Publishing

Every book has its own Publish page. You reach it from the sidebar or from the book's settings. The page shows what's new since the last publish, what's changed, and anything still blocking the publish.

• Validation runs across the book. Every chapter, Glossary Item, Dynamic Component, and Trigger is checked. If anything is broken (a reference points at something deleted, a template is missing a required field), the publish button turns off and the failing rows are listed. Click any row to jump to the fix.
• A Snapshot is taken. The whole book is frozen as it is right now: chapters, Glossary Items, Dynamic Components.
• The expansion goes live. You set a name, description, and price; the Snapshot is pinned to the expansion. From then on, anyone who buys it reads from that Snapshot, not your live book. You can keep editing the live book; their copy doesn't change.

Expansions stack. A reader who buys expansion 2 must already own expansion 1; expansion 3 needs 1 and 2, and so on. The order is the order you shipped them in. Readers can't skip ahead, and you can't ship an expansion that overrides an earlier one. Each expansion only adds to what's already out.

• Expansion 1 is the launch: the first chapters, Glossary Items, and Dynamic Components. This is the version new readers start with.
• Expansion 2 and beyond add new chapters, new Glossary Items, and new Dynamic Components. They can also append to Glossary Items that already shipped: new blocks at the bottom of the wiki, new facts on the fact card.

A book is an open-ended stack of expansions, so readers can't tell a finished story from one that's still going. When you've shipped the final expansion, the Publish page lets you mark the story complete. Readers then see a Complete badge wherever the book is listed: the catalog, Discover, your author profile, and the store page.

• It's reversible. Reopen the story from the same place if you change your mind.
• Publishing more reopens it. A new expansion clears the Complete badge automatically. Mark the story complete again once the new expansion is the last one.

Once a piece of the book ships in a published expansion, the editor freezes it. Readers who bought that expansion read from your Snapshot of it. Changing the underlying content would break what they paid for.

• Chapters lock entirely. You can't rename them, retag them, change the toggles, edit a paragraph, or delete them.
• Glossary Items become append-only. Existing wiki blocks and existing facts freeze, along with the title, the category and the combat settings. New blocks at the bottom of the wiki and new facts on the card stay editable until the next expansion locks them in turn.
• Dynamic Components lock fully. Their cards in the list show a lock icon and no longer open the editor. Click a card's Duplicate action to get a fresh copy with (Copy) appended to the name, and work on that. The original keeps serving its readers exactly as they bought it.

• Price per expansion. You set it on the Publish page. Verhaler is the seller of record, so the price you set is the total the reader pays. Any VAT or sales tax is included in that price, not added on top, and we handle it.
• A paid price needs payouts set up. To charge anything above zero you need a connected Stripe payout account that has finished onboarding. Until then the price field is locked to Free.

The Publish page lists every reason the publish button is off, with a link to the offending row so you can jump to the fix. The usual ones:

• Broken references. An invalid Dynamic Component, an invalid Trigger, or a Trigger result pointing at a chapter or Glossary Item that has since been deleted.
• Not enough writing yet. Every expansion, paid or free, needs at least 30 paragraphs and 15,000 characters of new writing. Publishing costs nothing, so this floor keeps the catalog honest.
• Missing payout setup for paid expansions: a connected Stripe payout account and an eligible writer country.
• Per-publish caps hit. This expansion adds more than 40 new chapters or 50 new Glossary Items, or appends to more than 30 already-published Glossary Items. The page suggests splitting the publish into smaller expansions.