Scribophile

I was so surprised by the great edits I got on my short story just after I uploaded it to Scribophile. The people were so helpful in pointing out ways to make my story better. Now I just have to earn enough points to start uploading my novel!

Whether you've been writing for years, or are a newbie with your first book, this is the site for you. The critiques are from fellow writers who know what they are doing. There is both a paid and free service, but the critiques are the same for both. The extras are things like as many messages as you like in your inbox.(free people only get 10.) As many critiques as critiquers wish. (Free members only get 3 per post.)
You must critique other's work in order to gain 'karma' in order to post your own.
I have found the critiques I have received most helpful. Knowing the people critiquing your work are other authors is reassuring. I would recommend this group to any author, no matter their experience.

I was looking for an online critique group and stumbled on Scibophile and love it! There's stacks of active members, the website works really well, and I love the sense of community there. It's really inspired me to write again and I'm getting great feedback from experienced writers. Couldn't be happier!

In all the website is generally an awful place the main site admin had a rather pathetic tantrum over a chapter of mine containing 311 words more than the 300-word limit. When his demands were met he refused to refund my points.

I spent a long time writing on my own and I didn't realize how nice it is to talk to other people about writing. The selling point of Scribophile is getting reviews for your novel but I've found it even more useful as a chat space to talk to other people who are all trying to write. It is so nice to find a group of people who are all going through the same struggles as you are in writing a novel. And everyone is so welcoming. The reviews are nice too but where the site really shines is as a place to talk with other writers.

I joined this site as a novice unpublished writer two years ago. There were/are numerous groups I could join, that best suit my writing interests. The critiques I have received have been extremely insightful. Unfortunately I'm one of those authros who think I'm so very clever when I write something - the critiques have shown me that I'm not so clever and ways in which I could improve my writing.

I've now done quite well having been a finalist in six national short story contests (yet to win though) and most of those where greatly improved through the critiques of those on scribophile.

That said, the critiques one gets can vary considerably, depending not only on the writing experience of the critiquer, but their capacity to have insight into how one can improve the writing and where/why the writing was weak

The site is free nut you can pay a modest premium to get added benefits, which I elected to do. You can message other authors with whom you have developed a collegial relationship and arrange more consistent critiques of your work.

I find this site to be far more helpful than the writers group I attend at a writers centre.

I've spent a lot of time at other writing sites, like Writing.com, Fanstory, Wattpad, and the other day someone recommended Scribophile. After a few weeks I knew I had found the place where I wanted to stay. I've gotten so many detailed reviews of my first few chapters and met some beta readers too. The way the app is organized means that beta readers find you and you get reviews suuuuper fast. I can't recommend it enough!

If you're an experienced professional who just wants confirmation that you're on the right track with a particular new story then Scribophile ought to be a good place to trial stuff right? Wrong. Whilst there are genuine people there, and I did get a lot of very good feedback, there are a lot of trolls with no writing experience at all, who simply exist to make life hell for the rest of us. Additionally, there's hardly anything posted on there that isn't Fantasy of some kind. I had to leave for the sake of my sanity.

I'm writing this to counteract the fact that I have recommended Scribophile to people for years. I wish to correct this because I've seen first-hand how it fails the kinds of young writers I've mentioned the site to.

On the face of it there's no reason for a writing and critiquing community to be particularly bad: it's as good as the community is, right? And therein lies the problem.

First, crits from the main spotlight are close to universally poor. It's very common for people to be desperate to post their own endless novel chapters to the point they will hit the precise number of words for a crit (of the top of my head 300, this might be wrong because my crits were from 800-2,900 words and I never tried to stick to the minimum so it's not something I remembered). These are nearly always inline crits, so comments stop wherever the hit that minimum. You then get a copy-paste closing section with something like "well done for being so brave to post this! It's really good!"
Now, to be fair, this is not a dealbreaker. You can join a group, find critbuddies and get out of the standard crit economy. That does take a premium account, though, as if you are on free you're locked into the standard offering.

Second the community is heavily skewed towards older people who are often quite rude. Their viewpoint is generally accepted within the forums and people disagreeing are dogpiled on. This is something that other users remarked to me as having happened to them (in PMs, on the scratchpad, directly on the forum -- presumably before their post was silently deleted).
I've talked personally with a young disabled writer who felt turned off from the site by how ignorant that older userbase was about disability issues. The level of wilful ignorance definitely shaded into insult. I would say this is also true for issues like BLM etc., where discussion of it seemed pruned from the forum. You'd expect writers engaged in human issues to talk about BLM a lot, but very few posts directly addressing it existed. I am quite sure this is because people talking about it had their posts silently removed. Someone recommended Chick-Fil-A sauce to me, I pointed out I'm not interested because of their history on LGBTQ+ issues, and my post was removed.
Even innocuous posts are removed. An older user remarked that I'd insulted them and I apologised. My apology was removed.
Again, to be fair, this is not a dealbreaker. You could use this site without using the public forums. But I think that this site will never suit younger authors until there's a massive Zeitgeist shift in terms of userbase, moderation and where the money comes from. Currently it's skewed so far in favour of certain values that open discussion just isn't possible.
You can work around this issue. Still, I know multiple wonderful authors who just fell off Scrib because they felt belittled on the forums. I know people still very active in writing and publishing who still have accounts but otherwise just don't use it as being there is so draining.
Censorship of perfectly civil opinions is definitely a massive step too far for me. When that censorship is completely unexplained and your only evidence of it happening is a feed with "X reacted to a forum post", "Y replied to a thread", the identifying info having been removed by the deletion, it's more than a little creepy.

Overall it's not ideal for open discussion. You can entirely sidestep Scrib and the benefits it offers by getting a group of writers together and simply committing to commenting on each others' work, e.g. through using comments in a Word document, or simply writing your own comments in a different coloured typeface. That might be why Scrib works so hard to prioritise its ageing userbase: someone younger and with a little knowledge of simple stuff like Google Docs could easily sidestep it completely, as long as they have a group to share writing with.

I'll never recommend Scrib to anyone ever again.

I've been to so many other writing sites to look for beta readers, and none of them have been very good. I'm glad I finally found Scribophile! I've been a member for a few months and I already have a fantastic group of beta readers who are reading through my novel. You have to earn points to post your writing and that means there's always someone to read your work. At first it's a little tough, but after a while I've wound up with more points than I can use.

Everyone is so nice and it's awesome to finally find other writers who can do beta reads!

I am a long-time member of this site, but there are drawbacks. I am actually one of the authors who has been published, thanks to Scribophile. However, I can't stand by and let the bullying continue. It's just too much, and the only way to end bullying is to take a stand against it.

I was in this forum, and there were five so-called writers who really lambasted a complete stranger without knowing her at all, without speaking to her, without meeting her. They decided to pick on her because she is also a literary agent, but she did not ever advertise her agency on the website. She is a real professional who simply sought to participate in the writing community. She never once mentioned it when I worked with her.

In one fell swoop in one thread, they completely discredited this author. At least two pages of judging a complete stranger, all invalid. Jerry Quinn, for example, didn't even know that Predators and Editors have not been running for at least three years now! So uneducated!

Just to let you know, the author had won an international award and is widely published over a span of thirty years. She has a lot of credibility, while these newbie pleebs have none. I know her on a professional level, and she did not ask me to leave this review. I have been bullied, so I know how to end it: take a stand.

It's really such as shame when people have to spoil what would be a great platform for writers, but it's such a negative place! She has tried to speak her mind and protect herself, but the owner and all his moderators have done everything to suppress her voice. This poor woman! She has actually been nominated for by several people to hold a Tedx talk on her experiences with bullying! She's a mental health professional who has been published widely on mental health and parenting. She's one of the real ones, unlike the jealous posers who sought to completely ruin her reputation.

She's trying her best to fight the bullying on the platform, so I decided to post something here to let other users know exactly what you're in for.

Five of the "writers," strangers to the person I know, all decided to call my acquaintance a fake and a phony with no knowledge. When I say strangers, they were literally strangers to each other. My colleague had not known these people at all. Yet, they all called her a fake, phony, fraud, predator, dishonest person, and even compared her with a drunk driver without knowing her or her situation. When she woke up, she literally saw an entire thread covered with libel! That's just not right!

She has been trying her best to work with the site, but unfortunately, the site's owner and his moderators all work to silence and censure her.

Good thing they cannot control everything. Thanks, Sitejabber, for providing me a voice to protect an undeserving person from abuse and to let the general public know what they're in for when they deal with Scribophile.

Well, a good, honest professional who has spread more good and light in the world was abused at the hands of these trolls: Song Magrew, Ann Wellington, Caroline Mack, Jerry Quinn, and Don Logan. I did some research about these posers, and they are known across social media by different names. This is usually what con artists do. My experiences in corrections tells me so. By contrast, the author I know is consistent across all platforms, showing her honesty and genuineness. Song Magrew is a nobody because I found this person nowhere else. It really shows how invalid their abuse was toward this loving, kind woman.

Not only was I upset when these people picked on her, but also, she told me the moderators are all deleting her posts! All of them. It doesn't matter what she posts now! It's outrageous, like living under a Nazi regime or within the novel 1984. It's really awful! The site left libel and slander up for over twenty four hours! Yet, she posted simple things to address the bullying, and it was deleted within minutes! Awful, awful. She did nothing to deserve this type of treatment! The trolls' posts should have been deleted instantly. It's like the owner and the moderators are sending the message, eh, bullying and libel is okay on this site, but go off topic, and oh, no, they can't allow that to happen even for a moment.

The abusive posts were deleted, but nothing was done to the bullies! They are still all on the site, ready to abuse everyone else they come into contact with. This is why I provided their writer names for everyone to see. People should be warned that when they deal with these people, they are open to be abused. It just goes to show that people can abuse others there and not be penalized at all, which says volumes about this site.

There was nothing fair about this situation, and you can expect that if you suffer at the hands of trolls, you will be treated the same way. The woman who runs the biggest beta swap on the site told me that it has been a really big problem for years. She told me that this one troll was so bad, the person would abuse everyone who was just starting out on the platform, so she and a group of others would make it their mission to go around and send kind messages to the troll's victims to make them feel better.

There is only one way to correct people's unprofessional behavior: Don't tolerate it. It's not rocket science. These transactions are in writing. They should have never been allowed to be left up for over twenty-four hours to spread the libel of these individuals. These individuals should have been banned for their behavior. The owner should revise his policies to clearly state that trolling and abusive behavior will result in the closure of their account.

I'm calling out the owner of this site to make it better and safer for upcoming authors. If you tolerate abusive behavior on the site, people will keep doing it. I hope the lightbulb goes off in your head. Revise your policies and mete out appropriate penalties and consequences for trolls, and they will no longer exist on your site. Suspension of their accounts for a certain amount of time is the very least penalty people should experience. Then I will leave a review of five stars, because despite your antiquated ways of tolerating trolls and bullies, it's a great platform! I really love it, but something has to change.

UPDATE: The owner is really just unreasonable. My friend just contacted me and told me that she was banned from the site because she tried to stand up to her bullies. So disappointing, Alex Cabal! But, these latest actions completely prove my point. It's a place overrun with trolls and bullies, and the owner is the biggest one of all, and keeps all the trolls on the site and bans nice, good people so all that is left is a pit of abuse. Also, I hear people complain their work is stolen from the site. Fakers from other countries use the site to steal others' materials and publish them in other countries. Then, you have little recourse to go after them. It's totally not worth it. Everyone should just leave and find a reputable writer's circle to join. There's better ways to get feedback than this. No reason why you should be subjected to bullies, con artists, and thieves. I'm going to go close my account now.

Scribophile is a GREAT place to meet new Writer friends, show off your work, and also get more potential readers. The only reason I'm cutting a star is, because I wish they would ease up on the requirement to critique so you can post your own work. Otherwise, I'm very thankful for this site!

I have been a member for a year. In that time I have made so many great friends on Scribophile. The people there give you great reviews and it is a fantastic way to get detailed feedback. I have used the free membership for a while but the paid membership is a pretty good value. Eventually I had a paid membership gifted to me by someone on the site!

A friend told me about Scribophile and I signed up and love it. There is so much stuff there to read it's almost overwhelming. I've met a few people and we're swapping chapters and starting a beta read. Everyone is so nice and there is so much knowledge there.

This is a bad site, bad team who banned me because I was writing a novel related to a Christian-Muslim war in Lebanon... Nobody has the right to shut my mouth, and I will find my way to spread the novel, not because I care what happened during any of the wars, but because there are readers out there who like to read about crime... am so sad :(

I've been using Scribophile for a while and unlike other writing sites this one is focused on getting feedback on your writing. If you want to just post your writing for the world to read, like in a blog, then this is the wrong place... it's for getting reviews and critiques. And they're really good quality. It's a little hard to earn karma points but for me writing critiques has been a good way to train myself to look at my own writing differently. Great site!

I signed up for Scribophile earlier this year. It's helped my writing so much! The system makes you write critiques for other people before you can post your own novel. At first I was a little hesitant but let me tell you, sitting down and thinking hard about what other people can improve in their writing goes a long way to helping me objectively look at my own work.

So far I've made a lot of friends and critique partners, and I'm getting ready to do a complete beta read swap with another member. I would never have gotten this chance without Scribophile.

Besides critiquing, the forums are usually pretty busy and while the moderators can sometimes be a little zealous I think they're usually pretty fair.

In short I can't recommend Scribophile enough. Love it!

I signed up for Scribophile recently and have critiqued others works and posted two of my own works. The community really helped me improve my work, and I appreciate it. However, earning enough karma points to post them, and esp. Premium is really a problem.

It takes forever to earn karma points (you have to critique over 125 words to get 1 or 0.50 points). And Premium can make things unfair. What esp. bothers me is that non-paying writers have to delete past works just to post more.

So to conclude, if you are willing to pay and very professional, then this site is for you. But if you are a college student like me, you might find some issues.

You never own the stuff you put on there. Let me explain. If the owners or those who run the site ever dislike you or you write about something controversial they will remove you from the site and all your data will be lost. No you can't retrieve your stuff. All it takes is one to two people complaining. It is not a place for creative freedom if you write horror or anything not pg-13. With the exception of romance but even then you can get reported. Art should be freeing. Like music, a cd will warn of explicit details. That cd wasn't removed from stores. Imagine working on a book and losing everything because someone didn't agree with your vision. Your not treated as an adult, your treated like children who should behave and stay silent.

I went to scribophile to learn and grow as a writer. While the site is fairly well structured and encourages writers to support one another, their critique system could use improvement. As could the overall attitude from members and moderators alike.

Commenting on other's work in regards of grammar, etc. can earn you flags. Not to mention they discourage lengthy critiques. They also don't like you posting chapters or pieces over 3,000 words. Which can be quite a pain as a number of writers end up having to divide their work into even smaller parts just to comply with the rules.

Also, unless you're a paying member... which its $9 dollars a month just to message freely and not have a limitation on the amount of work you post, it can slow you down to a snail's pace. Not to mention actually present your work in a decent format. If you're not a paying member, it is even harder to earn karma points. Even if you do a lot of reading and critiquing the limitations they set makes all those stacked up karma points seem wasted. Not to mention, it slows a number of writers down that might have deadlines or be looking for some serious feedback on their work.

Though I'll say this much... I ended up being a paying member so that way I could fully utilize everything, it still felt overpriced as there were times I would take out a lengthy time to read and critique another's works to get flagged and would end up get half-assed critiques that were pointless to even acknowledge imo. But as I did not want to cause trouble, I let it slide. Not to mention I didn't want to have to deal with the moderators which came off as rather pushy, snooty, and condescending.

I signed up for Scribophile last year and have been loving it ever since. Everyone there is smart and helpful, I've gotten great feedback on my novel, and it's just about ready for publication! The owners are always improving the site and making sure it runs smoothly. Scribophile is one of the best communities I've ever been a part of.

I joined Scrib years ago when it was starting out. There was a great community of writers there, nearly all of them gone now. I came back last year, because a friend encouraged me to return to writing. It is almost exactly as it was then, a great writing community. Here's the problem, my friends. The owner. Alex Cabal. He runs the place through terror tactics. Say anything on the forum or in a group or in a private group that he doesn't like and you will get your message deleted, you will get a strike, and you will be stalked, and you will be banned. It doesn't matter if you paid for the premium membership, you will be permanently banned and your writing deleted and your access to your writing community will be gone. The people who remain are silenced through fear of being banned. So prepare yourself: if you want to join a site where anything you say can be held against you, where the owner can ban you even if you paid in full, if you can't appeal any decision, if you can't speak out on behalf of any friends who were unjustly banned, if you want to get your heart broken by losing all your work in the blink of an eye, if you can't respectfully protest anything, then you have been warned. Oh, and Alex favorite words for people who dare to speak out: Jerks. $#*!s. He proudly comes onto the forums (another intimidation tactic) and brags about the jerks and $#*!s he's banned from the site. He lies and makes up reasons when he bans people. He is a bully who has created a reign of terror on the site. The forums are dull and dead because everyone fears him. Look for another community of writers, this one will break your writing spirit, and your heart.

Joining Scribophile (Scrib) was one of the best decisions I ever made as a writer.
Other reviews here note the membership cost--$65 a year is very reasonable, especially since you can store as many works as you want with that price.
The karma system makes perfect sense, as with most writing groups one would need to read and critique 3-5 other people's works as part of the exchange to get their own critiqued. I personally found that karma didn't really matter, as I am a novel writer, so I would seek out other novels and critique them. Usually by the time I had read and critiqued 2-3 novels, I had plenty of karma to post my own work.
The beta spotlight makes things even easier, since if you create or join a group you can exchange without using karma towards the posting fee. You DO have to pay for premium for this advantage, but again, it's rather affordable, and there are a lot of philanthropic members who gift premium to people who are hard up.
The community as a whole is pretty great--the main forums can get a little intense, but on a site with writers I think that's to be expected. Groups are a great way to socialize with like minded people and avoid the general area if that's more your speed.
Also, there are policies in place to handle people who give poor critiques and don't follow the "pay it forward" mindset of the site. Some other reviews here criticize it, but in my experience, the moderators and owner do their best to be fair. It may seem a little harsh, but usually if you try to follow the rules you shouldn't have any problems.
The site is a lot to take in at first, and I think it could be improved with some site ambassadors who reach out to newcomers and help them learn the ropes of the site, maybe assist with or review their first couple of critiques.
Other than that, it's fantastic, and I highly recommend it.