If Manage serial, the Release buttons and the installment list
vanished after you edited a chapter, nothing is broken and nothing is
lost. This article explains what happened and gets you back to the
controls in about a minute.
The short version
Go to /my-stories → Published tab → find the
published row for your story → press "Manage serial" there.
Release from that row.
What actually happened
On a live serial, editing the text of a chapter that has already
been released automatically creates a new, unpublished version
of the story and moves you into that new version.
That is deliberate: your readers keep reading the version they
started while you work on the next one. But a draft version has
nothing released yet — so inside it the whole serial surface has
nothing to show:
- Manage serial is gone.
- The per-chapter Release buttons are gone.
- The installment list is gone.
It looks exactly as though the feature had been switched off for your
account. It has not. Your published serial is still live, still has
every part you released, and still has its controls. They are on the
other row.
Since a recent update, an explanatory panel renders where the serial
controls used to be, pointing you at "Go to My Stories". If you
can see that panel, you are in the draft version.
Getting back to the controls
- Open
/my-stories. - Switch to the Published tab.
- Find the published row for the story — not the draft you were
just editing. - Press "Manage serial" on that row.
- Release your chapter from there.
That is the whole recovery. Nothing needs to be undone or repaired
first.
The same trap, seen from the other side
While an unpublished draft version of the story exists, editing or
appending on the live row is refused and the app reports a
conflict. People often read that as a second, unrelated fault. It is
not — it is the same fork from the other end. The app will not let two
versions of one story be written at the same time.
The way out is to finish the draft version (publish it) or discard it.
After that the live row accepts edits again.
How to avoid it entirely
To add the next installment, add a new chapter. Adding a chapter
forks nothing: no new version, no vanishing panel, no conflict. You
write it, you press "Release", it is out.
Only editing the text of an already-released chapter creates the
new version. Typo fixes count. If a small correction can wait until
you were going to publish a new version anyway, letting it wait keeps
everything simple.
The rest of the workflow — starting a serial, releasing, ending it —
is in Publishing a serial.