how to publish a story/work to AO3 with voiceover on mobile

This guide assumes that you have already received an invitation to AO3, and created your account. These steps will most likely be most easily followed using an ipad and bluetooth keyboard, but should also be doable on any mobile device with voiceover.

Getting Started

There are many ways to access the post new story (or work as the site refers to it) page, but I will show you the most direct way. Double tap the post link after the link labeled hi, followed by your chosen user name. It will expand a submenu with two options. New work, and import work. If your story is not yet published on any other sight (fanfiction.net is not currently supported) double tap the new work link.

The New Work Page

Once you have double tapped the new work link, you will be taken to a page filled with different fields to fill out. This is all important information about your story that can be filled out in any order. I will briefly go over each field below, describing what they are and how to fill them.

Work Fields

The descriptions below should give you an idea of how each field works, but I recommend you browse other people’s works to get a better idea of the specifics.

Rating

What audience your story is best suited for. You can choose not to rate your story, but I recommend you do so by selecting the rating that best fits your work from the menu that appears after double tapping the popup button.

Warnings

A series of checkboxes to give your readers more specific indication of what sort of content to expect in your story. Again you can choose not to use these, but I recommend you do so by checking each one that applies to your story. If you feel that an additional warning that’s not present in the list is needed, you can add it via the additional tags field which I will go over later in this list.

Fandoms

What fandoms your story was written for e.g. Harry potter, hunger Games, Gravity Falls. You can add as many fandoms as you’d like.

Important Note About This And other Tags Fields

This field is one of the tags fields, which is a combo box you can type anything you’d like in and use it as a tag. Suggestions of previously created tags will appear as you type, and you can choose to apply one to your story by double tapping on it in the list. note that strangely placed spaces will appear when the tag is in the suggestions popup, but will disappear once selected.

If you don’t see a tag in the suggestions that you want to use, you can create it by typing its name and pressing enter. You can remove a tag you don’t want by double tapping the button labeled times after its name in the list above the combo box.

If you have trouble getting the suggestions to appear, delete the last character you typed then retype it as many times as needed. I like to set my sight skin to white on black so the popup has a stark contrast from the background.

Categories

Categories based on what sort of relationship(s) your story focuses on. They are as follows:

F/F: female+female romantic/sexual relationship(s)

F/M: Female+male romantic/sexual relationship(s)

Gen: no sexual/romantic relationship(s). Note: This doesn’t necessarily mean there can’t be any romantic/sexual relationships, they just aren’t the focus of the story.

M/M: Male+male romantic/sexual relationship(s)

Multi: Could be for either multiple kinds of relationships or polyamory, i’ve seen it used both ways.

Other: Doesn’t fit the categories above.

Select all categories that apply to your story.

Relationships

The relationships between two or more characters that are focused on in your story. Romantic/sexual relationships are usually written as A/B while platonic ones are written as A & B

Characters

The characters that appear in your story. You can tag as many as you’d like, so don’t be afraid to include all of them.

Additional Tags

More tags you’d like to include that don’t fit into the last fields. They could be anything.

Work Title

The title of your story.

Summary

A brief description of your story to hook your readers in and let them know what to expect, like the blurb on the back of a book.

notes

If you are planning to include notes at the beginning and/or end of your story/first chapter, use these checkboxes and type them in the text fields that appear. Note that unchecking the boxes after this will delete your notes, so be careful.

Post to collections/challenges

A combo box that allows you to submit your story to collections. You can do this after your work is published as well.

Gift this work to

If you wrote this story for someone else, type their user name into this combo box.

This work is a remix, a translation, a podfic, or was inspired by another work

if so, check the box and fill out the appropriate information.

This work is part of a series

If so, check the box and select the appropriate series (or enter the title if it’s the first.)

This work has multiple chapters

If so, check the box and fill out the information.

Set a different publication date

if you wrote your story a while ago and would rather it have the date you wrote it, you can check this box and set it.

Language

The language your work is written in. Select it from the popup that appears.

Skin

The visual appearance of your story. This is mostly visual.

Privacy

A series of mostly checkbox fields that allow you to do things like only show your work to registered users, disable anonymous commenting and a few other things. they are all very straight forward.

Work/chapter text

One if not the most important field of all, the text for your story/first chapter. you can write in plain text or HTML, but it’s not automatically saved so I recommend you write your story in your favorite word processor then paste it into the text field. Be sure to have rich text selected when you do this.

once you are finished you can double tap the post button, and there you go! You’ve just published/started your first story on AO3! Congrats! If you have any questions about this guide leave them in the comments and I’ll answer them to the best of my ability.