Your readers are already here. This is for you.
WIP Inbox helps readers track their AO3 subscriptions. When your story updates, it shows up on their dashboard. You didn't have to do anything for that to happen on AO3 — and you don't have to do anything here. But if you want to, there's more.
What WIP Inbox actually does
When a reader subscribes to your story on AO3, they get an email when you post a chapter. If a reader chooses to set up email forwarding in their own email client, WIP Inbox takes that update and organizes it into a reading dashboard — chapter progress, update history, fandom and relationship tags, and a direct link back to your work on AO3.
That's it. WIP Inbox organizes readers' relationship to AO3. It doesn't touch your fic, doesn't reproduce it, doesn't scrape your profile, and requires no changes to your AO3 account, profile, or works. Everything about how your work appears on AO3 stays exactly as you left it.
What we never do
- •Reproduce your fic or any part of it
- •Scrape AO3 for your content or profile
- •Train AI on your work
- •Display your story without linking back to AO3
- •Intercept or divert kudos, hits, or comments
- •Sell your data or your readers' data
- •Run ads against your work
- •Require any changes to your AO3 account
What we do
- •Show chapter summaries you've written — only when you include them, only in your words, always attributed to you. If you don't write a summary, nothing shows.
- •Link every story card directly to your work on AO3
- •Link author names to your AO3 profile by default
- •Support readers in staying current with your updates
- •Give you a direct channel to those readers if you want one — free, always
Your author profile
All your links, in one place
Threads, Tumblr, Bluesky, Discord — wherever you live outside of AO3. And if you have a Ko-fi or Patreon, those live here too. Readers who love your work have one place to find everything, instead of hunting through author notes across a dozen chapters. Your profile, your choice of what to include.
Post directly to your readers
Send a short update — "next chapter is about three quarters done, expecting to post in a couple of weeks" — and it appears in the feed of every reader who has your story in their WIP Inbox dashboard. Not buried in an author note. Not lost in a Tumblr reblog chain. Directly to the people who are actively waiting for your work.
Entirely on your terms — and always free
Author profiles are optional and completely free, now and always. You claim yours by forwarding a single AO3 notification email — no friction, no personal information required beyond your AO3 username. You control what's on the profile, what you post, and when. Nothing about your AO3 account or your works needs to change. Readers can mute author updates if they want story tracking only — that's their choice to make, and it's there to make sure your updates never feel like noise to anyone who didn't opt in.
Your profile, confirmed as yours
To verify your AO3 username is really yours, we ask you to forward any AO3 notification email — a kudos alert, a comment, anything from do-not-reply@archiveofourown.org — to authors@wipinbox.com. We do see the email address you forward from, because that's unavoidable — but we only use it to send your confirmation, and we don't store it after that. Once verified, your author name on every reader's story card links to your profile, and a small verified badge appears.
Claim your author profile
Free, optional, and takes about two minutes. Forward any AO3 notification email and you're in. No changes to your AO3 account. No new account required if you're already a WIP Inbox reader.
Claim your profile →Questions first? authors@wipinbox.com