A New Journey: Novlr Becomes Writer-Owned

It’s been a very special week for all of us here at Novlr. This is a moment that fills not only my heart but the hearts of our entire team with immense joy and pride.

For quite some time now, we’ve been dreaming of taking a step that changes the very essence of what we do — making Novlr the first creative writing platform to be co-owned by the writers to use it. And today, we can finally announce to the world that it has happened!

Novlr is co-owned!

We opened up early access to our waitlist, and, as of writing, we already have 90 writer-owners contributing to our mission of serving creative writers better and helping them achieve their writing goals. And now, it’s your turn. We’ve opened up co-ownership to all writers, and we invite you to join and become part of this amazing journey.

At Novlr, we have always been all about writers. Kim and I are both writers, and we started Novlr because no platform at the time catered specifically to what we needed as creative writers. Fast forward eight years and Novlr has grown into a thriving community of thousands of users who’ve produced millions of words. It continues to astonish me when I see that almost 800 million words have been penned on Novlr, and collaboratively, we’re adding almost 500,000 a day!

Starting a new chapter

This marks the beginning of an exciting and significant new chapter. As Novlr now truly becomes owned and consequently moulded by the needs of our writers, we’re prepared to shake up the creative writing landscape. Our vision is to build a platform/community/movement that empowers writers like never before, giving them significant control over their work and opening new avenues for their writing careers.

The more writers that join us, the more impact we can make. So, lend us your support and help us turn this vision into reality.

What else is new?

New features

• We now publicly display our last 24 hours in numbers on our co-ownership page so everyone can see the impact our writers are having. We are also tracking and publicly sharing our goals as a platform with real-time updates on how those goals are progressing.
• Introduced a Partnership program through Rewardful where writers can earn a commission when they share information about Novlr.

Feature improvements

• Improved display of shared projects: Share links default to the menu open to make project navigation easier for those not familiar with Novlr. The formatting of bullet points is also now consistent with what displays for the writer.

Bug fixes

• Fixed an issue where the mobile menu on Android phones would push the site content to the side.
• Fixed a bug where the course player would not work as intended on iPads.

UI improvements

• Added a dashboard notification at the bottom of the menu to let people know when the app has been updated.
• Dashboard cards no longer leave blank spaces when hidden.
• Made changes to our homepage to reflect the fact that we are now writer-owned.

Coming soon

• Reading Room refresh to bring you a community-led space for writing advice
• Optional progress emails to show how you’re tracking against your goals
• Introducing a referral system where you can get a free month of Novlr Pro for you and a friend
• Improved NaNoWriMo integration