Ink and the shop

Ink is what you earn for taking part. You spend it in the shop on stickers and avatars, and on nothing else. It cannot be bought with money, and there is no plan to sell it.

What earns Ink

Ink pays for the work that makes this place worth being in: reading other people’s writing and saying something useful about it.

• Commenting on another writer’s published piece
• Returning a critique, a peer review, a beta read or a sensitivity read
• Starting a forum thread, or replying in one
• Giving a reaction
• Taking part in your Chapters: writing in a sprint, logging words toward a Chapter’s word goal, or ticking off a revision pass on your own piece. A check-in on its own does not count.

Writing in your own drafts, on your own, does not earn Ink. Neither does receiving a sticker, a reaction or a comment. That is deliberate: Ink measures what you give, and XP already measures what you write.

The ceilings

There is a limit on how much Ink a day and a week can hold, and the limits are shown to you rather than hidden.

• 60 Ink a day
• 300 Ink a week

Your day runs midnight to midnight in your own time zone, and the week starts on Monday.

Some kinds of act also have their own smaller limit, so no single thing can fill a day on its own. Reactions are the clearest case: they are quick, so they stop paying well before the day’s ceiling.

There is one more rule worth knowing, because it surprises people: giving a lot to the same person in one week pays less each time. Five thoughtful comments on five writers earn more than five on one. The point is to make it worth talking to someone new.

Why something earned nothing

Every act that could have earned Ink leaves a line in your activity log saying what it earned, or why it earned nothing. Open your Activity History and choose the Ink tab to read it.

You will see reasons like:

• Too short to count. A comment below the length floor is not a contribution yet.
• This one already counted. Deleting something and posting it again pays once.
• You have been paid for several with this writer already this week. The same-person rule above.
• This kind of thing had already earned its most today. A per-act limit.
• You had already earned everything today (or this week) holds. A ceiling.

Only acts that could have counted appear in that list. Writing in your own draft was never a candidate, so it is not shown as a zero.

If a line looks wrong, that log is what support will read with you.

Fontaine’s shop

Fontaine is an inkcap: a mushroom that dissolves into ink as it ages. He keeps three things, and they change every Monday.

Three a week is not a shortage, it is the point. A shop that showed you everything would be a catalogue, and nothing in a catalogue is a find. Rarer pieces appear less often, and seasonal ones only appear in their season.

Nothing is cheap. The most expensive pieces are worth about two months of real participation, and the first one you can afford usually lands inside a fortnight.

There is no list of everything that exists, and there will not be one. New pieces keep arriving, so a total would be wrong by the time you read it, and a collection with a total stops being a collection and becomes a checklist.

If something is on the counter and you cannot afford it yet, you have until Monday.

Stickers and avatars

A sticker goes on somebody else’s work: a published piece, a comment, a forum post. It is a reaction with more in it than an emoji, and it counts toward that item’s reaction total like any other.

You cannot put a sticker inside a manuscript, and stickers do not exist inside a team workspace. A team is somewhere people work, and it stays that way.

An avatar is yours to wear. Once you own one you can set it as your picture anywhere you would normally use a photo.

Owning something is permanent. Pieces do not expire, and nothing you have bought can be taken back.

If your Ink changes on its own

Two things can move your balance without you spending it.

• Content you earned on was removed. If a comment of yours is taken down, the Ink it earned goes with it. The line in your activity log says so.
• An account is suspended. A suspended account’s Ink is frozen rather than emptied, so it is all still there if the suspension is lifted.

Where to look

• Your balance and the shop: Ink
• What counted and what did not: the Ink tab of your Activity History
• What else is being tracked as you write: Streaks, XP and craft levels