Authors can now choose to publish chapters right away, or delay release to a time of their choosing. If you release a chapter a week, for example, you can now set that up in advance and the system will handle it for you automatically. The time you set matches your local time. No need to think about time zones or conversions.
Included with this is the option to set a time-delay on expanding the size of your free preview. This is most useful for serial writers. Say, for example, you want to run a subscription model where people have to subscribe to get the last six months of chapter updates, but everything older than that is free. You could schedule a chapter to release on December 5th, 2024, and then have it become part of the free preview on May 5th, 2025.
There are two ways to schedule publication — scheduling a whole book to go live at once, or scheduling each chapter individually.
Scheduling an Entire Book
- In the text editor, click the Publish button in the top right corner of the screen.
- For first-time publishing, enter the title, select genre, upload cover, and add description.
- Choose “Schedule for Later” or make available immediately.
- Click the date box to select your release day. Click “Today” to schedule for the current day.
- Click the time box to choose a time. Chapters can be scheduled for the top of the hour, or the midpoint.
- Unlock chapter(s) — This option allows you to increase the size of your free preview to include newly published chapters. The default setting is OFF.
- Email Notification — This setting is ON by default. When the chapter is published, all readers who have opted in to updates from you will receive an email notification.
- Click the blue “Publish” button to complete the process.
Click the X in the top right corner of the screen to cancel.
Note: Scheduled publication only impacts chapters not already published. So you could have several chapters up as a preview to draw interest, then go through this process to schedule the release of the remainder of the book.
Scheduling Individual Chapters
The process is almost identical, except it is accessed from a different location:
- In the text editor, click the three dots on the left side of the screen for the chapter you wish to publish.
- Click “Publish chapter.”
- Follow the same steps as above.
Chapters will show their release status under the box showing their publication status. These dates will disappear once the chapter has been published and (optionally) the chapter has been unlocked.
Modifying Publication Time — If you need to change the time chapters publish, simply go through the process again, selecting a different time, and the book / chapter will update accordingly.