Adding a novel

A novel is the container everything else hangs off. Chapters belong to it, readers favourite it, and it is what appears on the homepage, in the library and in search results.

Novels live under Web Novels in the WordPress sidebar. Web Novels ▸ Add New starts one.

The title and the description

The title is what readers search for and what appears on every card.

The main content area is the synopsis: the novel’s own description, shown on its page and, shortened, in list view. Write it as a pitch rather than a summary. It is the only prose most visitors will read before deciding.

Cover

One picture, used on library cards, homepage sections, carousels, search results and the novel’s own page.

Portrait, 3:4. The theme crops to that shape and renders it at up to 450 by 600, so upload at least 900 by 1200 and it stays sharp on a retina screen. A landscape image will be cropped down the middle.

A novel with no cover shows a placeholder, which is honest but does the novel no favours in a grid.

Novel Details

Six tabs. Only the first has anything you must fill in.

Novel Information

Original Title and Original Language are for translated works, and both are optional. The language list itself is editable in Appearance ▸ Theme Options ▸ Content and Features ▸ Novel Data.

Genre and Status are the two things readers browse by. Pick as many genres as fit and exactly one status. Both lists come from your own taxonomies; see genres and status.

R18 / Adult Content flags the novel. What that actually does to readers, a badge, blurred covers, an age gate, or nothing, is decided site-wide in Theme Options ▸ Content and Features ▸ Adult Content, and the field says so.

Author, Author Link, Publication Year and Original Chapter Count are metadata. The chapter count is the original’s total, which is what lets a reader see that you are 54 chapters into a 300-chapter work.

Reader notice is a line printed above the novel’s tabs. It comes with templates, Hiatus, Schedule change, Moved elsewhere, Chapters elsewhere, Looking for help, so the common announcements are one click and a blank to fill in.

Rating & Stats

Rating is the display rating out of 5. Reader votes are counted separately and shown alongside, so setting this does not overwrite what readers said.

Votes is a starting count that reader votes are added to. Views is a manual override of the view counter.

These exist for a library you are importing from somewhere that already had numbers. On a novel that started here, leave all three alone.

External Links

NovelUpdates link, for readers who track releases there.

External chapters URL and its button text, for chapters that live somewhere else, a previous translator’s site, or your own older archive. Putting the address here turns it into a button on the novel rather than a line of text a reader has to copy, and keeps it in one place.

Recommendations

Related novels, shown at the bottom of this novel’s page. Search and pick them by hand, or leave it empty and let the theme match automatically. Which of the two happens, and how automatic matching works, is a Customizer setting in layout settings.

Release schedule

When chapters of this novel go out. Useful for a novel with a fixed cadence, because it lets the site tell readers when to come back rather than leaving them to guess.

Access & price

This novel’s own paywall, overriding the site default.

The first option is Use the site default, and it names what that default currently is, so you can see what you would be departing from before you depart from it. The other four are the same rules described in chapter access.

Price works the same way: use the site’s cost per chapter, or charge something else for this novel.

Two things worth reading carefully on this tab:

• It applies to chapters added from now on. Saving it does not make existing chapters paid.
• The note at the bottom counts. It says how many of this novel’s published chapters these defaults actually govern, and how many were here first and keep the access they have, with a link to review them. On the novel above that reads “these defaults govern 0 of this novel’s 54 published chapters”, which is the difference between what you think you just did and what you did.

Search & Share Description

What search engines and social cards show for this novel. Left empty, the synopsis is used. Worth writing separately when the synopsis opens on atmosphere rather than on what the book is.

Featured

A switch on the novel, not a tab. Featured novels are what the homepage’s featured sections select on; see layout settings.