# Chronostates > Build alternate history worlds, play through them, and publish the books that come out of them. ChronoSagas, the bookstore, is free to read. ## What is Chronostates? Chronostates is a web platform for alternate history. You make choices at historical decision points and watch the consequences cascade through time; you can build worlds from scratch, play through them, and turn them into finished books. ChronoSagas is the public bookstore where those books are published. ## ChronoSagas — the bookstore **Everything on ChronoSagas is free to read.** There is no paywall on any book, no cart, and no purchase step for readers. **Publishing is free.** Any signed-in account can publish, on any subscription plan or none at all. There is no fee to list a work, no minimum, and no editorial gate. Authors keep ownership of everything they publish. **Authors who want to be paid use their own payment link.** A one-time $10 commercial licence — charged once per work, never per chapter, and never again if the work is unpublished and republished — lets an author display their own payment link (Ko-fi, PayPal, Gumroad, Buy Me a Coffee, Patreon, Payhip, itch.io or a Stripe payment link) on that work's public page. Readers pay the author directly. **Chronostates takes no cut of that.** We are not a party to the transaction, we receive no share of it, and we cannot help with delivery, refunds or disputes — those are between the author and the buyer. The $10 licence is the only money that reaches us from publishing. **Works published free of charge must stay free.** An author publishing free agrees not to solicit payment, donations, tips or crowdfunding on the page or inside the story. Fan fiction is always free and cannot be commercially licensed. **AI-assisted fiction is welcome.** It is treated like any other tool a writer uses, and books are not labelled by how they were written. Books live at https://chronostates.io/books/{slug}. Authors have a public page per pen name at https://chronostates.io/authors/{handle} — an author with two pen names has two separate pages, deliberately unconnected. ## Products ### ChronoStates scenarios (Free) Play through curated alternate history scenarios. Each has 10-100 generated events with 4-7 choices per event. Play as a Character, experiencing events first-hand, or as a Strategist guiding nations from above. ### Book Pipeline ($30/mo — Explorer and up) Turns a world into a finished novel of 20-40 chapters. Every chapter is reviewed by three independent AI models before you see it. Higher tiers write with stronger models. ### Create Your Own World ($30/mo — Explorer and up) Build alternate histories from scratch: custom premises, up to 10 story arcs, 200 events per project. ### The Architect ($50/mo — Creator and up) A conversational worldbuilding agent. Build a complete World Bible through dialogue, upload notes and images, export as PDF or launch it as a playable game. ### Media studios (Creator and Studio) Audiobooks, songs, music videos and short video episodes generated from a world or a book. ## Pricing | Plan | Price | Includes | |------|-------|----------| | Free | $0 | 10 events/month, 5 prebuilt scenarios, Sandbox Mode or World Builder, Event generation | | Voyager | $10/mo | 100 events/month, Worldbuilding and play, ChronoStates Sandbox access, Prebuilt scenarios added frequently | | Explorer | $30/mo | 100 events/month, Everything in Voyager, 5 books a month, 5 songs a month | | Creator | $50/mo | 150 events/month, Everything in Explorer, 5 books a month, 10 songs a month | | Studio | $100/mo | 200 events/month, Everything in Creator, 5 books a month, 10 songs a month | Chronocredits are a top-up currency: 1 credit = $1, they never expire, and they buy extra quantity of something a plan already includes. They never unlock a feature a tier excludes. ## Genres in the bookstore - Alternate History — https://chronostates.io/sagas/genre/alternate-history - Science Fiction — https://chronostates.io/sagas/genre/science-fiction - Fantasy — https://chronostates.io/sagas/genre/fantasy - Urban Fantasy — https://chronostates.io/sagas/genre/urban-fantasy - Romantasy — https://chronostates.io/sagas/genre/romantasy - Space Opera — https://chronostates.io/sagas/genre/space-opera - Dystopian — https://chronostates.io/sagas/genre/dystopian - Post-Apocalyptic — https://chronostates.io/sagas/genre/post-apocalyptic - Steampunk — https://chronostates.io/sagas/genre/steampunk - Cyberpunk — https://chronostates.io/sagas/genre/cyberpunk - Mythology & Legend — https://chronostates.io/sagas/genre/mythology - Paranormal — https://chronostates.io/sagas/genre/paranormal - Romance — https://chronostates.io/sagas/genre/romance - Historical Fiction — https://chronostates.io/sagas/genre/historical-fiction - Mystery — https://chronostates.io/sagas/genre/mystery - Thriller — https://chronostates.io/sagas/genre/thriller - Crime — https://chronostates.io/sagas/genre/crime - Horror — https://chronostates.io/sagas/genre/horror - Adventure — https://chronostates.io/sagas/genre/adventure - Literary Fiction — https://chronostates.io/sagas/genre/literary-fiction - Western — https://chronostates.io/sagas/genre/western - Military Fiction — https://chronostates.io/sagas/genre/military-fiction - Political Thriller — https://chronostates.io/sagas/genre/political-thriller - Young Adult — https://chronostates.io/sagas/genre/young-adult - Short Fiction — https://chronostates.io/sagas/genre/short-fiction - Nonfiction — https://chronostates.io/sagas/genre/nonfiction - Other — https://chronostates.io/sagas/genre/other ## Frequently asked questions Q: Is Chronostates free? A: Yes. The free plan includes prebuilt scenarios and 10 events per month, with no card required. Reading anything on ChronoSagas is free and needs no subscription. Q: What does it cost to publish a book? A: Nothing. Publishing is free on any plan or none. A one-time $10 commercial licence is optional, and only needed to show your own payment link on a work. Q: Do authors keep the rights to their work? A: Yes. Authors retain ownership of everything they publish. Q: How do authors get paid? A: Directly, through their own payment link on a commercially licensed work. Chronostates takes no percentage and is not part of the transaction. Q: How is the writing quality checked? A: Every chapter is reviewed by three independent AI models before the author sees it. Q: Can I bring my own API keys? A: Yes. BYOK is supported for DeepSeek, Anthropic, OpenAI, xAI and Google AI. Keys are encrypted at rest with AES-256-GCM. Q: Is AI-generated fiction allowed? A: Yes, and it is disclosed on every book's page. ## Pages ### Bookstore - /sagas — ChronoSagas — the bookstore. Original stories and shared universes, free to read. - /sagas/browse — Browse and filter every published book by genre, length and format. - /authors — Every author publishing on ChronoSagas, with their books and worlds. - /sagas/faq — How ChronoSagas works — publishing, reading, licensing and ownership. ### Product - / — Chronostates — build alternate history worlds, play them, and turn them into books. - /features — What the platform does: worldbuilding, play, the book pipeline, audio and video. - /pricing — Subscription tiers, what each includes, and how Chronocredits work. - /blog — Writing on alternate history, worldbuilding and the craft behind the platform. ### Try it - /daily — A new alternate-history decision every day. No account needed. - /demo/what-if — Write your own what-if premise and play the first events of it, free. - /demo/gettysburg-gambit — Playable demo — what if the Confederacy had won at Gettysburg in 1863? - /demo/cuban-midnight — Playable demo — advise Kennedy through the Cuban Missile Crisis. - /demo/first-contact-1492 — Playable demo — what if Indigenous Americans had gunpowder in 1492? ### Company - /about — About Chronostates. - /faq — General questions about accounts, billing and the platform. - /contact — How to reach us. - /privacy — Privacy policy. - /terms — Terms of service, including the rules for publishing free and commercial works. ## Contact - Email: chronostates@gmail.com - Website: https://chronostates.io - Fuller version of this file: https://chronostates.io/llms-full.txt