Frequently Asked Questions

OVERVIEW

Why read books in installments?

Because if you’re like us, you spend hours each day reading email and tooling around on your phone and then complain that you have no time to read books. DailyLit brings books right to you in convenient installments that take less than 20 minutes to read. You can read them on your computer at work, on your phone on the commute home, or while waiting in line at the grocery store.

What does DailyLit do with my information?

We use your email address to send you installments, and we use your location to make sure we get you those installments when you want them. We use a third party service to process our emails but we’ll never sell, rent, or share your e-mail address to any third party for marketing purposes without your express permission. See more about this in ‘privacy’.

Why are some books free and others not?

Many of our books are in the public domain and others are available for free under Creative Commons licenses. There are also some books still under copyright that are offered for free on our site by special arrangement with the publisher. The rest of our books aren’t free because writers need to eat, too.

Why don’t you have some books I consider classics?

Most books published after 1923 in the United States are still under copyright. If there’s a book you’re dying to see on DailyLit and you know it’s in the public domain, send a request to us via the contact page.

Why am I not receiving my DailyLit emails?

First, check your spam folder to make sure that the email didn't get caught in that email black hole. Look for an email from books [at] dailylit [dot] com. If you find it in the spam folder, then mark it as “not spam.”

If it's not in your spam folder, chances are, you're using Gmail and our emails are going into your Promotions tab. The Promotions tab looks like this:

If you find email from DailyLit in your Promotions tag, start by dragging them into your Primary tab. For some users, this has solved the problem - emails from DailyLit now arrive in their Primary tab. Others aren't so lucky. You may have to keep checking your Promotions tab for emails from DailyLit.

If it's not in either of those place, please email us and we’ll try to figure out what’s going wrong.

Where did all the nonfiction go?!

We’ve decided to go back to our roots and focus on what DailyLit has always done best: literature. We’ve still got a rich library of novels, novellas, short stories, plays, and poetry, but by curating our list we’re better able to guide you to your next read. We’ve also been able to improve installments so that they better reflect natural breaks in the text – a task we could only tackle with a more limited library. Still, we know a lot of you miss your nonfiction, and over the next months, as we consider how to expand, we’ll be taking that under advisement. So keep that feedback coming. What do you miss most? Memoirs, classic works of philosophy, self-help? We want to know.

What happened to the women's fiction category?

Read our blog post on the topic.

Something’s wrong! What do I do?

Contact us.

HOW INSTALLMENTS WORK

How do I change when I receive my installments?

It’s easy to change your settings at any time. Simply go into ‘My Books’ and select the book. You’ll be brought to that book’s screen, where you can change when you receive installments.

What if I want to take a break?

It’s easy to pause your installments, and easy to resume them. Simply go into ‘My Books’ and select the book. You’ll be brought to that book’s screen. Press the ‘Pause’ button to stop installments from arriving in your inbox. You can resume the installments at any time by pressing the ‘Resume’ button.

What if I can’t wait until tomorrow to find out what happens next?

Just hit the ‘Next Installment’ button at the end of your current installment. The only times you won’t see a ‘Next Installment’ button are when a book is currently being serialized. In that case, we’ll let you know when the next installment is available.

Can I look at my installments online?

Yes. You can always read installments from the book page.

BY EMAIL

Why are some of my installments missing?

Because they are being blocked by your ISP, company, or email provider. There are a lot of aggressive spam filters out there that block messages even before they get to you (hence they don't even show up in your spam or junk folder). If you do receive some installments and not others, then you either have to have your system administrator whitelist books [at] dailylit [dot] com or you need to use a different email account. If you are only missing installments occasionally, then you might choose to view installments online.

How do I change my email address?

Simply go to “Account Settings” and change away. You will receive a validation email at your new address. We will not begin sending installments to your new address until we receive this validation.

BY APP

When is the iPhone app going to be available?

Winter 2014.

Is there an Android version in the works?

Not right now.

Why would I want to use the app?

Our goal with the app is to build the ideal platform for fitting fiction into the small spaces in your life. We’re designing an elegant and streamlined reading experience built around one single great contemporary and one single great classic title each month.

DAILYLIT ORIGINALS

What are DailyLit Originals?

DailyLit Originals are serial novels and short story bundles by award-winning and emerging authors, designed to be read in short installments over the course of about a month.

How do they work?

New installments of our serialized novels will be released once per week (like a TV show). You can choose to read your new installment all at once, or to have it delivered to you in smaller parts over the course of the week.

When you buy one of our short story bundles, you’ll receive one new story by a different writer every week for five or six weeks.

During the initial serialization period, you’ll only be able to read the installments or stories that have already been published. We’ll let you know when the next installment or story is available.

Why can’t I read my DailyLit Originals all at once?

If you begin to read one of our serialized novels or story bundles while it’s first being serialized, you’ll only be able to read the installments or stories that have been published so far. We think the anticipation and speculation that comes from not knowing what’s going to happen next is what makes serials fun. Our hope is that the combination of weekly installments with shorter daily pieces will give you the freedom to customize your reading experience while still preserving the anticipation that makes serials exciting in the first place.

How can I submit to DailyLit Originals?

We are not currently accepting unsolicited submissions. Please check back later to see if this has changed.