Adding chapters

A chapter belongs to a novel and carries a number. Those two facts drive the table of contents, previous and next, the free opening range and every “latest chapters” list on the site.

Chapters live under Chapters in the sidebar. Chapters ▸ Add New starts one, and the novel’s own screen can start one already attached.

Chapter Details

Novel is which novel this belongs to. A chapter without one is invisible: it appears in no table of contents and has no previous or next.

Chapter number is what orders everything. Numbers do not have to be whole, so 10.5 sits between ten and eleven, which is what side stories and interludes are for.

Audio narration takes a URL, for sites that publish audio alongside the text.

Access on this box overrides both the novel and the site default, and a custom price overrides the site’s cost per chapter. A manual setting here beats everything above it, which is deliberate and also the first thing to check when one chapter behaves differently from its neighbours.

Release queue

Chapters use WordPress scheduling, and this box is where a chapter sits in the run-up to going out.

A scheduled chapter is invisible until its date. If you use the timed access rule, its paid period starts from that publication time rather than from when you wrote it, so chapters published in the same batch have countdowns that end together.

Search & Share Description

The same box as on a novel: what search engines and social cards show. Left empty, the chapter’s opening is used.

Doing this in bulk

Do not paste four hundred chapters one at a time. If they are already in .epub files, see importing an ePub. If they are on another WordPress site, see moving an existing site.