The Folio author guide

Folio  ·  onfolio.press

Folio is a browser-based book publishing platform. Write, format, publish to a public shelf, sell directly to readers (no middleman), and optionally drip-release your book as a serial. This guide walks through the whole workflow — writing, publishing, selling, and serialising — with the parts most authors ask about first.

The tiers — Free, Indie, Imprint

Everything in this guide works on the Free tier. Folio doesn't wall off the actual publishing workflow behind a paywall — writing, formatting, releasing, selling, and building a subscriber list are all included in Free. What the paid tiers add is marketing surface: a customized imprint page, richer shelf info cards, product-page customization, boost credits, and analytics.

Full side-by-side comparison lives at onfolio.press/press/ — use that link if you want to know exactly what each tier unlocks. Short version:

If someone comped you a subscription: welcome. Your ✨ Founding Contributor badge appears on your imprint page automatically once the comp lands. Everything paid-tier unlocks for you immediately.

What is a serial?

A serial is a book that doesn't unlock all at once. You set a release cadence (weekly, every two weeks, monthly, or your own custom interval), and chapters become available one at a time on that schedule. Readers see locked chapters with a live countdown — “Chapter 4 unlocks in 2d 14h” — and can subscribe to get an email each time a new chapter drops.

Serials work for both free books and paid books. Paid serials gate the whole thing behind a one-time purchase; once a reader has bought it, the cadence still controls when they can read each chapter.

Step 1 — Write the book

Write your manuscript in Folio the same way you'd write any book. Each chapter in your sidebar is a unit that can be drip-released. Make sure your chapter breaks are where you want subscribers to receive an email. If you have a 3-chapter prologue you want to drop as one piece, either combine them into one chapter, or accept that subscribers will get three rapid emails on launch day.

Front matter (foreword, dedication) and back matter (acknowledgements, copyright page) are not part of the cadence. They appear immediately for everyone with access. Only the body chapters are drip-released.

Step 2 — Open the Release modal

Click the Release button at the top of the sidebar. You'll see four sections:

Title, author, description

Pre-filled from your sidebar fields. The title and author show up on the locked-paywall card if you're charging, in the email subscribers receive, and at the top of the reader's screen.

Mode picker

Choose Public & free, Paid, or Private link. Serials work with all three.

Paid fields

Only visible when you've picked Paid. Set your price, currency, free-preview chapters, whether to include an audiobook, and your payment provider. Folio supports two:

Serial release section

Toggle Drip-release as a serial to expand it.

Step 3 — Configure the cadence

Inside the Serial section:

Cadence

Pick weekly, every two weeks, monthly, or custom. Custom lets you set any interval in days. Weekly is the most common for serial fiction.

First chapter unlocks at

A datetime picker. This is when chapter 1 becomes available. For a launch, pick a date in the near future so you can announce “chapter 1 is out!” and have it actually be true at click-time. If you set a date in the past, every chapter whose computed unlock time has already passed becomes immediately available.

Schedule preview

As you change the cadence and first-unlock date, Folio shows you the next five unlock dates so you can sanity-check before committing.

Email subscribers when each chapter unlocks

Check this if you want every chapter release to send an email to your subscribers. Leave it unchecked if you'd rather not send emails — subscribers can still sign up, but releases happen quietly.

Step 4 — If you're selling: choose a payment provider

Folio itself doesn't touch money — every sale goes through a third-party payment processor you set up in your own account. Two options:

PayPal Native (recommended)

The buy flow stays inside Folio. Reader clicks Buy on any locked chapter, PayPal Buttons render inline, they complete checkout, Folio unlocks immediately. To set up: open the sidebar Folio tab, click Vendor Connections, paste your PayPal Client ID + Secret (from developer.paypal.com → Apps & Credentials). These are account-wide — every paid folio you publish uses the same PayPal account. In the Release modal, pick PayPal Native as the provider. No product ID or license key involved.

Gumroad (alternative)

For paid serials via Gumroad, Folio gates the reader on a Gumroad license-key check.

Over in Gumroad, create a product. Either “Digital download” or “Membership” works (you don't actually upload anything to Gumroad — Folio is the reader). Set your price. Note the short product ID at the end of the Gumroad URL: if your product is at gumroad.com/l/midnight-rain, the ID is midnight-rain.

Back in Folio, paste that ID into the “Gumroad product ID” field and set the same price. Save.

When someone buys, Gumroad emails them a license key. They paste it into Folio's paywall, and Folio unlocks the book for them. The unlock lasts 30 days before they have to re-enter the key — this is automatic, not something you configure.

Step 5 — Publish

Click Publish in the Release modal. Folio saves the release and shows you a reader URL — something like onfolio.press/app.html?read=<your-folio-id>. Click “Copy link” to grab it.

If you also ticked List on the Folio Shelf in the release modal, your folio appears on onfolio.press/shelf alongside every other author's public folios — a browseable marketplace. Free listings appear immediately; paid listings do too, gated at read time by whatever provider you chose in Step 4. Any age rating above “All” queues the listing for moderator review before going fully public (you can still see it as the owner).

The book is now live. If you set the first-unlock for the future, no chapters are visible yet — readers see locked cards counting down to chapter 1.

Step 6 — Share the link

For free folios (serial or not), post the reader URL anywhere — your blog, Twitter, Reddit, your newsletter, your imprint page. Anyone who clicks lands in reader mode and sees whatever's released so far, plus locked cards for upcoming chapters (if it's a serial).

For paid folios on PayPal Native, share the same reader URL. Readers see the free preview, click Buy on a locked chapter, PayPal Buttons appear, they pay, the book unlocks. No separate purchase URL to juggle.

For paid folios on Gumroad, share the Gumroad product URL (gumroad.com/l/your-product) — buyers land on Gumroad, pay, get a license key emailed. In your Gumroad product description, paste your Folio reader URL with a note like:

After purchase, head to onfolio.press/app.html?read=… and paste the license key when prompted.

Step 7 — Release chapters

Once your serial is live, chapters become available in two ways:

Automatically on schedule

Folio computes which chapters should be available based on your cadence and first-unlock date. If you set a weekly cadence with chapter 1 unlocking last Saturday, chapter 2 will unlock itself this Saturday — no action needed from you.

Manually with the “Release next chapter now” button

This button lives in the sidebar next to the Release button (it appears once a serial is published). Click it to release the next chapter immediately, ahead of schedule. Useful if you wrote a chapter early and want to drop it now, or if you're not using a strict schedule and want to hand-pace the releases.

The two methods combine: a chapter is released if either the schedule says so or you've clicked the button enough times. A manual bump never un-releases a chapter that the schedule has already opened.

One important note about emails

Today, only the manual button sends emails to subscribers. Auto-scheduled releases happen silently. If you want subscribers pinged each time a new chapter drops, click Release next chapter now — it does both jobs (releases the chapter and sends the email).

Step 8 — Iterate as you go

You can edit your manuscript freely after publishing. Save and readers see the latest version next time they refresh.

You can add new chapters at the end as you write them — the cadence extends automatically. You can edit existing released chapters for typo fixes or revisions; readers see updates immediately.

Be careful about reordering chapters in a serial that's already partway through release. The cadence math is based on chapter position, so reordering can confuse subscribers about which chapter is “next.”

To change the cadence after publishing — say you set weekly but realized you want every two weeks instead — open the Release modal, adjust the settings, and click Publish again. Chapters that have already been released stay released. The new cadence applies going forward.

What readers see

When someone opens the reader URL for your serial, they see the book's title and author at the top. Chapters that are released render normally — they can read them, bookmark them, take notes if they're a beta reader or editor. Chapters that aren't yet released show as a card with a lock icon, the chapter number, and a live countdown that ticks down every 30 seconds: “Chapter 4 unlocks in 2d 14h 03m.”

Below the first locked card — only when “Email subscribers” is enabled — there's a small inline form: an email field and a Subscribe button. Readers who want to be notified type their email and hit Subscribe. They get added to your subscriber list immediately.

When you release the next chapter using the button, Folio sends every subscriber an email with the chapter title, a button that takes them straight to the new chapter, and a one-click unsubscribe link.

For paid serials, this all happens behind the paywall (PayPal Native or Gumroad, whichever you picked in Step 4). The reader buys the book once, Folio unlocks, and from that point on they see the same locked-card-with- countdown experience that free serial readers see.

Your serial dashboard

Once a folio is published as a serial, your sidebar shows a small dashboard line above the Release button:

Currently released: Ch 3 of 12  ·  Next unlock: Sat May 9
[🔓 Release next chapter now]

That's the at-a-glance view of where you are in the run. The “next unlock” date is what subscribers will see counting down on the next locked card.

Tips and gotchas

Pick a launch date you can actually announce

“Chapter 1 drops Friday at 9am Pacific” works much better than just hitting Publish and letting people stumble across it. Your launch email or social post should land at the same time chapter 1 unlocks.

Don't stress about being early

If you've already written ahead, you don't have to release on the strict cadence. The “Release next chapter now” button exists exactly for this — let your readers pull you forward if engagement is high. Or stick to the schedule for predictability. Both work.

Subscribers persist across re-publishes

If you re-publish a serial (to fix a setting or update the description), your subscriber list stays intact. You won't lose the people who've already signed up.

Time zones

The unlock countdown shows each reader their local time. A reader in Tokyo and a reader in New York both see the same actual moment, just rendered for their zone.

Test the subscriber flow with another email

As the author, you'll always have full access in editor view, so you won't see the locked cards or the subscribe form on your own folio. Open your reader URL in an incognito window (or with a different account) to see what subscribers actually experience.

Releases are forever

Once a chapter is released, it stays released, even if you change the cadence later. There's no way to “un-release” a chapter from the schedule view — if you really need to pull a chapter back, you'd have to delete the chapter content from your manuscript and re-publish.

What's still coming

A few pieces of the serial workflow are planned but not built yet:

Auto-emails on scheduled releases

Today, scheduled releases (the cadence ticking forward without you clicking the button) don't send emails. Only the manual button does. The fix is server-side and is on the roadmap.

Subscriber list management

Right now subscribers are stored but there's no UI to view, export, or manually remove them (other than the unsubscribe link they get in every email). A subscriber-list panel is planned.

Schedule editing UX

Today you change the cadence by re-publishing. A dedicated “edit schedule” view that's clearer about which chapters move and which stay is on the list.

If you hit any rough edges, drop a note — folio@jacobsiler.com. The serial flow is new and feedback shapes what gets built next.

Beyond serials — the rest of the platform

Serials are one publishing mode. The full surface also includes:

The Folio Shelf

onfolio.press/shelf — the public marketplace. Every folio with “List on the Folio Shelf” ticked appears here, browseable by genre, tag, series, and language. Readers filter with power-tags (“fantasy romance BUT NOT spicy” is a real query). Each card shows the cover, blurb, price, chapter preview strip, and a ⓘ more link that opens the full folio info without leaving the shelf.

Your imprint page

Every signed-in author gets an imprint page at onfolio.press/imprint/?uid=<your-uid> — your author bookshelf. All your published folios appear here. Indie+ tiers get accent-color customization; Imprint tier gets custom hero image + font overrides. Readers who click your name on any folio card land here.

Ratings + moderation

Content ratings (All / 12+ / 16+ / 18+) live in the release modal under the shelf-fields section. Any rating above All queues the folio for moderator review before going fully public. Owners can always see their own pending listings. Ratings 16+ and 18+ hide from signed-out visitors.

Genres + tags

Two dimensions of classification: genre codes (Folio's own open taxonomy, primary + up to 4 secondaries) and free-text tags (slow-burn, cozy, dark-academia, no-explicit-content, etc.). Both are used by the shelf's power-tag filter. Genres shape categorisation; tags shape discovery.

Workspace layout presets

The picker next to the dark-mode toggle in the sidebar header switches between Full, Write, and Focus modes. Write mode collapses shortcut chrome for more vertical writing space. Focus mode hides sidebar + toolbar entirely for deep-write sessions (a ⚙ button in the corner lets you switch back). Choice persists per browser.

Reader image lightbox

In reader mode, clicking any image opens it full-screen. Click again (or press Escape) to close. Works for cover, inline illustrations, full-page art, and quad plates.

Where to go next

Tiers & pricing → for what Free / Indie / Imprint unlock in detail.
Help & FAQ → for common questions.
The Shelf → to browse what other authors have published.
folio@jacobsiler.com for anything not covered here — feedback shapes what gets built.

Quick checklist

Before launching:

  1. Manuscript chapters are where you want them, with clear breaks.
  2. Title, author, description all filled in. They appear in emails and on the reader page.
  3. Cadence and first-unlock date set. Schedule preview confirms the next 5 unlock dates look right.
  4. If paid: Gumroad product created, ID and price entered in Folio.
  5. “Email subscribers” checked if you want notifications sent.
  6. Published. Reader URL copied.
  7. (Paid only) Reader URL added to your Gumroad product description.
  8. Launch date announced wherever your readers are.

That's the full pipeline. Once you've shipped chapter 1, your weekly rhythm is: write the next chapter, save, click Release next chapter now when you're ready. Subscribers get an email, the lock card flips to readable content, and the countdown starts ticking on the next one.

© Jacob Siler  ·  Mullingar, Ireland
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