Theres a separate thread for this but it seems to have basically gone by unnoticed. https://support.furrynetwork.com/topics/452-story-icons/

Its kind of irritating to only be able to submit stories as blank thumbnails because they show up in people's feed looking like a 404 error instead of a story, so there that much more likely to just get overlooked. as if it already wasn't hard enough for writers to get noticed.

Even if we cant upload custom thumbnails maybe just give us some basic text we can put in the icon instead. maybe like a big Title bar and a small space we can give a few word description or bullet point the major themes involved. I mean thats what most story thumbnails are anyway, and they make a HUGE difference in people choosing to give a story a chance or just passing it by without even clicking to investigate

That's not true in the slightest. There is plenty of evidence from dozens of other writers even just the ability to post a generic icon made in paint that lists just a simple list of stuff that the story contains whether it be fetishes or general content or even an incredibly simplistic summary drastically increases people's interest and the ability for people to notice the story and want to click it. Compared to just having a blank empty black icon that means nothing. Go look on furaffinity and I will bet you money that the stories that even just have that icon that gives a brief description of what the story contains will typically have way higher view counts then the stories that don't have any thumbnail at all. But even hypothetically let's say for the sake of argument that you're right writers still deserve that opportunity. Letting some people post icons doesn't take away anything from anyone else but it gives some writers an opportunity to maybe get a few more views in a community that already barely acknowledges literature

I agree with this 100%. though i also would not mind having the additional option of being able to add a downloadable file that someone can save afterwards. Whether because theyd rather download the file so they can read it offline or on a tablet or something with better formatting, or just people that would like to 'save' a story.

Personally I've taken many stories ive enjoyed and had to manually download or even just copy and paste them so i can make them PDFs and load them onto my tablet so i can read them on the go without an internet connection.

But yes. priority list i agree should totally be

1: better word processing capability for the website integrated story posting

2: THUMBNAILS FOR STORIES so we can upload thumbnails or cover art

3: Ability to upload a file for the story as an option to download.

There absolutely needs to be something like this. Cover art, even if its just something giving a brief idea of what is in the story like "Vore" or "Transformation" can be vitally important to drawing attention to stories. TBO im amazed this isnt like, one of the top voted issues relating to literary works