Authory is a very impressive service for writers whose work is online. It creates an archive of your articles that it gathers from specific publications that you specify. Authory then provides you with full-text copies behind the scenes and the public with headline links to the post and the first sentence or two of the article (or blog post or poem or your choice if it’s online with your byline). You can also make the whole article public or even publish new articles on Authory.
Overall, Authory is well-designed, easy to use and offers great value for writers who feel their work is worth saving and sharing.
Authory’s Value Proposition
I’ve just begun using Authory and am writing this review largely because I will get a free year out of the deal. However, I’m already getting the feeling that I will continue using it after the year is up. Currently it costs $10 a month or $8 if you pay for the year. You can also get a free trial for 30 days via this link.
Times are tough for a lot of folks right now. If you’re pinching pennies, Authory may seem like a luxury. But, if you’re trying to build a professional career or already have one, Authory feels like an indispensable tool for maintaining an archive. That also goes for people seeking new work or just wanting to save work they’ve done in multiple locations. If a publication goes offline, you’ll still have a copy of your work that you can easily share publicly.
I could also see Authory being useful for academics, even as a way to share abstracts of publications that are behind paywalls, for poets and for fiction writers. If your work is scattered across a lot of sources, this would be a very useful service.
My Experience
I gave Authory five publications with which to start. So far I’ve only found one article that was not mine but it did contain a reference with my name and a link to an article of mine on the same publication. I was impressed by its gathering job overall but will update this review if needed. You can check out the results here. Note: I haven’t added a profile image but that’s an option as well.
The backend includes a list of publications you’ve included with the option to stop scanning them which can be turned on or off. You can also import articles manually and even publish articles on Authory. Since you can make the articles full text, if you wish, and I have multiple blogs on which I self-publish, I probably won’t use the last feature. But, given the ease of use of the platform and clean design, I could see Authory being used for self-publishing.
My biggest challenge will be organizing my work on Authory. It includes over 1000 articles with over 800 of them from a single source. The other sources won’t be so hard to account for but the larger mass will be an organizational issue.
Authory does include search tools that can be focused on a specific publication. You can also create “Collections” that features topics that then appear above the search box. I think these options will satisfy readers that wish to know more about your work.
I haven’t checked out the following features yet but I should note that Authory includes data on how your articles and posts perform on social media. It also has a feature for email newsletters of new articles. The latter would be especially useful for those who publish on a variety of platforms and want an easy way of informing their fans about new work.
Things I’d Like To See
Since I’ve discussed my concerns about organizing my larger source of articles, a feature that would help me with bulk tasks would be nice to have. For example, Authory could create a backend that includes an index of titles and publications with links out and the ability to add multiple articles to a collection, to delete multiple articles at once and to do other tasks rapidly. That feature would be a real boon to someone in my situation. The backend of a WordPress blog gives one example of how that might work.
But that’s the only large concern I have at the moment which is surprising. I’m highly critical of such platforms and, even if I give one the benefit of the doubt, I don’t hold back in reviews.
I Highly Recommend Authory
The above details and features should give you a sense of just how well thought out is Authory. It fulfills major needs with a user interface that’s easy to navigate, clean and simple. These days that’s getting harder to find and will be greatly appreciated by both busy authors and readers who like to read!
Anyone who’s publishing a lot of work on the web across platforms could find Authory of use. I will update this review if I discover major aspects that need updating but, at this stage, I have a very positive impression of Authory and would recommend writers taking a closer look.
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