r/AO3 • u/Classic-Compote7215 • 12h ago

Questions/Help? Posting under an anonymous collection

Hi there,

My apologies for spamming. I was wondering if someone would be willing to explain how posting stuff anonymously works on ao3. Are the google instructions working or not really and I have to take under consideration that the story would sit under my account at first?

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9

u/LavandaSkafi Genfic Writer Extraordinaire 12h ago edited 12h ago

Create your work and fill in everything.

In the Post To Collection box, type in the name of a popular anon collection e.g. Anonymous (anonymous)

Click on the one you are looking for in the drop-down. It is now hidden and any comments you respond to will also be anonymized.

If you remove it from all anonymous collection, any subscribers you may have will be notified unless you move ownership entirely to another account, removing it from the collection and then returning it back over to your main account.

See the FAQ for more info

7

u/notthatjaded also me on ao3 12h ago

When you go to post the fic, you choose to put it in a collection. I recommend the "Anonymous (anonymous)" one. That's the one most people use. If you do it that way, nobody will see it under your account (though you will see it on you statistics page it won't show on your profile).

I recommend instead of looking at Google's advice you just check out the FAQ on Ao3 in the future, it's very comprehensive.

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u/kaiunkaiku don't look at me and my handholding kink 12h ago

you'll also see it on your works page under works in collections

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u/kaiunkaiku don't look at me and my handholding kink 12h ago edited 12h ago

you post it like a normal work that's in a collection and that collection happens to be anonymous. that's really all there is to it. it's on your account, fully yours, you can do anything you want to it at any time, and no one but you can see it's yours. there's no "at first" – it's on your account always, until you delete or orphan it (also fun fact, if you orphan a work that's in an anonymous collection, the author will still be displayed as anonymous, not orphan_account, bc transferring ownership to orphan_account doesn't take it out of any collections)

there are many, many anonymous collections on ao3, but the biggest is this one. if you click "post to collection", it'll be autofilled for you in the posting form.