Galo Vargas
Inkspired Programs
Inkspired Official
The official product blog of Inkspired, with all the news, perks, changes and releases we make.
It's been a long year for many of us, but finally, we are able to officially announce the first of a series of biggest changes that will be coming to Inkspired from now until the end of the year: Memberships for all creators!
If you are an active user on Inkspired, you may have noticed a few changes around the dashboard's user interface around this feature. We have compacted the "Followers and Following users" section into one core page called Audience, where you will be able to check who is following you, who are you following, and also the list of all of the Paid Subscribers you may have gotten and even a list of e-mails for your future newsletters. This is a big change! But let's explain what is Paid Subscribers and how does that relates to Memberships.
Paid Subscribers are like followers who are paying you a monthly or annual membership fee directly to you. As a creator or author on Inkspired, you can set up your own membership, and have people subscribe to you directly from your user profile for a fee, in exchange to access to exclusive content you produce.
Using the new Monetization section on the dashboard, you can create as many memberships as you want, set the price you want for each month or as a yearly payment, and then include your stories among any memberships. It's also possible to leave your stories for free (like always), or put them at a one-off sales price, or even combine pricing (one-off payment) for non-subscribers with a membership, which means that anyone who is subscribed to you can access that story without extra payment. If you get creative, you can even create multiple memberships with tiered access. It's really up to you as an author!
Furthermore, you can now activate payments and pricing directly from the new Monetization section, and after a one-time application request, you will no longer need to "apply" to put your stories on sale. From now on, it's just as easy as "activate" or "deactivate" payments, set up the price, and start monetizing your audience, and also view all of your sales in the "Sales" tab on top of that page. We have also reduced the number of requirements needed to activate them: we eliminated the exclusivity clause and reduced the minimum amount of followers needed. Premium members also benefit from even fewer requirements and fewer administration fees as well ;-)
Readers can find the memberships you are offering directly in your User Profile. They can also see them whenever they reach the paywall in your stories that require a membership to keep reading. For them, it's just as easy to click on the "Subscribe" button. On the checkout page, they just need to choose between a Monthly or Annual payment plan, choose the payment method and hit confirm payment to fill in the billing information. They can also cancel the automatic membership renewal at any time in Preferences - Subscriptions.
Getting paid as an author or creator on Inkspired never has been that easy. Using the "sales" tab in the Monetization section, you can be in total control of how many sales you are making each month, what status they have, and where they come from. You can see if the sale is a one-time payment for a story or a payment part of one of your recurring memberships.
Fees remain the same on Inkspired, and you can see your brut and net price, and how much are you going to get in the payout in total at the end of the payout cycle. At the moment we are accepting payouts via Bank Transfer for bank accounts in the US, the European Union, Canada, Australia, Singapur, UK, Ecuador, plus transfers via PayPal, Revolut, Payoneer, and Wise. It is also possible to go self-service and transfer your funds to your Inkspired Wallet. All funds stored in your wallet can be used anytime inside the platform to purchase anything.
Pre-sales are coming on Inkspired too in the next couple of weeks, and you will be able to manage them in the same place where you manage everything else related to selling your content: that's right, you guessed it! It's on the same Monetization section.
Pre-sales work differently on Inkspired compared to all previous Selling Options. As a standard, having your story published and verified is required for selling. However, stories that are eligible for pre-sale must have never been published before, but have all their future chapters in an advanced state of writing (at least with titles) as they will count as the table of contents. Pre-sales also come with the chance to have bundles and limited-time pricing. You can also set up a countdown to the publishing date, and when the countdown runs out, it's up to you as an author to decide what happens next: the story goes live on Inkspired, a download link is activated or set up a redirection link to elsewhere.
Pre-sales are cool to create momentum, raise awareness and start selling before even releasing your product!
Inkspired is evolving into a professional publishing/authoring tool for creators and writers alike. In the same line, we felt we could enhance our value proposition, even more, to cater to more advanced authors and help them manage their content with more flexibility, sell more, and grow their audience. We have revamped our Premium page. From today, our former Writer Premium becomes only "Premium", same pricing and same good ol' subscription :-) However, we have added two new plans called Premium Plus and Premium Pro, aimed at the most ambitious authors with a mission to sell their content, and monetize their audience by converting their followers into paying subscribers. They also come with the introduction of the new amazing benefit of newsletters for creators. You can upgrade today in monthly or annual plans (2 months free)!
Check our new premium plans at this link.
With the latest update, we have had the chance to make many fixes and small tweaks to improve the overall user experience of Inkspired. While they are not as "shinny" as memberships and the new premium plans, they indeed make a difference to a lot of people:
This blog post is mainly aimed at users from Latin America, so it makes more sense to publish it in ESPAÑOL (a continuación). Although, in a nutshell, I will just announce that from today, most of the South American countries (Argentina, Bolivia, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, Uruguay) plus Brazil and Mexico, can use their own local currency and favorite local payment methods on Inkspired; the latter includes making payments in cash, bank transfers, debit cards, e-wallets or even in installments! It's possible to top up your Inkspired Wallet, register for The Authors' Cup, purchase Gift Cards, and use your Wallet to acquire any service, product or purchase stories from your favorite authors. Read the full list of payment methods allowed per country.
A partir de hoy queremos anunciar que la mayoría de los países sudamericanos (Argentina, Bolivia, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, Perú, Uruguay) más Brasil y México, pueden usar su propia moneda local y métodos de pagos locales favoritos en Inkspired. Seguimos en nuestra misión por integrarnos mucho más con la región, y brindar todas las facilidades, herramientas y servicios, de forma transparente, a todos los residentes latinos que sean autores/creadores en Inkspired y también a sus lectores :-)
Inkspired ahora permite transacciones en:
Puedes utilizar los métodos de pago más populares en cada uno de estos países (incluyendo Ecuador), y pagar utilizando efectivo, tarjetas de débito, e-wallets, transferencias bancarias directas o inclusive ¡pagar en cuotas! Ahora además estamos aceptando todas las tarjetas locales en tu país. Lee la lista completa de métodos de pago permitidos por país.
Puedes adquirir virtualmente todos los servicios, productos y hasta historias. Directamente, puedes utilizar tu moneda latina y tus métodos de pago en tres sitios:
No obstante, con este último, *si recargas tu Billetera Inkspired, puedes utilizar aquellos fondos en todo el resto de servicios en la plataforma y también para comprar historias de tus autores favoritas; así que en pocas palabras podemos abarcar todo el sitio web :-)
Hay un solo servicio dentro de la plataforma que no es posible adquirir directamente con la Billetera Inkspired todavía, el cual es la suscripción Writer Premium. Pero como siempre hay solución para todo, nosotros podemos hacerlo manualmente por ti si nos notificas a [email protected] Solo basta con que recargues tu Billetera Inkspired con un monto igual o superior al de la suscripción anual, y nosotros te daremos de alta enseguida en la membresía Premium.
El proceso a seguir es muy sencillo. Si estás en un país de los que soportamos estos métodos de pagos locales, basta con solo ir al formulario de pago (checkout).
En la lista de "Métodos de pago" verás las nuevas opciones enlistadas. Al escoger una, verás el precio en USD o Euros, y luego tendrás la conversión al precio final en tu moneda local utilizando la tasa de conversión del día.
Al hacer click en "Confirmar pago", irás a un nuevo formulario de nuestro socio comercial EBANX. Solo debes de llenar tus datos en el formulario y seguir el proceso que se indica: es muy fácil y está lleno de instrucciones a los pasos a seguir. Recibirás un correo de confirmación también con todos los detalles de como completar el pago.
El pago de cuotas solo sirve en pagos con tu tarjeta de crédito local: tendrás opción de entre 2 hasta 6 cuotas diferentes si así lo deseas, tú decides. Para pagos en efectivo o transferencias, tu orden quedará en "Pendiente" hasta que completes el pago y seamos notificados por la entidad de que está confirmada tu orden, ¡y listo!. En realidad es un proceso sencillo, transparente, y seguro : - )
Nosotros pensamos que por mucho tiempo todos nosotros en latinoamérica nos hemos visto limitados cuando se trata internacionalizarnos tanto para vender como para cobrar. Inkspired está comprometido en hacer todo lo posible para integrar más a la región y abrir puertas a nuevas oportunidades y posibilidades para que tú, como creador, puedas despreocuparte de cómo vender y cómo cobrar; y para que los lectores tengan todas las opciones más convenientes para poder apoyarte.
Dentro de muy poco, además, será posible que nuestros creadores y autores puedan recibir, también, los pagos en sus propios bancos en sus propios países; de esta forma sin verse limitados o preocupados de cómo cobrar o retirar los fondos que arduamente han conseguido.
No hay mejor momento para volverse un creador y autor comercial en Inkspired, porque estaremos aquí para apoyarte a ti y a tus lectores en todo momento : - )
Creating stories is a narrative art that can take any form. I have been a storyteller ever since I was a kid, even though that just meant creating stories in my head. As I grew older, I started to experiment with more artistic approaches: small comics on a notebook, a small series of comics on a book, painted mangas, even 2D animation using Flash. But there was a trend: every time I came up with new characters playing a part in a story, I always had the tendency of investing myself in the story to make it bigger and bigger. So, in less time than I expected, I will always end up worldbuilding the universe of those characters: its places, attributes, its rules, the history, who is who and why; and, when I started writing as the ultimate way to produce a faster narrative, I even started creating maps in a very much-inspired The Lord of the Rings way.
Worldbuilding is not easy. It requires patience, commitment, time, and, most of all, consistency in the narrative. This consistency is not simple to achieve either: you need to look up for every detail and be so organized that you do not end up getting lost in the ocean of information of the fictional world you are creating. It's a common mistake, in the best-case scenario, to end up with secondary characters that have blue eyes in one chapter and black eyes in another; in the worst-case scenario, end up with a story with so many plot holes that it does not make any sense.
As Inkspired, ultimately, is a storytelling platform for reading and a storytelling tool for creating, we felt the need to expand into that direction. As a writer of fantasy, I have seen the struggle first-hand, and I always thought there must be a better way to organize the content and put it in the function of a larger production. Inkspired has always let you create stories in different formats, but we know that for longer series there was a key component missing: a component that actively links all those stories and puts them in the same content, unifying all the elements that take part in them. So we did something about that, and it's called Universes and Smart Glossaries. Today I'm welcoming you officially to our new worldbuilding tool.
Universes are Inkspired's latest initiative* designed and created by Galo A. Vargas. They are a new way to showcase your stories. Instead of a story type, Universes are an immersive way to aggregate your existing stories, microfictions, and other media into one single common space. It's especially useful if you are writing full-length novels, books or starting a wider creative project based on fictional worlds. It will help you to remember names, places, dates, and everything you create and write along the way.
Even though it's widely integrated with everything Inkspired as a platform offers, you can also use it with your content elsewhere or even internally in your own group creative projects.
Universes will greatly help you to organize and connect your ideas and your Characters, Places, Events, Cultures, Societies (and more) through our Smart Glossaries.
*Inkspired's "Initiatives" is a program aimed at entrepreneurs who want to start a private app within our community using Inkspired's technology. Send us an e-mail to learn more.
Universes act more as an aggregator of content rather than a content creator per se. That means that it better serves you if you already have stories (or other media, not necessarily only hosted on Inkspired) you want to bring together in a common space. Universes will be the go-to place for your readers to know everything about the development of your world: the stories you are writing on it, all the glossaries playing a part, the news of upcoming releases or updates, its world maps, and even open up channels for direct collaborations.
So if you are storyteller, or a novelist expanding a fiction universe, or even a producer of other interactive media like video games, role playing games, or a series: Universe are just the tool for you; it will help you organize your content as the producer, and it helps you to follow all the details of the stories if you are the reader.
To get started, just visit the Universes official page. It contains all the step by step of what you have to do to start today for free.
Smart Glossaries reside at the core of Universes. A Glossary can take the form of a Character, or Event, Place, Item, Vehicle, Technology, Weapon/Armor, Organization, Culture, Society, Historical Registry, Storylines, Techniques/Magic or Creatures. Each one of those brings up all the possible information you could add to better describe that Glossary and then connected to one or more Glossaries in a way that all the information around your story and chapters is always related.
Smart Glossaries can help you to write more accurate fiction by serving us a record of all the details you write about, but it also will help readers to look up for all the references you mention in your narrative and make them stay within the world you are describing. Furthermore, the end goal of the Smart Glossaries, over time, will be to help you as the author and your readers browse all that information "visually", with the involvement of interactive maps, genealogy, characters' relationships, and more.
We envision Universes as a pillar of what Inkspired wants to be: the ultimate tool for creators and storytellers. Writers (especially fantasy authors) are the first ones to benefit from all its perks, but in general, it can serve any kind of creators as we add more features and integrations throughout the rest of the year. Expect Universes to become a pillar of what Inkspired, as an interactive storytelling platform, wants to be.
26 de Enero de 2021 a las 14:25 0 Reporte Insertar 8
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?
📷Go to the Inkspired Writer Mobile app download page
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.
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 6
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