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Gofarman t1_je1a42t wrote

I read quite a lot of serial fiction and won't start a new one if it is content blocked, kindle unlimited for example.

How do you balance the growth of your readership against using a service like kindle unlimited?

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CasualfarmerBOC OP t1_je1bdo7 wrote

From what I understand KU itself drives growth. People binge reading off KU, then getting converted to reading the newer chapters of the serial happens.

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of_thoughts t1_jee7yc0 wrote

Here is a recent post from the author of Beneath the Dragon Eye Moons.

https://www.reddit.com/r/financialindependence/comments/12641eu/a_creatives_route_to_fire/

"This year I'm looking at roughly $500k total income on the extremely conservative side, closer to $600k if I'm a little more aggressive with my estimates. Patreon's about half of that, with Amazon being the other half. Within Amazon, KU is 70% of my income."

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of_thoughts t1_je1f7yx wrote

Not an expert but from talking with other authors once you have up around 60+ chapters and are up there in the rankings, the growth of new readers slows down. Those who were going to read the story have already discovered it. Those who are just discovering Royal Road for the first time will add to your numbers but they are much smaller. The growth plateaus.

By then going to KU (which unfortunately is the dominant player out there) the authors gain a HUGE new audience and then this new audience hops over to Royal Road if they want to get advance reads of what comes after the KU book.

Sure it sucks to come across a "new to you" story 1-2 years later and it is stubbed but the authors need to put food on the table. Royal road without Patreon/KU is not paying the bills of full time authors.

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RJWolfe t1_je2j6ia wrote

> Royal road without Patreon/KU is not paying the bills of full time authors.

Does Royal Road pay authors, at all? I was under the impression that it's like love in the '60s.

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RavensDagger t1_je2on6y wrote

No, RR doesn't have an system of monetization on it. You can link to a Patreon/Kofi/Paypal from it, however.

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of_thoughts t1_je88zbh wrote

Exactly, no bills being paid.

So essentially people are saying, "Keep posting thousands of words here for free and leave them up forever" while authors are saying, "Hey, here are thousands of words here for free but after tons of people have enjoyed them I am going to take the early work down to post them somewhere else where I can get paid and will use that money to live and keep writing NEW words I will post here for free for you to read." And people are like, "No, keep posting for free".

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of_thoughts t1_jee7r19 wrote

Here is a recent post from the author of Beneath the Dragon Eye Moons.

https://www.reddit.com/r/financialindependence/comments/12641eu/a_creatives_route_to_fire/

"This year I'm looking at roughly $500k total income on the extremely conservative side, closer to $600k if I'm a little more aggressive with my estimates. Patreon's about half of that, with Amazon being the other half. Within Amazon, KU is 70% of my income."

If you check out their Patreon they are at $30k/mo! So RR will let you build your audience but then you need to monitize those eyeballs somehow at it looks like 50% is Patreon and 50% is Amazon.

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