Are you tired of getting your short stories rejected by literary magazines with weird names like Ploughshares, The Paris Review, and, lol, The New Yorker? Do you, a writer of a searing, minimalist narratives of longing and loss amid the ruins of late capitalism, need to eat? 

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Sure you do! Well, now you can turn your 5,000-word story about a self-loathing gentrifier whose life falls apart in the wake of an ill-considered affair into SHEER PROFIT. Dorian (not kidding) is a “no-code interactive storytelling app” that allows writers to turn their little stories into choose-your-own-adventure games. Per Tech Crunch:

Dorian is building a new way for writers to make money off of their fiction by turning their tales into choose-your-own-adventure mobile games. As users navigate the free-to-play app, they can spend in-app currency to unlock alternative story routes, directly putting a cut of the payment in the author’s pocket.

The app is definitely pitched toward writers of fan-fiction and genre, but there are no rules against, say, an MFA grad trying it out. As co-founder and CEO Julia Palatovska points out (telling an all-too familiar truth): “The majority of creators on the platform have been writing fiction and fan fiction for years, and they have never monetized anything.”

Sigh. 

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Jonny Diamond

Jonny Diamond

Jonny Diamond is the Editor in Chief of Literary Hub. He lives in the foothills of the Catskill Mountains with his wife and two sons, and is currently writing a cultural history of the axe for W.W. Norton. @JonnyDiamondJonnyDiamond.me