“Who are we or any editor in the world to judge whether your book is worth publishing?”

– Inkitt Website, 2018

Note on the Original Article

I wrote this article originally in 2018, when these were my primary concerns:

1. A missing book series for Inkitt-published writer Erin Swan,
2. Concerns about data mining, and
3. Author ownership of stories published to Inkitt¹

The original article relied heavily on the work of James Beamon of Fictigristle (2018), Rachel Sharp (2016), and my amateur efforts to decode the Inkitt Terms of Service.

Beamon concluded that Indie publishing was likely superior and Rachel raged at Inkitt’s Twitter accounts for spam; which—while funny to the outside observer—matches common complaints about Inkitt & Galatea’s social media and mailing strategy.

This article has been updated for 2025, as Inkitt has undergone some important changes.

New Me

Between 2018—2019, Inkitt moved their publishing into a separate app: Galatea.

Galatea is the publishing-side of Inkitt, and the exclusivity agreement that made me incredibly skeptical of Inkitt has now been moved into Galatea, which finally separates the fanfictiony² internet publishing from the sketchier publishing.

The Galatea publishing agreement is not public, as contracts are negotiated on a “case-by-case basis”, but here’s a table that attempts to draw comparisons by grabbing from a mosaic of sources of dubious quality (mainly Reddit).

Inkitt (Old) data by Victoria Strauss of Writer Beware and my own research from 2018.

Inkitt has refused to share median income (only reporting top-earners) and contract terms are both unknown and nonnegotiable, unless you’re already successful with them (catch-22). Everything is further hidden behind the classic algorithm black box.

Inkitt is essentially a fancy Wattpad / AO3 dumping-grounds with integration into their own tools and metrics, while Galatea is their IP-arm that tries to buy works for pennies on the dollar.

The Were-Elephant in the Room

So, why would an author pursue sign or pursue such a high-risk, low-reward path?

Because Inkitt relies on the illusion of having captured a niche.

And what niche is that?

If you don’t know, dear reader, go visit the following sites, and report back.

1. ArchiveOfOurOwn.org
2. Wattpad.com
3. Inkitt.com

Inkitt’s specialty is omegaverse fiction for young women—their advertising and branding makes this extremely obvious. It’s the same quality and type of fiction as the other two sites, but with a gamified green progress bar that taunts writers with the possibility of a getting a bad contract.

Despite its image, Inkitt’s value is quite low. Their actual value is their writers, for whom they show their appreciation by locking them into exclusivity contracts that (1) limit their reach and (2) turn their hobby into Content for cheap. And who doesn’t love Content.

The Shoulders of Giants

131.23M, 2.25M, 517.85M

Those are the monthly visits for Wattpad.com, Inkitt.com, and ArchiveOfOurOwn.org, respectively⁸.

While Inkitt presents itself as a good choice, the audience is anywhere from 0.01% to 0.004% of the size of platforms that aren’t aggressively spamming writers on social media, email, and their own platform to convert them into their exclusive, cheap Content cows.

Now you may call this comparison unfair for reasons like, “X is more general/older” to which I say Inkitt was not created from nothing.

Inkitt benefits-from and makes its money by both (1) modeling itself after and (2) by pulling people away from more equitable communities like AO3 (which is nonprofit and open-source)⁹. It’s not unfair to compare Inkitt to the sites and communities whose wider culture it reaps the benefits from.

Unsolicited Advice

If you are daunted by the size of larger sites, or are coping with “something is better than nothing”; I implore you to truly consider the alternatives.

Your options aren’t just “publish to Kindle Unlimited” or “give Galatea 97% of your profits”, look to the indie writers in your field who already have a following and see what they’re doing.

One of the largest strengths of indie is that you can build a relationship with your audience in a very untraditional, but close way.

Readers who follow your War and Peace-length werewolf fic. are more likely to donate to your Patreon/Ko-fi. People like sci-fi magazines that’ll publish your short stories. People like buying commissions from artists who are people to them.

Your passion, whatever it is, has a value that is all-too-often drowned-out by the monetary.¹⁰