of_thoughts

of_thoughts t1_jee7yc0 wrote

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

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_jee7r19 wrote

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

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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of_thoughts t1_je88zbh wrote

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

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_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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