Built by a reader.
For other readers.

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.

• 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

• 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.

The Reader tier is completely free and completely real. It's not a watered-down trial. Track up to 10 stories, with full dashboard, reading progress, author updates, and your Weekly Stack. No time limit. If that's all you need, use it.

Fanatic exists for people who are deeply in it — unlimited stories, cover art, unlimited personal tags, custom shelves, deeper stats views, and a Weekly Stack you can customize to your schedule. $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.

If you'd rather see the reader-facing version first, here's an AO3 reading tracker that fills itself in. No spreadsheet, no userscript, no login.

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.

A percentage of every Fanatic subscription goes to the Organization for Transformative Works — the nonprofit that runs AO3. They're volunteer-run, donation-funded, and the reason any of this exists. Once WIP Inbox covers its own costs, that percentage kicks in automatically.

Learn about the OTW →

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.

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.

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 Threads, Tumblr, Bluesky, Discord, or wherever else you have a presence outside of AO3.

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.