Checked my emails and found one from story.one, a writing/publishing platform where people can upload their stories and get them printed as actual books with an ISBN and such. They also started an annual writing contest in cooperation with Thalia bookstores called "Young Storyteller Award" in 2021, which seemed like a really great opportunity for young (hobby) authors to get a book published and to get creative.
Well, in their email they promote their AI assistant which they describe as an "editor" with the promise of "writing" printable books (specifically non-fiction and guides) in just about 2 hours and therefore enabling authors to "write" books like 300 times faster than usual. It apparently does basically everything for you: complete synopsis in barely 20 minutes including a generated book idea, content and sample chapters, as well as 45 minutes "deep research" in approximately 150 sources ... tested by SPIEGEL-bestselling authors...
And guess what else I just found out: This year (2025) they explicitly fucking allowed AI "written" texts in their WRITING COMPETITION and had the nerve to compare generative AI with simple spell checking after getting backlash - as long as you would state you used AI in your book it would get judged the same as non-AI generated stories ... in a WRITING COMPETITION!
So ... in about a month (April 28th) the official submission period for the Young Storyteller Award 2025 starts.
For those who do not know, the Young Storyteller Award (YSA) is a competition set up by Thalia (one of the biggest book shops in Germany, Austria, and Switzerland) and story.one (essentially a vanity press, outside of this)
It is open to entry for anyone aged 14-35. You can write in any genre and any language, though you have to translate your book if it is not in English or German (at least that is my most up-to-date information).
There are monetary prices, you get an author copy, you retain the rights to the content of your book yada yada. If you want to know more about the pros of the competition you can check it out here:
Young Storyteller
Now, as yall might have noticed, I am not a fan of story.one. Let's get into that
TL;DR: I am salty and don't like a lot of aspects of Story.one. But the Young Storyteller Award is an amazing oportunity for aspiring authors and holding your own story in your hands is a very cool feeling. You should participate, if you want to and are not too old/too young (gods if you're under 14 how are you reading this?)
It is a vanity press. Outside of the YSA you can pay up to 100 Euro to simply publish your book, depending on the design choices you make, and this still contstrains you to their specific design philosophy which essentially means your title can only be in one specific spot, in one specific font. This still, as far as I can tell, does not include an author copy.
(To be clear, participating in the YSA, which happens every year between the 28th of April and the 31st of August, lets you design for free and gives you a free author copy)
That part would already be enough for me to tell you to stay far away from it, unless you choose to participate in the YSA. But, as you might have guessed, there is more.
You can buy books published through story.one both on Amazon and on the Thalia website (and, for a lucky few, even physically from Thalia stores). These costs, from last year's YSA at least, cost you 18.50 Euro.
Why do I emphasize this? There are far more expensive novels out there, and stuff printed on demand tends to be higher in prize anyway. And all story.one books are hardcovers (we'll get to the idiocity of that later), which again are higher in production costs so a higher prize might seem justified.
The maximum page count for these books, which are about A5 sized, is 80. Not 800, 80. Maximum pages in total. Not maximum pages with story, mind you. That maximum runs 68 if you want to be generous, or rather 51 if you want to be realistic (I'll explain that, again, later).
That would run you 20 cents a page on the high end, or 36 cents per page on the low end. For comparison:
The Hunger Games, the first book, in hardcover, as sold on the Thalia website would cost you 22.99 Euro. It has, according to Thalia, 374 pages. So per page you are paying 6 cents. That means, even with the highest possible page count, a story.one book costs the reader about 4 times per page what the Hunger Games would.
Sure, the comparison is very stark, but it is still one i wanted to make to actually explain how much these books would cost. So, vanity press.
If story.one actually wanted to be a publisher, even if still making the author pay, they might have thought of selling e-books for less. After all, there is no big production cost with e-books (and all of that would be covered by what the author pays, let's be honest here) and Thalia even has their own e-book marketplace and their own readers! Story.one has been working with Thalia from their very inception after all.
But no. As far as I can tell (especially since story.one won't answer me when I contact them through their form) while their ToS/AGB do specifiy that e-books, softcovers, audiobooks, etc. etc. *might* come in the future and thus are covered by their copyright of their specific layout (not your story, which redeems them a marginal amount) there is no actual plan for any of these.
Okay, but what about royalties? I mean, I did mention those way up. Yes, story.one does pay out royalties. 10% (so 1.85 per book), which is about traditional publishing rates. (honestly a joke, especially since, once again, you could be paying up to 100 euro just to publish if you do so outside the thalia competitions)
But, those 10% only come in from the 11th sale foreward, which means for the first 10 you make nothing. Most authors, especially those participating in the YSA, will likely make no sales beside family and close friends, which rarely surpase 10 sales. So, no royalties. Just family paying ludecrous prices for essentially no content and story.one pocketing all of it.
Also, if you decide at some point "I don't want this story of mine available anymore. Stop selling it." you will have to pay story.one 26 euro. to stop selling your story. yay. and you can't do this in the first 6 months after you published. yay again.
Okay, okay. But like holding your own book is so cool though! Like yeah, you made that! And yes, that aspect I cannot deny. I participated in YSA24, and I will do so again this year, because holding my own book was the coolest feeling I've felt in a long while.
However, I am going to be honest, I wasn't happy with the story within, I felt like it was unfinished (and while I will try my darndest this year, knowing more than I did last year, I am anticipating that I will still feel like something was lost)
This has to do, as you might guess, with that maximum page count mentioned above.
The story.one format, described by themself, is:
"The Tik-Tok of the Book Publishing Industry"
A quick explenation of it will probably not get across exactly how infuriating their format is to me specifically, but I will try my best
Essentially, a book is made up of "Stories"(Chapters). A book can have between 12 and 17 such stories. A book also includes a page for your dedication. This dedication can have a maximum of 750 characters (characters, not words). Dedications are generally not that long, so that's fine.
Now, stories (chapters). One Story takes up 4 pages of your book. 1 page for a picture, or a quote, or an illustration, or whatever else you want to start your chapter off with. Crucially, you cannot choose to display the chapter title here. Because the chapter title takes up the first of 3 pages of writing.
Not 3 possible pages of writing. 3 pages of writing. you cannot choose to have less, you must fit on exactly 3. there are ways to trick the platform, but essentially you will end up with three pages no matter what.
(you might notice, my note on the maximum numbers on pages makes more sense now. You have a maximum of 17 chapters, where if you are realistic there are 3 pages of actual writing, and if you are optimistic 4.)
Within those three pages (again, about the size of an A5 page) you can fit, if you write like I do (with normal paragraph breaks), about 8 paragraphs and between 550 and 650 words (word-length dependent, and paragraph-length dependent). Let's show you the layout of one of the chapters of my YSA24 entry to visualize this better.
On that blank first page was a quote, a part of a poem, which is not showing for some reason. But we are here about the writing, because that first chapter page is honestly negliable in the telling of a story.
Also the "Bestseller Format", a book about how to write a book with story.one written by its founder doesn't even follow these format rules which is kind of funny
So that's the writing, but what about the cover? I ranted about that shortly above as well, so what's that about? Well, dear gentle aspiring author or interested party, let's design a cover on story.one!
To start, let's choose a cover image! Now, if you want to pay nothing (outside YSA) this must be from their provided connection to Unsplash, which does not include nearly all Unsplash images, so you are quite constricted. If you want to pay 40 euro though (or are participating in YSA) you can upload your own image! Either, cover the entire outside of the book beside the spine, or just the front. The writing on the back of your book will be white, so keep that in mind!
Then, we gotta design our Title! Rather constrictive here, as you can only choose from Story.One's "Vignets" and you cannot move them on the cover. But, whatever. Also, if you want to do anything but the basic rectangle style, more money to the overlords! (again, participating in YSA means you do not have to pay any of this!)
Now the back! The text is done elsewhere, but will appear in white no matter what. So choose wisely! colors only here, no way to upload an image (though you can definitely design a horizontal image to fit this, the dimensions are 3000 px * 2000 px at the very least. However, that is not the actual dimension of the book, as the very faint white lines are the fold-over. I have not been able to find exact dimensions anywhere)
Also, if you want anything other than story.one red and are publishing outside YSA, you gotta give em another 10 euro. yay.
In Conclusion (longer TL;DR)
Story.one seems to be pretty amazing for non-fiction, memoir adjaicant writing. YSA is saturated with these, and that is what mostly wins (as far as I can tell)
But I, and most of my friends here on tumblr, are fiction writers. And so that is my perspective.
Now, I managed to tell a story last year. And I will manage again this year. But it will always feel like I am literally pressed into a mold, a format.
Story.one makes it very easy to finish a story. Because of how restrictive it is. Which is a point toward it, in some sense at least. I love that I can hold a book now that i finished, with a story that I am ... at least somewhat happy with. Otherwise I wouldn't have submitted it.
You should participate in teh YSA25, even with all I said here. You might win, and why not try. And you will likely finish a story, if a short one, and that feeling and holding your book can honestly barely be surpassed. especially if you do either (or both, in my case last year) for the very first time.
(Also, if you do decide to participate after this long long long rant, I am trying to establish a Young Storytellers discord since neither thalia nor story.one offers a real tangible way to collaborate or form community in an official forum. So gotta do it myself, I guess. If you're interested, message me! Right now it is literally me and like two firends xD So don't expect much, I suppose)
87 is alone with their thoughts. The plague doctor collects the dead each night for burning. With only the company of the dead, and two criminals sat at the back, it’s hardly social hours. On a beautiful clear summer evening, it’s time to get down to the ghastly business.
Delighted to announce I have written a book for the Story.One Young Storyteller Awards! Three pages a chapter, 15 chapters. I'm awaiting my author copy and honestly doubt I'll sell any more but I am very excited to publish a book with an actual ISBN.
Follown a nameless and genderless Plague Doctor reduced just down to their number as they go about collecting the dead to burn in a sick city. Encounter reflection on society, reflection on life, and reflection on the meaning of their work. It is a long night, and 87 has too much time to think.
