Home

My name is Bruno Lowagie. In a previous life, I was a software developer and tech entrepreneur. You can read all about my adventures in open source —bootstrapping a company from start-up to exit— in my book Entreprenerd. After selling and leaving my business, I set myself a new goal: pursuing a career as a writer.

In 2019, I made a single New Year's resolution: to win at least one writing contest in Belgium (where I live) or The Netherlands (my mother tongue is Dutch). That year, I won three first prizes, along with several other nominations and publications in the years that followed.

In 2024, I started translating my most successful stories into English.

Introducing Folio

Use Duotrope, they said. Chillsubs is newer and better, they said.

I tried, but I soon discovered that submission-centric services don't work for me. While they excel in discovering publication opportunities, they didn't cater to my needs as an author. I desired a story-centric system that allowed me to create an inventory of all the stories I have written over the years. For each story, I wanted to view every nomination, publication, and submission on a single page. Additionally, I wanted to store different Word documents for every title, whether they were alternative versions written by myself, or edited versions uploaded by professional editors.

Failing to find a platform with this functionality, I decided to develop my own story-centric submission platform, which I named Folio.

In Folio, every title is attributed a unique identification code consisting of three parts:

• Two characters indicating the language: in my case, either EN or NL, which are the ISO 639 codes for English and Dutch.
• A two-digit number referring to a year: starting with 19 (referring to 2019), this number indicates in which year the story was written. I have some older stories too, but I'm not always sure in which year they were written.
• A three-digit number to make the code unique: starting in 2024, this number indicates the order in which the story was written. For example, EN24-015 is more a recent story than EN24-002. The numbers before 2024 are more or less random.

I created three roles for Folio users:

• Guests can consult a redacted list of story titles. They also have access to pages listing contest results, publications, publishers, and statistics, but many pages will be empty, or even show the message: 'Sorry, you don't have permission to see this page.'
  When competing in a story contest, authors often need to anonymize their stories. By default, Folio shows all titles as '--Not Yet Disclosed--' unless I flag them as visible to the public, for instance, once they have won a nomination or secured publication. Most titles are rendered in a regular font type. When a title is shown in bold, I consider it as one of the better stories.
• Editors have access to the unredacted story list and are granted permission to view different versions of each story as a Word document (if available). They can share comments about the story with the author and the other editors and upload new versions in .docx format.
• Authors have full access to Folio. They can insert, update and delete titles, contests, publications, and submissions. When selecting a story, they get a complete overview of previous contest participations, publications and submissions. They can also upload Word documents with different versions of the same story. They can create projects to organize stories by genre, or by any other criterion. Finally, they can mark stories as 'ready to submit' and get an overview of those stories, excluding stories that were already submitted but are still waiting for a response.

If you are an editor at a renowned publishing company, you can apply for Editor access by replying to one of my story submissions. I look forward to working with you!

Using Folio

Folio is written in an old version of PHP and runs on a Linux server with MariaDB as the database. If you're an author or a publisher interested in using Folio, you can contact Wil-Low BV for a quote.

Wil-Low BV can install Folio on your server if you provide the necessary credentials for your webserver (Linux, PHP, and MariaDB or mySql need to be readily available). The installation fee is 125 euro / hour, with a minimum of 50 euro (always due) and a maximum of 300 euro (to be paid only after a successful installation). Obviously, this doesn't include populating the database with your stories, nominations, and publications.

In addition to the installation fee, there's a license fee of 25 euro per year and per author. Volume discounts are available if multiple authors need to be supported.

The license fee covers the use of the software and access to updates involving bug fixes and new functionality (if any). The license fee does not include consultancy services. If additional functionality is needed, it will be added at the discretion of Wil-Low BV. The license fee does not cover upgrades or migrations. If you want to move Folio to another webserver with a different configuration, the quoted prices no longer apply as it may require a significant rewrite of the source code.