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of_thoughts t1_je1f7yx wrote

Reply to comment by Gofarman in I am Casualfarmer, author of the web serial and novel Beware of Chicken. AMA! by CasualfarmerBOC

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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