AnyStories
reviews and complaints

I write on the Anystories/Novelsnack platform- have been writing on the platform for ... well over a year, closer to two.

Suddenly, per them, I wrote my first story with them July of this year, (2023) - not even close.

Majority of my reader's comments have disappeared. My view count has also been drastically reduced. I have five stories with them, three signed. The Reader Saves for three of the stories suspiciously went down to 0; chapters read on one went down to 0 as well, when there were actual numbers before. All this time, I've accrued under $26.00 with them, I haven't cashed it in because they keep having "issues" with the companies they use to distribute funds to the authors. My first editor, Wendy was great. She pushed my story and was so encouraging. I was told she left due to health issues. Since she's been gone, my story has been collecting dust "exposure-wise" but my readers keep reading the new chapters... but my accrued funds don't really change.

I'm on my third editor now, Franco. (Julie was the second, she was awful). I don't know about Franco yet. I brought issues to him... hit and miss. On the 16th of this month (November) an issue I brought to him will celebrate its month anniversary sans resolution.

If you write, use it for exposure, maybe to get your feet wet, but definitely DO NOT sign exclusive contracts with them. Plus, you have to jump hoops to correct grammatical errors. The platform is in Singapore, I believe, I don't know the laws there and obvs, not easy to regulate or keep tabs on.

Amazon's Kindle Vella works the same way, you can write one chapter at a time if you wish. (Sign up via Kindle Direct Publishing). If your story is liked, you can potentially make fair funds. (In four months, I made over $1,200.00 with them. You can make more if you're phenomenal.) You can fix your own grammatical errors on the spot- just have to wait a few hours for the change to post. Hands down, easier to work with and no suspicious practices.

The app has a good potential, I like the stories, some are better written than others. Having to buy each chapter is not that bad. But when my saved coins from daily reading got lost for the third time I decided to write e review and delete the app. Oh and the customer service is still not replying / non existing after a week. Thank god I did not put in real money.

Joined AnyStories about four years ago. It was amazing back then. The chapters were reasonable 17-25 coins and the authors were amazing. However, here within the last year they have NOT been able to bring in new talent and the prices have gone through the roof 50-70 coins per chapter. The daily bonuses were something you could use to help offset some of the price and now they have taken that that to a number so low 3-10 coins that it does not help. The developers have started to push the readers to WhatsApp with the claims they were giving out better bonuses only for them to ask all their group members to give out positive reviews on book that they have only read a single chapter on. All those sudden reviews with weird codes at the beginning are nothing more than desperate readers trying to gain enough coins to read a single chapter. Feels very scam-ish at this point. I’ll complete my yearly subscription and I’m done!

The books are well written but the amount coins needed is my issue. The chapters are short and are soooo very expensive like 56-70 plus coins. So if you buy 9.99 dollars and get 1000 coins it will barely get you through 20-30 chapters because you each chapters is almost 70 coins each. Then you barely earn bonus coins to offset the price. Then the books are never ending so do the math. The never ending books would be great if they were sooooo expensive. But here’s the kicker! If you want extra bonus coins you have to join this WhatsApp only to have to painfully go through each group to find the weird cods only to not be able to still not afford a chapter. Oh and the help feature is not very helpful it’s probably the most complicated I’ve ever seen on pay by chapter apps. I hate that the books are good and I wish the authors would take their business to other apps. I unfortunately will have to leave get rid of this app.

I want to start this review by saying I haven’t spent a single dime of my own money on this app, thank goodness. I used daily bonus coins, completed daily challenges, got frequent “gifts” from three different Facebook groups, and watched ads. And EVEN STILL, I only made it like 24/99 chapters into a book I was interested in before I gave up. I’ve had this app for approximately one week, and I’ve just had enough. The three stories I’ve tried are riddled with grammatical errors, and the individual chapters cost entirely too many coins. I spent 85 coins on a chapter that was probably as long as a single page on Microsoft word, single spaced. I frequently will finish a chapter and say, “I paid ___ coins for that?” So I’m done. I am so glad I didn’t waste money on this app. There are only really three tropes available on the app, and I’m just not interested in billionaires, werewolves, or trauma-love stories enough to keep going. So, I’m deleting this awful app and I’m never looking back.

I really want to love this app. However, it’s fairly often that I log in and get my log in credits, go to click on a story to read a new chapter and all of a sudden my credits are gone. So it’s not really something that I can screenshot to get help with. But the time I did grab some screenshots, I wrote their help center and it wouldn’t let me send the photos through the app. So I just sent the written problem and then they said I had to send the screenshots. I tried to at least reply to the email in order to send the screenshots and they never got back to me. I have at least 60 credits worth by now that have just disappeared.

Also, the stories are great but often full of misspelled words or grammatical errors. So I don’t know if there are supposed to be editors helping these new authors but if so, they certainly are doing a poor job.

I will still keep this app till I’m done reading the stories I currently have going but, unless the glitches stop happening, I will be deleting when I’m done.

I love the variety of stories available on the app and I’ve started reading several different ones, but this whole premise using coins to unlock chapters really bothers me. Sure, you can complete small tasks or come back every day to earn bonus coins, but if you are a binge reader, you will go insane with how slowly you have to read a book if you go solely based on bonus coins. If you decide to buy coins to unlock chapters, you run into the problem of paying WAY too much for a book that isn’t edited very well or sometimes, just poorly written. And you never know how much a book will end up costing you. In one book I’m reading on the app, I unlocked one chapter for 27 coins. The very next chapter was 66 coins! I still think the stories available are entertaining, but I wish there was a way to buy a book outright or at least know how much you’re going to spend on a book… but I guess if the app was that transparent, no one would use it. Bottom line: The app has some good stories, but be aware and proceed with caution.

This app is insanely overpriced. I found the app by reading books by Jenny Fox and Marii Solaria (who thankfully, has started to sell hard copies of her stories for $20). Some of the stories are great but cost way more than they should. I have friends who self-publish or work with smaller publishers and their books of comparable length/word counts never exceed $20/book.

I regularly pay for stories in similar apps but AnyStories’ prices are way too high. For example, if I were to take advantage of all the bonuses and discounts, I’d pay $69.99 (gives 40% bonus) for 9800 coins (7000+ 2800 bonus). Then, if I were to purchase all 133 chapters of “The War God’s Favorite” at once, it gives me 15% off so the total coin cost is 3615 coins instead of the normal 4253.

That means it’d cost me $25.82 for the entire book even w/ all the promotions. If I don’t utilize any discounts by buying in bulk, it’d cost me at least $42.39 for the 4253 coins needed, technically $44.85 bc the smallest number of coins you can buy is $2.99 for every 300 coins. That is an insane price for ONE book.

You can read a few chapters from any book for free before you are required to spend “coins” to unlock chapters. While you can earn a few coins, the max per day is never enough to finish a book and sometimes not even a chapter.

There is no option to spend coins to unlock an ENTIRE book at once. Plus, the cost to unlock a single chapter is completely random, one book had a chapter for 148 coins and another had it for 12. For reference, you can purchase 1000 coins for $9.99. Keeping that in mind, $10 will not unlock a full book. I can literally walk into a bookstore and buy a COMPLETE book for less.

On top of being overpriced, in order to earn more coins I joined their Facebook group. I was given a task to “earn” 140 coins (not enough for a chapter in a book I wanted to read). I was told to write a review on GoodReads using a prewritten message about reading for free on this app. Not cool. I do not feel comfortable spamming another app to earn a few coins to unlock parts of a book. Not cool at all.

Maybe the books are worth it? I will never know since downloading the app 2 weeks ago, I have started 5 separate books and haven’t gotten past 10 chapters on any of them.

This app requires you to pay astronomical prices for books, many of which are incomplete.

I started reading a book with introductory free coins. I was interested in it so I decided to purchase a large amount of coins for $50. I thought with that much money, I would be able to read for months.

I quickly found out I was wrong.

That $50 allowed me to read a single book.

Actually, that book isn’t complete so I paid $50 to read part of a book.

Unbelievable.

When I realized how quickly the coins were being used, I purchase the unlimited subscription. I thought since it’s unlimited that it give allow me access to all the books.

I started reading a new book that I was interested in finishing. But I got a short percentage in and was prompted to purchase more coins.

That’s when I realized that the term unlimited is intentionally deceptive.

What’s unlimited about only being able to read only some but not all of the library of books?

To summarize, I spent $110 to read one incomplete story, and to read a few chapters of another story only to find out unlimited is not unlimited.

I have no idea how they get anyone to pay these prices. I don’t know how anyone can afford it. They’re ridiculous.

So I only recently downloaded this and while I’ve found a couple of stories I like most of them are great concepts but so poorly written I can’t get through more than a couple of chapters. This is no fault of the writers I know it’s common for writers to not have the best grammar, I just feel the people running the app should proofread stories before publishing even if it delays updates.

Also I’ve checked in every day for the last five days but it only gave bonus for the first three every time I go to check in for the 15 bonus the date it says suddenly moves to the following day which is RIDICULOUS. I’m in school I can’t afford to spend money on these apps and there’s no wait for a free chapter feature, so bonus really help me get some reading.

Its also a little hard to navigate in general it’s easy but I seem to only be able to put one tag and Id really like to be able to sort better through them. I wouldn’t mind an option to sort through complete and ongoing. Not to mention so far the majority of the free stories I’ve found are no more than ten chapters, I’ve found one free story that’s complete. I’m sure there’s more but my ability to sort and navigate the app makes it difficult the free story I did find that’s complete was found by accident.

Ok, first off. I’m an author in here and relatively new but not too new too. I have two FREE books and yet, I am unable to find any of my books when I search them up but they are both in my library as well as a few readers, HOWEVER, new readers cannot find them unless I or another fellow reader copies the link from the book itself to post onto the AnyStories fb group app in the comments.

I have just finally updated the first chapter today to my new book and the book isn’t there when I search it up nor is my book under my name when I view my profile.

It’s so frustrating AND annoying that our books, that are not signed are being hidden when FREE books bring in readers!

I love the app, the books and I have a few favorite authors who are amazing and deserves more credit than we(both readers, fellow authors, and AnyStories company itself) give them.

I am really upset because even though I am NOT a signed author, I chose to put my work onto AnyStories a few years ago and now that it’s changed so much, I’m finding it more harder to stay with them.

In fact, I wasn’t even notified from the team/editors that free books or my books will be removed or hidden(but still on the app and those who have saved my books can still access them) I was given no explanation of anything even though I am an author, even if I am not a popular or signed author, I am learning as I go and with time I will get better and my books will also get better too.

I have yet to sign any of my two completed books with them because 1.) I need to heavily edit them and rearrange new story lines and 2.) I am iffy on signing with them due to so many things most of us readers/authors are aware of.

I would gladly appreciate it if AnyStories can actually STOP hiding free books and authors when we search them up!

I have repeatedly told my editor Chloe, with the app AnyStories, that my novel needs to be removed from all sites. Anystories breeched my contract by publishing my novel under another company without permission. After waiting over a month I said I would go public with my statement and proof of my disappointing experience if it wasn't removed by 5/10/22. Continuing to hold my book hostage is a form of plagiarism. AnyStories has been permantently banned from GooglePlay and that is the reason they created a new company. They did it behind the backs of their authors. It was authors who found their new app. After being caught they sent out emails about the need for authors to sign new contracts with the new company name saying that everything was the same but the name. Caught in another lie they were also caught changing the authors percentage. Lowering it. They sent me a non-disclosure contract disguised as a termination aggreement. It basically stated that if they decided I said anything they didn't agree with I would owe them 1 million us dollars. I refused to sign. I didnt expect any compensation and only asked for my book to be removed. AnyStories was caught recently promoting a novel that plagerized at least 20 different authors and only removed it once people complained in a public forum. Was the authors who had their work stolen compensated? So far no one has heard, but with how AnyStories seems to think its ok to pocket funds from hardworking authors I doubt it. They tried to give out mass amounts of bonus coins, enough to read entire books, to placate readers. After, again, authors had to begin complaining publicly did they finally hold up to their promise to start compensating authors for those mass amounts of coins.

I will keep posting publicly until my book is removed and to my readers I apologize for all of this. I apologize for ever trusting this company. I am completing Flames of Revenge offline and will be publishing it myself after completion.

AnyStories Anystories-romance #Anystories

The AnyStories Book app has tons of different stories and novels to choose from and is easy to use. In my opinion it’s a good choice to start out with if this is the type of reading you like to do. So far I’ve seen everything from mafia boss romance novels to werewolf novels and more in between. This means there is surely a topic/genre for everyone. I myself haven’t looked through every genre on the app yet, but the ones I have looked at have been enough to catch my interest. I really like that the stories are easy to read, and that you can read through them by flipping the pages like a physical book. To me this seems like it makes it easier to focus on the story since your attention can’t wander further down the page and miss out on details that we’re quickly skimmed over. Most stories and novels on the app have the first 3-4 chapters available to read for free. After that you need to use coins, which is the currency used in the app, to unlock the following chapters or in some cases novels. In some cases it can cost as much as 30coins to unlock a chapter, so it is kind of pricey if your coins are a limited supply because of cash flow. The coins are fairly easy to come by if you don’t mind paying for them, otherwise you can receive daily login rewards, watch ads, and join the AnyStories announcement group on WhatsApp for codes to receive free coins. The only issue I’ve seen so far, in my opinion, that could be fixed or made easier to navigate would be acquiring the coins to unlock chapters and some novels. Either increasing the amount of coins received daily for logging in and watching ads, or slightly decrease the prices of unlocking chapters. This would make it more likely for more people to want to use the app. Because from my personal experience I’d you don’t have the money to buy more coins, you have to wait a day or two to earn enough free coins to unlock a single chapter if you want to continue a story. Otherwise you’re stuck reading several free chapters but never get to finish a story unless it’s one that’s fully free for every chapter.

I like this app you can read books from authors who are reading your books and you read theirs I do not know if these are written by published authors or armatures but from what I have seen the stories I have read or rather the rue I’m reading seems to be written by a professional author the story drew me into the story right away from the introductions the welcome packages ensure you to be able to unlock chapters far enough into the book for you to know if you want to buy enough tokens which are given a part if not all tokens are given to the author you spend to unlock a chapter and unlocking is cheap to buy more tokens are pretty cheap too so you can read as many books as you want and as slow as you want.also they have a great font size selectee you can choose from once you start reading your first story with added reading challenges that allow you to gain more tokens for unlocking

Downsides
You cannot put a book in printed form in a library in your home as you can when bought from a book store also you have no options in the app or to choose to read only books that are completed and not all books state if it is final or not because writing is a form of art and an artist is never satisfied with their creation an artist is their worst critic another downside is no set times and dates for a book that is unfinished to be updated the book update is up to the author and all authors get the deeded writers block from time to time all in all though it is a great app which brings me to the last part of this review

Suggestions

Only a few suggestions really first a computer that reads the book so that the visually impaired can enjoy the stories as well a update button to update s book without opening it or a way to move within the app from updating to switching books I add several in my library a head of time so I can start reading the next book once I’m finished with s book so I like keeping them all updated a way to go from reading to the rewards area would be nice but right now to get there you have to close the app

Conclusion

ok this is all I can think of now the app is goo but needs improvements the stories are great authors keep up the great work

Kattria

Yesterday, 20/09/2023, I bought all the chapters available for Werewolf's Heartsong @ $19.99. I think it was 264 or 265 Chapters but I definitely bought it all, I have the Paypal records to proof this.

I am currently on Chapter 42 and it refuse to unlock Chapter 43?

My Profile is:-

Petro Janse van Rensburg

650aebcc8495410019fd975e

Please sort this out asap

They don’t give you much in the way of earning bonuses to keep reading and half the time when you do get bonuses they disappear right after getting them. It’s happened to me multiple times and at this point I’m going to delete the app because it’s not worth the effort. They have some good stories but people who can’t pay can’t
Read more than a chapter MAYBE two chapters a day. It’s very frustrating. So goodbye AnyStories. Hopefully these things get fixed sometime in the future and I’ll download the app again but not until then.

The stories are not the issue, I love the stories. it’s the price of reading the story. It’s expensive to finish a book because you need coins for every chapter, and it’s frustrating that they don’t have ways to “earn” coins without paying for them, (like daily check in bonus, watch ads, complete an action bonus, etc like the competitor apps similar to this offer.) I usually spend a few dollars a week to finish a story In some of the other apps, but I’m not willing to spend $15- $20 a book. I’m pretty disappointed by this and won’t be using the app.

I love the books don't get me wrong but the cost is outrageous! Plan on spending a minimum of $50 to read a book that says has 90 something chapters which truly at the end of the day are paragraphs at best! Seriously you swipe your screen 2-3 times! It is ridiculous. Also this app charges significantly higher than it's other also high priced competitors whose chapters average about 15 coins/credits a piece. Read one book would love to finish the series buuuut the cost just isn't worth it. How many real books can you buy with that $ that are longer reads even!

If you want to spend $25-50 worth of app credits for an unedited story while being frequently interrupted by pop ups attempting to convince you to spend more money for credits then this is the app for you! It’s a shame because a few of the books had interesting plots but after signing up for a 3 day free trial (that would have cost $120 if I forgot to cancel!) only gave enough credits for a few chapters I spent $20 of actual money only to find that wasn’t enough to cover a single typo filled book I gave up. This is at best a ripoff, and I’m tempted to call it a scam.

If your looking to finish any of the books without spending an large amount of money hang it up. The chapters cost so much just to read them you start to lose interest in the app and honestly I can understand trying to make sure the writers get paid but I’m not about yo pay 63 tickets for 4 pages! That’s ridiculous and it’s very deceitful. I love reading I always have and I don’t mind supporting the little people but this is just ridiculous. You need to come up with better ways for readers to continue to enjoy you app. I’m honestly looking for these same books elsewhere.

Long story short: "free" on this app means at a certain point in ur reading you'll be asked to purchase coins to continue reading your story... "unlimited" means you'll read up to a couple of chapters before you will be stopped and asked to pay for a monthly subscription...

Dear Developers,
I, personally, don't know what the word "free" means to you in whatever dimension you came from, but I know what it means to me here on earth. And what I can tell you is that we have 2 very obvious differences in what the definition of it is. I'm going back to Inkitt where free means Free.

Not enough opportunities for coins. Reading for coins doesn’t track accurately. I’ve read for 30 minutes and it counted 12. They’ve decreased the value of coins you arm for checking in, as well as the reading coins. Increased cost of the he chapters. 72 - 92 coins for 20 pages is INSANE! Oh and 5 star reviews are fake. The social media pages give you coins for the review. DO NOT WASTE YOUR TIME! Try Kiss, GoodNovel, or MyNovel. They aren’t super great but better than this. Or just get a kindle unlimited membership and read all you want for $15 a month! And those will be real authors.

I have had a subscription with this app for almost if not two years. Haven’t had one problem with the app until recently. I contacted the company about my subscription not working and they said to contact apple. That it had nothing to do with them and I had to buy coins to read any book I was half way through. Then I go back on the app a couple of days later and you can’t even get to the unlimited section. What is the point of having the the subscription of you can’t use it? It is not an apple problem it is the app developer’s problem. As my subscription is still showing up with apple.

I paid $15 for enough coins (1500 coins) to read ONE book. ONE! Each chapter was a different price (17-29 coins). Ridiculous! I could have bought 2-3 books on Amazon, Kobo, or Google play for the price I paid. Also, the number of grammatical and errors was distracting. Perhaps some of the authors should finish the books first, have beta readers proof them, THEN post a complete novel that doesn’t rip me off.

Too bad because I really liked the story, it had a great plot line in spite of all the errors, but I will NOT pay that much for a book again (especially when the story isn’t even finished).

I was suckered into spending way too much on the app. It is way too expensive for what it is. It’s great that there are places for non-traditional publishing; however, the price is disproportionate to quality and compared to traditionally published books. To read the book I found that it cost over $40. I’m all for supporting up and coming authors. But, be upfront. Don’t have free chapters and then say it will cost X amount to finish the book. It’s misleading. I downloaded the app because of a recommendation for a book on it. But no one explained the price system and I was naive and did not read reviews.

The app itself is glitchy when I try to complete a task. The app freezes and I have to restart my iPad. That could be overlooked because the story I was reading was pretty good. The book I was reading had the first 8 chapters free then I bought coins to unlock more chapters. Which got me to chapter 18 then it says you can unlock the rest of the book which is 82 more chapters for 3,799 coins which you can buy for 29.99! That is crazy. Crazy! The chapters are like 4-5 pages long. You cannot earn enough extra coins to cover that amount quickly. So if you want to read it you have to buy the coins. I am not spending 29.99 to read 1 book. Not happening.

I have been dealing with an issue with the app. My unlimited stopped working even though I have an active subscription and recently renewed. I emailed support but since I didn’t get a response. I decided I would try to reinstall the app. I took screenshots first as a precaution. After I reinstalled the app I relogged back in and my account behaves like a new account. All the history and coins are gone. So I lost $25 of permanent coins and $10 of the unlimited. I have been emailing support but it takes them two days to answer and they don’t actually help nor answer my questions. This is a major headache and not worth it. If this happens to you, Don’t log out or reinstall your app. Just use what coins are left and then stop the service.

You are constantly prompted to spend more money to unlock the next chapters. After spending $25 on a story I was enjoying, I was going to have to spend another $30 to progress. What a racket. The story was good but it didn’t appear to be reviewed by an editor. There are lots of mistakes. That’s not a big deal, I can still enjoy a story with errors, but for the money that expected to be shelled out to finish a story, the writing needs to be perfect. I deleted the app because I don’t like to feel like I am being scammed. If you have money to burn and don’t mind paying $80+ on one story then this is the app for you.

Before a developer gets on and tells me I can earn bonus coins, I have been wasting quite a bit of time to earn these bonus coins. It’s not worth it.

I’m in the middle of my 2nd book and I’m really enjoying the author’s work. However, my complaint is the high cost to unlock chapters. On other apps, the cost is pretty set with very little cost difference per chapter. But with this app, I’ve experienced an almost 20 cent difference. As you progress with the story, the price increases. It’s expensive to read these books, because you can’t just buy the completed novels. And since the price keeps changing, you can’t accurately determine the amount of coins needed to read the current stories. I get that they’d like you to read many authors, but if it’s going to cost $20 to read a book that would be $8 for something similar in paperback, then I’ll probably just stop reading new books once I complete the 3rd novel of the series I’m on.

On August 6, 2022, I emailed customer support because I was getting my daily check in coins, and when I went to my book to buy my next chapter, my coins had disappeared. (All in a matter of a couple minutes!). I let them know that I had lost at the very least approx. 65 bonus coins. They emailed me back that they had found the problem (bonus suddenly disappears) and that they were working on it. They gave me an exchange code with their compensation for me - 40 coins. Well, the problem isn’t fixed because I just lost my daily coins of 15 for today. And I’m pretty sure that I lost yesterday’s coins too.
This is such a scam. You get hardly any coins daily and the coins you need to unlock chapters is high. I’m sorry but I’m not spending $25-$50 a book. I can get books a lot less expensive thru my other ebook apps.
Please fix the problem!