Authory: A New Portfolio Tool for Authors and Journalists

As an author and freelance journalist of more than fifteen years, it can be challenging to keep up with my various stories, articles, reviews and interviews that are currently online. I’ve attempted to keep up with these in the past; soon enough, my once pristine page is a mess of broken links, and that’s not to mention time spent finding thumbnails or journal covers.

I was delighted, then, to try Authory, a new online portfolio tool created by Eric Hauch. Essentially, Authory is designed as a dual-benefit platform for readers and writers/journalists. For writers, Authory provides automated updating of articles once source publications have been created; for readers, it streamlines their potential to follow their favourite writers, and to be notified when there’s new material to read.

Setting up was easy, and once I’d signed up for the trial, I was able to add a bio pic, a byline, social media links, and a background image. From there, I linked to some of my most regularly published places via url and Authorly did the rest for me, importing all stories and articles at those sources within 48 hours.

Even more helpful for me was the ability to create collections outside of those sources. Being a freelance writer, not all of my pieces for one publication, for example, were of the same type. With that in mind, I was able to split reviews or non-fiction I’d written for Meanjin from my fiction pieces, which made organisation of my work so much easier.

The view from the Authory.com back-end, with collections listed along the bottom of the header.

Once you’re logged in, there’s also the option to make private or delete any articles you don’t want listed, which is another nice feature. In terms of drawbacks, I’ve not yet seen ways to edit images within the Authory Platform. It’s early days, however, so I’m happy to be corrected if this functionality is present and I’ve not yet come across it. Other that that, there’s also an added cost once you reach more than 500 email subscribers at $5 per month for each additional 1,000 subscribers. Depending on your reach, that could get pricey pretty quick. For myself, however, it’s not yet become a hurdle in wanting to present my material in as accessible a way as is humanly possible.

Finally, support has so far been excellent througout, with responses from ‘Eric’ at every point of the process. While I can’t guarantee these come direct from the creator of the software, I’m not all that fussed if they don’t, as for me what matters most is someone caring on the other end of support, and doing their best to help out the end user.

Aside from the image editing, I really can’t fault Authory as a portfolio tool. It’s intuitive, easy to use, and has already saved me a bunch of headaches when trying to collate my fiction, reviews, interviews, essays, and so forth over a now fairly extensive career. If you’re already world-conquering then the extra cost for more subscribers could be prohibitive; for now, this seems a great deal, and a fine way to collate one’s sources if you’ve predominantly made your way as a freelance writer our journalist.