Chapter access

This is the paywall itself: which chapters are paid, and for how long. It is the one part of monetization that works with nothing else set up, because a chapter that unlocks itself after a week needs no gateway and no Patreon account.

Set it in Monetization ▸ Settings ▸ Coins and Unlock ▸ Chapter Access.

Default access for new chapters

Five rules. Pick one.

New chapters are free. Nothing is locked. Use this while you are still setting up, or on a site that monetizes through ads and support links instead.

Keep the newest published chapters paid. A fixed-size window: the newest N chapters are paid, and a chapter becomes free when it falls out of that group. This is the one to use if you released a whole novel at once, because it does not care when anything was published, only where it sits in the order.

Keep each chapter paid for a set time after publication. Each chapter runs its own timer from its own publication date. Readers see a countdown on the locked chapter saying when it opens. Chapters you published together have countdowns that end together.

Keep chapters paid until changed manually. Nothing unlocks itself. You decide, chapter by chapter.

Sell early access to scheduled chapters. Your schedule becomes the paywall. A chapter you schedule for the 25th is listed straight away, locked, with a countdown; a reader with coins can read it now; on the 25th WordPress publishes it as it always would and it is free for everybody. This is the pattern most translation sites run on: paying readers are ahead, free readers catch up on the date you set.

Nothing is published early and no date is changed. The chapter stays scheduled until its own time, which is also why switching this rule off puts everything back the way it was: the scheduled chapters simply go back to being invisible.

Two things it leaves alone. A chapter you have set by hand keeps the setting you gave it, which for a scheduled chapter still means hidden until its date. And a free opening range is still free, so the opening chapters of a novel are never sold this way.

The diagram under the rules redraws itself as you choose, and the sentence below it spells out what you have picked in words. Read that sentence before you save; it is the fastest way to catch a rule that does not mean what you thought.

Free opening chapters

A number of chapters at the start of every novel that stay free whatever the rule above says. Enter 0 for none.

This exists because a reader who cannot read chapter one will not become a reader who pays for chapter forty. Ten to twenty is a common opening.

The range is by chapter number, not by position, so it follows the numbering you gave the chapters rather than the order they happen to be in.

Locked preview paragraphs

How much of a locked chapter a reader gets before the paywall. The paragraphs fade out into the unlock prompt.

Three is the default. 0 shows nothing but the prompt, which is more secure and reads as more hostile.

These are defaults, and they can be overridden twice

Per novel. Every novel can either inherit these settings or define its own, on the novel’s own edit screen. A finished backlist can be free while your ongoing series is paid.

Per chapter. Any single chapter can be locked or unlocked by hand, and can carry its own coin price. A manual setting beats both the novel and this screen.

That means fewer chapters can end up paid than a number here suggests: a free opening range, a novel-level override, or a manual unlock will each take chapters out. The count on this screen is a ceiling, not a promise.