Fable (social reading app, part of Everand): catalogue listing + a public club, zero spend
Date: 2026-10-31. Status for Cedwyn: PROPOSAL (needs an account on the project lead's side for the club; nothing posted).
What Fable is (read 31 Oct 2026)
- Social reading/book-club app (iOS, Android, web). Acquired by Everand (formerly Scribd) in June 2025.
- Scale: PW (June 2025) reported 3 million users and 100,000+ clubs. TechCrunch (2 Jun 2026): Everand + Fable have 5 million combined readers, "nearly 200,000" clubs, 100M+ ratings/reviews; 820,000 Fable readers joined a new club last year. Everand bundle from $11.99/mo (US).
- Free to use; Fable Plus is $5.99/mo or $49.99/yr (stats, goals, ad-free). Not needed for clubs.
- Clubs: tap Club tab -> blue + -> name, invite, pick ONE book (or TV show). Clubs are PRIVATE by default; flip to public in settings. "Discussion rooms" split talk by chapter so there are no spoilers (help.fable.co articles 36, 88).
- Fable's shop sells e-books read inside its app (inline comments/emoji). Sponsored shelves on fable.co are paid ("Kindly sponsored by Sourcebooks Fire").
The three author routes, and what each costs
- Sell on Fable (help article 120): only through Draft2Digital, ticking Fable as a retailer. D2D is no longer free (since 15 Apr 2026; INDEX: $20 + $12/yr) -> PAID route, skip under the zero-spend rule.
- Paid promotion (article 119): media kit via [address kept in the project workspace] PAID, skip.
- Free: get the book into the catalogue + run a public club. Catalogue add (article 90): Fable Chrome extension (beta) on any book page showing ISBN or ASIN, title, author, cover; or the Book Request Form (forms.gle link in article 90). Users report form requests can be slow (r/FableApp 1sw03av, snippet). No ISBN/ASIN -> extension cannot add it; form only.
Practitioner evidence (honest about thin numbers)
- r/FableApp 1syz768 (snippet, not read in full): "a decent percentage of club members are inactive or will opt out of the chosen book on a given month, so you need enough members". Plan for most members to lurk.
- r/Fantasy 1lmdxit "Does anyone real use the Fable app?" (title only): reach for small clubs is a real question.
- A press headline seen in search (Wired-style, title only): "A Book App Used AI to 'Roast' Its Users. It Went Anti-Woke Instead" (Fable's AI year-end summaries). What Fable did afterwards was not checked. Reputational, not a blocker.
- D2D blog "Say Hello to Fable" (snippet): authors running a club promotion via D2D get sentence-level reading insights. Paid route only.
- No case study with sales numbers for a self-published local-history e-book on Fable was found. Treat this as a discovery shelf, not a sales channel.
Playbook (zero spend)
- Check first: search the Fable app/site for each Cedwyn title. If absent and the e-book has an ISBN/ASIN (e.g. a Kindle ASIN), add it with the extension; else submit the request form once per title (title, author/imprint, cover, description). One request, never repeat.
- Make the Fable book page useful: description that matches the /ebooks/ page; the shop link cannot go in the listing, so the listing is for findability (Fable pages are indexed by search).
- Public club (proposal, needs the project lead's account): one club, e.g. "Welsh local history: reading the records", public, one book per month. Months 1-2 use widely available books on Glamorgan / Welsh rural history so the club is not a sales pitch; Cedwyn's own free first edition only once there are 25+ members. Use discussion rooms per chapter. Post a weekly prompt (a period record + one question).
- Measure: club members, active commenters per month, clicks from the club profile link (UTM: utm_source=fable&utm_medium=club).
- Kill rule: under 25 members or under 5 active commenters after 8 weeks -> stop posting, leave the catalogue listing in place.
How we apply it to Cedwyn
- Do now (no account needed): note whether any Cedwyn title has an ISBN/ASIN; if yes, a single catalogue request is the whole job. If no ISBN/ASIN, log "Fable: needs ISBN/ASIN" in the growth notes and stop.
- Club = proposal for the project lead's GO; it is a new public channel. Public text rules apply: never name the project lead; no banned words (states, assertions, per, second-hand report, not checked, reported, deception, taken); Llandough Farm is not Great House Farm; links to Cedwyn pages only.
- Do NOT use D2D or paid sponsorship (zero spend). Everand subscription distribution already has its own file (everand-subscription-reads-distributor-gate.md).
- Priority: low. Audience is US-heavy and fiction-led; useful mainly as one more indexed book page and a club home if a reader community forms elsewhere first.
Sources
- help.fable.co ; /article/88-what-are-rooms ; /article/90-i-cant-find-a-book-in-fable-can-a-book-be-added ; /article/119-how-can-i-promote-my-book-with-fable ; /article/120-how-can-i-sell-my-books-on-fable ; /article/142-how-much-will-fable-plus-cost (all read 31 Oct 2026)
- techcrunch.com (read)
- publishersweekly.com ... 97975-everand-acquires-online-book-club-platform-fable.html (snippet: 3M users, 100k clubs)
- fable.co (read: sponsored shelves)
- reddit r/FableApp 1syz768, 1sw03av; r/Fantasy 1lmdxit (snippets only, not read)
Raw Markdown: fable-social-reading-catalogue-public-club-zero-spend.md · version and changes: changelog · machine index: agents.json