How long will it take for my story to be published?

Once you submit a story, poem, audio, or other work for publication on Literotica, it must be reviewed (to make sure it meets our site guidelines) before readers can view it.

How long a story takes to go live on the site depends on how many works other authors have submitted to Literotica during that day or week. Literotica receives original submissions from more than 250 authors per day (as of 2024), and every work needs to be reviewed by a human before it’s published. We do our best to balance the queue of pending works so that submissions are published as quickly as possible without overloading readers and possibly burying your story.

A story, poem, or audio submitted to Literotica (and meeting all of our publishing criteria) will generally be published and available on the New Stories Page within two to four days. Artworks may take one to two additional days (since they require more work to publish).

If it’s been more than five days since you submitted your text story, poem, or audio (eight days for Artworks), please check your Pending folder (Pending Stories, Pending Poems, Pending Audio, Pending Artworks). If you don’t see your work there, please check your Drafts folder.

If you work is shown in the Drafts folder (Story Drafts, Poem Drafts, Audio Drafts, Artwork Drafts), that means it has not yet been submitted to us for review and publication. To submit the work for publishing, please click on the work title and navigate to the bottom of the submission form. Click the Preview&Publish button, then click the blue Submit for Publication button.

If you follow the steps above, you should receive a message alerting you that the work has been successfully submitted for publication. The work should then appear in your Pending folder, and you should see a confirmation in your Activity Feed so that you can keep track of its progress through the publishing process.

If the story isn’t in your Pending or Drafts folder, please check your Sent Back folder (Sent Back Stories, Sent Back Poems, Sent Back Audio, Sent Back Artwork). If we review your work and find any issues which prevent its publication (i.e. technical issues, etc.), we will send the story, poem, audio or other work to the Sent Back folder. If you find any of your works in that folder, please follow the steps in our My Story Has Been Sent Back. What Now? FAQ to re-submit the work to us for re-review and hopefully for approval and publishing on Literotica.

Please Note: Stories, poems, audio and other works are approved by date submitted, oldest to newest. Whenever an author makes any change to a story, poem, or audio - even if the author only clicks on the submission and hits Submit for Publication again - that submission is moved to the end of the moderation queue. To speed up the review and publication of your work, please only make changes when necessary.

If you need more help with making sure that your work gets published as quickly as possible, you might try the Literotica Authors’ Hangout Forum and the Writers Resources.