I've been publishing my stories online for years, and it takes a surprising amount of effort to do. The effort can be scaled depending upon how many sites you wish to release to, of course, but since I prefer getting as many eyeballs on my stories as possible, it makes sense to publish wide.
That being the case, every site has a slightly different way of formatting stories, which can be absolutely maddening to deal with. Here, I'll lay out my process for dealing with this, as well as my impressions about each site I normally publish to.
This explanation will use only free tools for formatting - yes, you too can write and publish your very own smut stories for free on the Internet!
Tools - Document Editor - Google Docs
I personally use Google Docs for writing all my stories, so the formatting advice below will assume that this is your starting point. In theory, any editor can be used to write your story, but there could be slight differences in how things will turn out when you copy and paste your work, so keep that in mind!
Tools - Notepad++
You can download a copy of Notepad++ here. It's an open source tabbed text editor with powerful find/replace tools and macros. I simply can't live without it when working with text files, and I use it extensively below.
Tools - Libre Office
You can use Word if you have a license, but if not, Libre Office can do pretty much everything Word can. I'll be describing the find/replace functionality in Libre Office below, but I'm certain that you could duplicate the same commands in Word given some experimentation.
Blog Posting - Blogger
When posting stories here, I simply copy the text straight out of Google Docs. That makes this the easiest way to post my stories, but I don't have a large viewership here, so this is only the starting point!
MCStories
MCStories has been around for ages, and is still run by Simon Bar Sinister (as far as I know - could this be a Dread Pirate Roberts situation?) It has good viewership, but the web page is bare bones. A lot of us like it that way (I certainly do), but this means that your story needs to be formatted to work in plain old HTML. That might seem intimidating at first, but I'll provide an easy set of steps to get you ready to publish below!
MCStories does have a content restriction you should be aware of - it only accepts mind control stories, and it does not accept stories which have gender transformations. If you like writing those kinds of stories, you'll need to post them elsewhere.
Simon is okay with self promotion and disclaimers, so if you wish to include those at the beginning or end of your story, knock yourself out!
Okay, with that out of the way, here's the steps I take to get a story ready to send to Simon:
1. Create a text file on disk.
Name it after your story. If you story has multiple chapters, name it Chapter 1 (E.g. 'My Story Chapter 1.txt'
2. Fill out this template for your first chapter:
Synopsis
<Your Synopsis Here>
Tags
<Your Tags Here - Use the tags that are defined here which represent the content of your story.>
Author's Notes
Here you can include a link to your blog or other works, as well as anything you want to say about the genesis of the story. You can also include disclaimers, if you desire, though most of your content warning should be applied through the use of proper tags above.
Chapter One (If the story is just one chapter, you can just use the name of the story here - 'MyStoryName')
<This spot contains the contents of the chapter, but you can leave it blank for now.>
End Chapter One (If the story is just one chapter, you can use 'End MyStoryName')
3. If you have multiple chapters, repeat the process above, creating one text file per chapter. At the end of the last chapter, you can include additional author's notes, if you so choose.
4. Copy your story contents out of Google Docs into a Libre Office Writer document. It doesn't matter whether you save it as a docx or an odt, either format is fine.
5. If your story contains italics, you will need to change those into a format that can be displayed in HTML. To do so, follow these instructions:
- Go to Edit -> Find and Replace.
- In the 'Find' box, put this: .*
- Click the 'Format...' button near the bottom of the box.
- In the 'Style' dropdown, select 'Italic'
- Click Ok.
- Back in the main box, make sure that the 'Regular expressions' box is checked.
- Use the 'Find Next' button a few times to verify that you are now matching on italic text.
- In the 'Replace' box, insert this: <i>&</i>
- Click on the 'Replace All' button.
This should surround all italic text in your document with an <i></i> tag.
6. Copy your story contents into the text document you prepared in step 2. All further formatting will be done in Notepad++ (italic formatting cannot be done in Notepad++ because it will not retain the italic style within a text document).
7. Go to Search -> Find, then select the 'Replace' tab.
- Use 'Replace All' to replace “ characters with "
- Use 'Replace All' to replace ” characters with "
- Use 'Replace All' to replace ‘ characters with '
- Use 'Replace All' to replace ’ characters with '
- Use 'Replace All' to replace … with ... (these might look the same but they are not)
- If you're feeling up for a challenge, you can use Macro -> Start Recording, then perform all of your replacements, then 'Stop Recording.' This will create a re-usable macro that you can use to run all the replacements in one go.
8. Send an email to simon@galaxy.net with your story text files attached, and ask him to post it to the archive! (Also thank him for doing so!)
Literotica
Literotica has been around for quite some time, and appears to have one of the largest audiences in the fetish space. Their content policy is much more accepting than MCStories, but they do not allow fanfiction or self promotion at all, and their moderation system is very strict.
Additionally, moderation takes at least 3 days per chapter, so if you have a multi-chapter work and queue it all up in one go, it will take a long time for the entire work to be posted, so do keep that in mind.
Formatting here is pretty simple - copy the text out of Google Docs into Libre Office Writer and save each chapter in their own docx or odt file. You can then upload these individual files to publish on the site.
A synopsis for the story is not required - instead, you will need to give each chapter a (very) short description. To group multiple chapters for the same story together, you will need to name them in a specific way using this template: <StoryName> Ch. 01, <StoryName> Ch. 02, etc.
The site now also supports series management, but the feature has been difficult for me to use properly. Your mileage may vary.
If you have a Patreon or Amazon author page, you can configure these to show up on the site by following the information on this page: https://literotica.com/faq/publishing/support-this-author
It's not great, but that's all the site allows.
Read Only Mind
Read Only Mind is another Mind Control story site that has gained popularity in recent years. It seems to have a pretty healthy readership, and is another great place to post your Mind Control stories.
To post here, you can use the same DocX or ODT file you used to post to Literotica. The added benefit here is that the site will load the text from your document and allow you to edit it within the web page. Pay special attention to any three star separators you've used (***), as the spacing will need to be fixed for the story to look good.
Fetlife
Many people aren't likely to post their stories to Fetlife because they don't want to link them to their personal kink accounts.
If you do decide to do so, you can follow the same steps as you would for formatting the text for MCStories, but use ** as the replacement for italics instead of <i>&</i>. Chapter breaks and headers should be denoted with double stars like so to make them bold: **This is bold text**
Hentai Foundry
I haven't found my readership here to be all that large, but you may have more success than me depending on your story content.
Formatting for this site is, quite frankly, a huge pain:
1. Copy/Paste from Google Docs into the inline editor.
2. Click on the 'Source Code' button.
3. Copy the text to Notepad++ and remove the extra inserted newlines using the Search -> Replace dialog (make sure Search mode is set to 'Extended'): \r\n\r\n\r\n -> \r\n\r\n
4. Copy the text back into Hentai Foundry, and turn off the 'Source Code' button. The text should now have the correct formatting and spacing.
5. You can include a synopsis for the story as well as descriptions for each chapter on this site, if you so desire.
DeviantArt
DeviantArt has recently reduced some of their adult content restrictions, but I am still leery of posting anything too spicy there. The fetish audience is actually quite large, however, and this a great place to notify people about what you're working on. Personally, I post images from the stories I am releasing there, as well as links to my blog that contain the stories I'm releasing, instead of trying to format them specifically to release there.
Let me know if you use this site differently!
Conclusion
These are the sites I commonly post my stories on. If you have others to recommend, drop me a line (or just let me know if you used any of these tips to publish your stories!)
Quick Reference Cheat Sheet
1. Blog: Copy from Google Docs
2. MCStories: Do the search below to replace italics, copy output to txt file and replace stylized characters with regular ASCII characters - ‘ ’ “ ” … -> ' ' " " ...
Replace italics with HTML formatting:
Search: Format Style -> Italic, Find: .*
Replace: <i>&</i>
Regular expressions checked
When finished, send story to simon@galaxy.net.
3. Literotica: Upload docx file with formatting. Name chapters in this format: Ch. 0x
4. Hentai Foundry: Copy/Paste from Google Docs into the inline editor. Click on the 'Source Code' button, copy the text to Notepad++ and remove the extra inserted newline: \r\n\r\n\r\n -> \r\n\r\n. Copy this text back to HF and it will have the correct spacing.
5. Fetlife: Do the same replaces as #2, but use *&* to outline italics instead of: <i>&</i> - Chapter breaks and headers need **bold text**
6. ROM: Use the same DocX used for Literotica as the starting point. Three star separators will need to be fixed.
7. DeviantArt: Post a link to the blog
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