Create AO3 works and chapters from Ellipsus

Many of our writers consider AO3 a home—if not the home—for their work. So we wanted to make sharing that work simpler. Back in October, we released a streamlined way to copy HTML out of Ellipsus and paste it into AO3. And writers were … very excited about it.

We can always count on our community to encourage us to continue iterating. Within a few hours of the release we received this note:

Oh I just tried it and its incredible, the only thing is, it redirects to ao3 after copying and starts a new ao3 fic but sometimes (most of the times for me at least) its an update to a fic not a new fic

Fair! Of course our writers aren’t limiting their creativity to one-shots. They’re also tending to multi-chapter works (and massive ones, at that). We wanted to help those writers too.

For the uninitiated: Archive of Our Own is a project managed by the Organization for Transformative Works. The non-profit, non-commercial archive hosts transformative fanworks, in particular, fan fiction. The mainstream might think AO3 is niche, but with millions of page views per day it’s anything but. Occasionally, the fan works hosted there even bleed into the public consciousness—just this week creator DRHPaints was name-dropped on podcast Conan O’Brien Needs a Friend.

Across Reddit, Tumblr, and other social platforms, what’s the best way to post to AO3 is a recurring topic.

Major pain points include preserving spacing and text decorations (like bold and italics) when copying and pasting, preventing random spaces from being inserted, and the general annoyance of having to clean up HTML tags. (And if you’re trying to post from your phone??? 💀💀💀)

We’re certainly not the first to answer the call. AO3 officially endorses a script for Google Docs, and independent developers have created tools like AOYeet.

But as more writers look for alternatives to Google Docs and Microsoft Word, they’ll need new ways to format their AO3 writing—ideally without having to juggle multiple tools.

Today, we’re expanding our support for sharing to AO3. In addition to posting new works, you can now manage and update existing ones. You’ll still need to manage titles, creators, and metadata directly in AO3—but generating nicely formatted HTML for your main text is reduced to a few clicks.

Post new works

Make sure you’re logged in to AO3 in the current browser. Then open Share and export and click Export to AO3 to open a sharing modal. From there, you can select + New work to copy the current doc or draft as HTML—we’ll automatically open AO3 in a new tab so you can paste your text and prepare your work for posting.

View existing works

After clicking Export to AO3, you can enter your username to generate a list of your current works on AO3. Your username will be saved to the current browser—a big time-saver if there are multiple Ellipsus docs meant for AO3. (We use AO3’s publicly available URLs to pull in works and chapters—you’ll only be able to post to AO3 if you’re logged into your linked account.)

By default, this list will be ordered by your most recent works. (But search is coming soon!)

After finding the work you want to update, you can choose to post a new chapter or edit an existing one. Select an option and Ellipsus will copy your current draft or doc to your clipboard and open AO3 in a new tab.

In 2025, we plan to extend our export options and even dip our digital toes into integrations. So, what do you want to see? Add your ideas to our feedback board or join our Discord to share your thoughts with the team!