Meet Reedsy
The Writing App You'll Wish You Discovered Sooner
Hi there!
It’s Jack, introducing you all today to an amazing platform known as Reedsy. If you don’t know what Reedsy is, this post is for you! If you already know about Reedsy but want to learn more about its awesome features and new apps, you’ll find this post helpful as well. In this post, we’ll be exploring what Reedsy is, digging deeper into each of its six main writing apps, and discussing why Reedsy is a must-have for writers of all ages.
Table of Contents
What is Reedsy?
Basically, Reedsy is a writing platform with tons of cool apps and features tailored for independent writers of all ages. Created in 2014, the website (Reedsy.com) features a Marketplace for those looking for professionals in editing, ghostwriting, marketing, and more. From there, users can easily access all of their six main apps and features. It’s honestly pretty self-explanatory once you get there but hopefully, this post will clear up any possible confusion.
The highlight of Reedsy is clearly its Marketplace and book editor, the other apps simply serving as enhancing tools, as stated at the top of Reedsy’s About page:
Crafting beautiful books is at the heart of everything that Reedsy does. We're changing the way books are published by giving authors and publishers access to talented professionals, powerful tools, and free educational content. Reedsy was founded in the summer of 2014 by Emmanuel Nataf, Ricardo Fayet, Vincent Durand and Matt Cobb. Since then, we've proudly built a community of over 1 million authors and 3,700 freelance professionals — helping them bring more than 15,000 books to market each year.
Many online articles I’ve found explaining how Reedsy works are solely focused on its book editor and primary app, so I’ve devoted this post to exploring each of their six apps and recommending this amazing platform to you all. So, let’s take a look at their apps.
1. Reedsy Marketplace & Book Editor
As I said before, this is the highlight of Reedsy and what all the other apps revolve around. The humongous Marketplace users are directed to when visiting Reedsy.com is filled with profiles of specialists in things such as editing, design, publicity, etc. (see below).
Here’s ProWritingAid’s overview of the Reedsy marketplace and book editor (as found here):
Reedsy is a one-stop-shop for taking your manuscript from start to finish. You can write, format, and export your book using the Reedsy Book Editor, which is a definite step up if you're used to working in MS Word.
But most authors won't write, edit, publish, and market their book alone, even if they are self-publishing. Working out whom to hire to work with you on your project is daunting. You're trusting them with your ideas and hours of your time and effort, and the publishing industry can feel—ironically—a bit like a closed book. … As well as using their Book Editor tool, you can also connect with professional editors, marketers, designers, and proofreaders in their online marketplace to help make your work the best it can be. Many of these professionals have experience working with US and UK book publishers, so you know your writing is in safe hands.
From the landing page (shown above), users can take the navigation bar to visit their projects (collaborations with professionals) and books (individual projects made using the Reedsy book editor) as well as Reedsy Learning, which we’ll explore later, the help section, and their user profile. Upon simple exploration, users can navigate the Reedsy platform effortlessly as the site is extremely user-friendly.
The picture above shows what the book editor looks like. It’s set up a bit like Google Docs only chapter numbers and titles are automatically integrated and controls are found on the right. On the left side, as you can see, are controls for your manuscript's front, body, and back matter along with other controls, including the copyright material and such. I absolutely adore this book editor overall and highly recommend it to all writers…
But is it better than Google Docs or Word?
If you like to choose your fonts, line spacing, and such, this book editor probably isn’t for you due to its limited customization tools. Whenever I use this book editor, I just ignore the fonts and whatever because you can customize everything afterward toward the downloading process, just not while you’re writing. For some people, that’s not a big deal. But I, along with many other people, am very OCD and picky with this kind of stuff so I prefer using Google Docs when typing up my stories. Another thing, Reedsy doesn’t have collaborative features yet, which I’m not too fond of because that means no alpha readers or peer editors. Don’t get me wrong though, the Reedsy book editor is an amazing app that I completely adore and appreciate.
Also, before we move on, I would like to include that all of the other Reedsy apps are accessible from the Marketplace homepage by clicking on the dropdown beside the Reedsy logo labeled Apps as shown in the photo below.
2. Reedsy Blog
I’ve been subscribed to Reedsy Blog (blog.reedsy.com) for some time now and I can tell you this site is one of the best writing blogs I’ve ever read. As you can see in the photo, Reedsy Blog features posts about book design, book marketing, author advice, writing tips, app updates, and understanding publishing as well as many posts simply about common writing struggles and controversial writing topics. (By the way, the top post in the photo is from April Fool’s. The other posts are much more serious 😆.)
Something I especially love about Reedsy Blog that is different from other blogs I’ve read is that all the ads shown on the Reedsy website (including all the other apps) are Reedsy’s ads (see below). So many of these ads are something users will actually be interested in and they’re also really clean and nice to look at unlike the random, in-your-face ads shown on other blogs.
One amazing feature of the Reedsy Blog that I find super helpful is their long list of tools, found as a dropdown in the navigation bar (see below). These tools can help authors with their creativity, book publicity, overall writing skills, and more!
One of these tools that I would like to highlight for a second is the Reedsy Plot Generator. This little tool can help writers get a general idea of a basic plot by letting them select certain genres, characters, and situations with little plot twists and secrets as well. Personally, I’ve only used this tool occasionally, but I would recommend it to all of you just to try it out and see how you like it. I’ve written several short stories and such based on the plot prompts from this generator.
3. Reedsy Prompts
I’ve written about this Reedsy app before in this post so I won’t include too much about it. But essentially, Reedsy prompts is a “database”, if you will, filled with creative writing prompts of every genre you can think of. Most of these prompts are simply for use but the few that are part of the weekly short story contest are open for you to write a short story based on that prompt and either submit it into the contest for $5 or publish it to your profile for free. I haven’t posted any short stories on there yet because I write a ton and the word count range is one to three thousand words. But I still go on there pretty often to check out the new prompts and read a few short stories (some stories do include trigger warnings, which is helpful). Also, the winner of the contest wins $250 and has their short story sent out to all Reedsy Prompts subscribers! I’m hoping to submit a short story soon and I would suggest that you all check it out too to see if any of the prompts interest you.
4. Reedsy Learning
Reedsy Learning is a collection of online courses to help users improve their skills in design, distribution, editing, marketing, publishing, and, the most popular category, writing! I’ve taken a few of these courses, my favorite one being a course to help improve fantasy writing (it’s still on the Reedsy Learning homepage if you want to check it out!) Most of the courses are free. However, the most popular writing course at the moment, a novel-writing video course, costs a small sum of money to take just like a few other paid courses. I would advise you not to pay for the courses unless you are certain you will enjoy it or find it helpful.
From the navigation bar, as you can see, users can access Reedsy Marketplace, the full Reedsy Blog, the other Reedsy apps, the fun tools, and the About page. Although Reedsy Learning is grouped under Reedsy Blog for the homepage shown, it is its own separate app with a separate homepage found at reedsy.com/learning. They’re pretty much the same only the other homepage shows one of the courses and doesn’t explain much about how Reedsy Learning works so I chose to show the blog homepage instead.
(I’m currently taking a course titled How to Write YA That Sells and I’ve already taken the fantasy writing one I mentioned before, which you can find here.)
5. Reedsy Live
Similar to Reedsy Learning, the Reedsy Live app is grouped under Reedsy Blog, but it’s totally its own app. Also much like Reedsy Learning, this app is for helping writers improve their skills only with a slightly smaller range of categories. On the Reedsy Live homepage, it says:
Every week we invite top professionals to share their knowledge with you live. Learn how to publish smarter, straight from the people that can help.
So it is a lot like Reedsy Learning; the major difference between the two apps is that Reedsy Live is not a continuous course but a one-time live chat/webinar about a certain topic. I haven’t actually attended any of these yet because I just recently discovered it but I am already registered for one and plan on watching some of the chat replays at some point.
6. Reedsy Discovery
Another recent discovery (pun intended), this app is pretty much like Reedsy’s version of GoodReads. You can save books you read, label some as want-to-read, and share your currently-reading updates with your friends. I personally think the GoodReads platform is garbage and Reedsy Discovery is a much cleaner version.
I don’t use Discovery at the moment for two main reasons: 1) literally no one is using this app (like under 1,000 people) and I like to share my reading progress and recommendations with my friends on GoodReads, but if everyone suddenly started using Discovery (which they could if everyone publicizes Reedsy enough) then I would totally use it, and 2) you can’t just rate books as a user, but you have to submit your rating for moderation and like become a Reedsy reviewer or something like that. You can still post what you thought about the books but I just really appreciated the GoodReads rating and review feature. Something that is convenient about Reedsy Discovery is that you can access it with your current Reedsy account. This means you don’t have to create a new account or anything. I’m the type of person who has no problem with creating accounts though so I don’t really find this helpful, but I know some people might.
Is Reedsy Worth It?
So, we’ve explored all six of Reedsy’s main apps as well as a few of their cool features and tools. Now to answer the question: Is using Reedsy worth it? Overall, YES! Reedsy is one of the greatest yet unknown platform for authors out there. You can create a Reedsy account with no idea how to write and publish a book, explore their apps and features, then discover not only how to do those things but when, where, how, and why. Some of the apps are more helpful than others, but overall they’re all super handy for writers of all ages and totally worth it!
And that’s Reedsy for you! In a very small nutshell. If you want to learn more about Reedsy, just head over there for yourself! Explore the endless features and posts I didn’t mention and improve your writing skills and knowledge! I hope you all found this helpful and will consider integrating Reedsy into your everyday life, whether by using their prompts to write or subscribing to their blog.
I hope you enjoyed this post! If you did, please consider giving it a like so it’ll be able to reach more people. And if you have any questions or messages, feel free to leave a comment on this post or DM me, one of our other authors, or The YA Section. I’ll see you guys in my next post!
Have a blessed day! :)
I've used this site a few times. Maybe I should check it out again!
hey i use this site.....