Narrative has launched its newest feature, Publications, which behave as branded channels for organizations or publishers that wish to have tight editorial control of their content. Publications are more suited to a business, entity, or author looking to create a blog or magazine.

Any Narrative member with a positive reputation score may become the owner of a Publication. As an owner, users can personalize the Publication’s landing page, as well as appoint administrator, editor, and writer privileges to members of the Publication.

A Publication’s administrator has the ability to set custom header images, connect the Publication to a website or social media, or change the percentage of revenue share from Content Creator rewards.

All content within a Publication can be edited by those assigned an editor role, who can also approve submissions. While an editor can not delete any material from the Narrative platform, they do possess the ability to remove content from a Publication. Control of content removed from a Publication reverts to the ownership of the author.

Editors can also choose to “Feature” a post, which displays at the top of the Publication’s front page. Additionally, editors can “unilaterally delete a comment posted to their content.”

Users who wish to post to a Publication will need to have permission from the owner. When a user posts to a Publication, they also transfer all editorial control over the post. The author loses the ability to edit the post once it is under review or approved by a Publication.

Niche’s relationship with Publications

Niches are areas where users may post personal journal entries or articles to a specific topic or subject matter. Anyone can post content to a Niche, which are moderated to ensure material stays on topic, but are not curated. When posting an article, users can select up to three niches in order to target content towards their intended audiences.

Where any user may post to a Narrative niche, Publications are owner-curated pages and branded spaces. Publications do not need to represent one specific and unique subject but can represent a broader range of subject matter.

Narrative gives an example that there can be many different Publications covering the National Basketball Association (NBA), but there can only be one NBA niche.

To be eligible to receive Content Creator rewards, an article must be linked to at least one niche. Therefore, when the author posts to a Publication and ties niches to their article, they qualify for “Content Creator” rewards for an article posted in the Publication. The owner of a Publication may also share this revenue, and require a percentage of Content Creator rewards earned from content posted in the Publication.

While the revenue share percentage is displayed in the “About” page of a Publication, an admin may change that percentage at any time.

Publication ownership fees

Ownership of a Publication has an annual fee associated with it, with two pricing plans on offer: basic and business.

A basic Publication channel allows for five content creators and two editors, running at US $125 annually.

A business Publication channel allows for up to 30 content creators, ten editors, and will eventually offer the ability to host a custom domain. This package will cost US $299 annually.

Currently, Narrative is offering to waive the annual fee for the first six months as a promotion to incentivize new Publication owners. In the future, this trial period will run for 14 days.

Looking Forward

Narrative states the development team will focus on enhancing the feature set of Publications, which includes adding tools to assist in managing the content feed. Such tools will consist of, “setting publications dates (for building out an editorial calendar), automatically paying editors with Narrative reward points, paying the annual fee with reward points, and more.”

The full Publications launch announcement can be found at the link below:
https://www.narrative.org/post/publications-are-here

Tags: