The Long Bet
The math is actually more encouraging than most people expect!
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Every time I talk about serials, serialization, and the subscription model for authors, I invariably have someone slide into my DMs and ask, “okay, but can you actually make any money?”
The answer is the same for serializing as it is for self-publishing in general: yes, it’s possible; but no, it’s not guaranteed.
Honestly I think most of you know that. Certainly, the veteran authors who have been in and out of the industry for a while, trad and/or self published, are fully aware that making a full time income is a road fraught with good luck, bad luck, and market forces we have no control over. C’est la guerre.
So, what I think is at heart of that question is actually, “is this model of publishing worth my time?”
The answer is “yes” but not because of that outlier author who makes $90k a month on patreon (yes really) or $40 million on kickstarter (we love to hate him). Or, honestly, because I personally love reading serialized fiction. (Do it for the KimBoo!!!!!)
For one thing, the subscription model, which is where most authors who serialize live, is a long bet on success. It’s not “20 books to $50” math. It’s not a “rapid release to own the niche!” template. Especially since serialized fiction is hard to find unless you go look for it on specific platforms or by specific authors. You can go on Patreon or Ream or Substack and do basic searches, but they are not very helpful. That’s a topic for another post, but for now, the point I’m making is that while the market is absolutely trending up, it’s not doing so evenly and obviously.
Just going with Patreon, what numbers are available show that on average, a Patreon creator (note that this is not just authors, though) earns between $4k-$10k a month. That’s a range which goes from minor supplemental income to career-sustaining.
Those authors making decent, living-wage money with subscriptions are mostly doing the exact same thing successful self-published authors do with their books: post consistently, meet reader expectations, understand the market, and advertise. Which is why the dominant genre (as always) is romance, and flavors of romance like “romantic suspense” and “cozy fantasy” and “dark romance.” But taking in platforms such as RoyalRoad and Substack, you start seeing other genres rising in the subscription arena: horror, thrillers, epic fantasy, litRPG.
The real trick, as always, is “reader conversion.” In my last post, I discussed how many modern readers today have been reading serialized fiction for decades, but mostly for free (LiveJournal, Wattpad, AO3, web comics, etc.). As a broad demographic, they are ideal readers: people who love reading stories and will do so consistently over time.
But will they buy a subscription to YOUR story?
Let’s talk real numbers, because I think the math is actually more encouraging than most people expect. We finally have some concrete, current data to work with thanks to Graphtreon, which tracks Patreon creator earnings in real time.
Looking at the writing category specifically, the range is instructive. Yes, the top earner (Zogarth, writing the web novel The Primal Hunter) is pulling in nearly $90,000 a month from over 11,000 paid members. That’s the outlier I mentioned earlier. But scroll down to the mid-tier and the numbers get genuinely interesting for working authors. Creators with 1,200-2,000 paid members are consistently earning $4,000-$12,000 a month. That’s a real income range. That’s rent, groceries, and a writing career that doesn’t require a day job.
One data point I find particularly interesting: Tamora Pierce—yes, that Tamora Pierce, beloved traditionally published author of the Tortall universe!—has 1,607 paid Patreon members and earns over $12,000 a month. That’s not a self-publishing wunderkind or a LitRPG machine. That’s a veteran trad author who built a direct subscription relationship with her existing fanbase. Admittedly, most of us don’t have that storied back catalog to work with, but it shows that even establishment authors see the subscription model as a viable income stream.
Now let’s do the math on a more modest scale. Two-hundred subscribers at $5/month is $12,000 a year. Not a living wage on its own (at least, not in the USA, booooooo), but a meaningful financial cushion to buy a used car or do something wild like pay off a student loan (*fist bump!*). To be honest, $5 is a low-tier subscription. At $10/month those same 200 subscribers become $24,000 a year. At $15, which is well within normal range for authors offering early access and exclusive content, you’re looking at $36,000 annually from a readership smaller than the population of a suburb. Stack that against the reality of a mid-list traditional publishing advance (typically $5,000-$15,000, paid in installments, with no guarantee of royalties beyond that if the book doesn’t earn out) and the subscription model starts looking pretty attractive.
One genuinely surprising finding from the Graphtreon data: the writing category on Patreon is heavily dominated not by traditional romance, but by “web novels” and LitRPG. Romance dominates paid serialization almost everywhere else, so that suggests different genres are finding their audiences on different platforms, and the ecosystem as a whole is broader and more diverse than any single platform’s numbers would indicate.
If you write LitRPG or epic fantasy, Patreon is your strongest platform after RoyalRoad. If you write romance, Ream or a direct subscription setup may serve you better. The point is: there is no one-size-fits-all answer here, but there is an answer for almost every genre.
The catch, and you know there is one, is that those subscriber numbers don’t appear overnight. Most authors building sustainable subscription income spend 12-24 months growing a free readership first, whether through Wattpad, a free tier on Substack, or their existing book audience, before converting a meaningful percentage to paid. Conversion rates from free follower to paying subscriber typically run somewhere between 2-10%, which means you may need 2,000-10,000 free readers to land those 200 paying subscribers.
I know that sounds daunting. But those free readers are also your word-of-mouth marketing, your most passionate advocates, your community. They’re not wasted effort, they’re the foundation you start with. And when you compare it to how many books you’re trying to sell monthly, it’s not actually that overwhelming, is it?
Market inflection points come and go. As I said in the last post, the best time to start was ten years ago; the second best time is now. What that means in practice is setting realistic expectations then following through with DOING THE ACTUAL WRITING OMG STOP READING BLOGPOSTS AND GO WRITE SOMETHING I BEG OF YOU PLEASE!!!!
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Sources:
https://graphtreon.com/top-patreon-creators/writing
https://www.sci-tech-today.com/stats/patreon-statistics-updated/
https://electroiq.com/stats/patreon-statistics/
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