users can finally purchase services in Euros as a local transaction without any conversion fee in between! To choose your preferred currency, just go to Settings - Account.

In our Community Groups, now it is possible to search for specific discussions using keywords or filtering them by a category tag.

We are premiering 2 new mascots, who are joining Inko on representing Inkspired! Today, we are officially Introducing you to Inka and Katze!

We have launched a Design Lab as well where you can check out part of the creative process that created Inko and Inka, what are their missions, and what is their project for the upcoming months. See the Inko, Inka and Katze (the cat) page.

A massive THANK YOU to Jorge Murillo, our very talented Artist/Illustrator, who collaborated with us to create these wonderful characters. You should definitely follow him on Instagram at @jmcucalon .

Open calls

Do not forget about our latest writing contests, Quarantine Stories. You can submit stories in any form, any amount and we are receiving stories in English, Español, and Portugués. To participate, go here. The submission deadline is April 17th at 23h59.

We are opening the next call for Ambassadors. If you want to become an Inkspired ambassador and contribute to growing our community and get many perks in return, this is your chance to join an amazing global team. We are looking for Ambassadors for our Spanish and Portuguese programs, and also someone who wants to lead our English, French and German market. For the latter, you need to be a native speaker. The application's deadline is April 30th at 23h59.

German and French translations are up to 90% on our website, but we can still use a noble extra hand. The same goes for our Russian translation which is a bit behind, and some additional help on a new version of Italian we are working on. If you are keen on volunteering to help us with any of those, please apply as a translator here. We will be very happy to hear from you, and we will reward you very well :-)

Next steps

Inkspired is growing more than ever, and keep delivering on our promises. Our next challenges will be: to deliver new original content for Inkspired, create new ways to make money for all authors, improved metrics of your story's performance, new mobile app updates!, more exclusive benefits for Premium subscribers, more self-publishing services, and a brand new cutting-edge technology for all writers who want to experience new ways of digital storytelling. Isn't that enough? Well, there might be even more ;-)

Best wishes to all,

Stay safe, #StayHome.

Galo

Inkspired CEO

PS: We would love to hear your feedback, so feel free to reply to this post and let us know with all honesty :-)