Built by a reader.
For other readers.
The honest origin story
I am an adult with a full-time job and life responsibilities. I am also mid-hyperfixation on Heated Rivalry (or maybe just crashing out about turning 40, shhh..) and at some point that led to a dozen WIP subscriptions, 30+ open tabs, and a truly embarrassing number of update emails buried somewhere in my inbox. Totally normal. Very chill. Not easy to stay on top of with the life responsibilities, though.
WIP Inbox is a passion project. It's not about making money. If AO3 makes this easier to do completely within their platform, wonderful. I'll shut this down.
I know there have been shady tools before. Projects that seemed community-minded and then weren't. Services that were free until they weren't. I understand why that makes people cautious. It makes me cautious too. So I want to be as transparent as I can about what WIP Inbox is, what it isn't, and what I'm committing to.
The principles, plainly.
Additive, not extractive
WIP Inbox helps readers stay engaged with fics they already love. It sends them back to AO3 to read, comment, and leave kudos — it doesn't replace any of that or divert traffic elsewhere.
Your reading is yours
What you personally read, how you read it, and where you are in a fic is private. I won't share it, sell it, or surface it to anyone (including other users).
Authors get the credit
WIP Inbox doesn't host fic, reproduce it, or build any presence around it. Authors' work lives on AO3 and wherever else they choose to share it.
Transparency by default
If you want to support this — great. If you don't? Also great. I'll always be open about what we're doing and why.
WIP Inbox will never:
- Sell, share, or broker your personal reading data to any third party, ever
- Reproduce, host, or display fic content — authors' work stays on AO3 where it belongs
- Divert hits, kudos, or comments away from AO3
- Show ads (not now, not ever)
- Surface which specific fics you follow to other users
- Use your reading behavior to train any AI model
- Feed any fic content into an AI model — not for training, not for summarization, not for any purpose whatsoever
What I might do, maybe.
- Introduce new features based on community feedback
- Make it easier to discover other fics you'd love — powered by anonymous aggregate data only (e.g. "47 other readers are subscribed to this work in your fandom, head to AO3 to check it out")
- Would people be into that?? I would, as a reader. Currently I just open new tabs for every recommendation I see on Reddit and, well, that's how I got here to start.
Reader is free. Fanatic is the supporter tier.
The Reader tier is genuinely free, not a watered-down trial. Full core functionality, no time limit. If that's all you need, use it.
Fanatic exists for people who want covers, unlimited personal tags, custom shelves, an author-subscription triage inbox, reading stats, and to help keep this running — around $3/month or $24/year. This keeps the technical lights on. I'm one person and I won't be able to solo-finance ongoing services if utilization really spikes.
There's also a completely free DIY guide explaining how to build a personal version of this yourself using only Google tools, at no cost. I put it together because people deserve to know how things work, the economy is trash, and because if someone would rather do it themselves than use an unknown tool, that's a completely valid choice.
WIP Inbox is a small tool on top of something much more important.
WIP Inbox is not affiliated with the OTW or Archive of Our Own. WIP Inbox works with the emails AO3 already sends you — it doesn't scrape AO3, it has no special access, and it doesn't interact with the archive in any way that strains its infrastructure. Please universe, no more AO3 downtime.
AO3 exists because a community built it and continues to fund it. If you don't already donate to the OTW, please consider it — you can do so at donate.transformativeworks.org.
You are not the product. You never will be.
WIP Inbox does not host, reproduce, or display your work. All it does is help readers track their own subscriptions — the same emails AO3 already sends them — so they can find their way back to your work more easily.
The goal is more engaged readers, not fewer. Someone who knows exactly where they left off in your fic is more likely to come back and finish it, leave a comment, and hit kudos than someone who lost their place and never quite made it back. WIP Inbox is on your side. It just lives in your readers' inboxes.
And to be explicit about AI concerns: WIP Inbox does not feed your work into any AI model. Not for training. Not for summarization. Not for any other purpose. Your AO3 metadata already passes through to readers as an email subject line — title, chapter number, author name. We take that metadata and display it slightly differently, in a more reader-friendly view. That's it. The actual content of your work is never read, stored, or processed by this tool.
If you have concerns or questions not addressed here, I'd genuinely like to hear them: hello@wipinbox.com.
Author profiles, if you want one.
Authors can claim a WIP Inbox profile by verifying their AO3 account. A claimed profile gives you a small space to post short updates that readers already tracking your stories will see — and to share links to Ko-fi, Patreon, Tumblr, or anywhere else you'd like readers to find you.
This exists because WIP Inbox is for the whole fandom ecosystem, not just readers. Profiles are optional, opt-in, free, and never surfaced to readers who aren't already following your work. WIP Inbox is a tracking tool, not a discovery platform — author profiles deepen the reader-author connection that already exists, nothing more.