If you are an author looking to make money off your writing online, you have probably heard of Patreon. It is a membership platform where patrons pledge money to support creators like writers, artists, musicians, and more. Many authors use it to supplement their income—some, like N.K. Jemisin, pulling in $4,000 a month.
Unfortunately, Patreon is a notoriously rough place for writers who don’t already have a dedicated following. The site also takes 5% of your earnings, and transaction fees average another 5% on top of that. And that’s just if you opt for the Lite subscription plan, which lacks membership tiers. For that, you’ll have to choose the Pro plan, which takes 8% of your earnings plus processing fees. The Premium plan takes a whopping 12% plus processing fees.
You’ll be glad to know that here at Fictionate.Me we have a new subscription feature. Unlike Patreon, our site already has a community of readers thirsty for more reading material. Like Patreon, Fictionate.Me charges a 5% cut of your royalties plus processing fees, but you don’t have to pay any extra for special features like membership tiers.
Read on for more information about this new feature for writers, perks you can offer your supporters, benefits of the service, and tips for success.
How It Works
Fictionate.Me’s subscription service is available to readers on a per-month basis. As part of the subscription you offer, readers will get access to your book(s). You can set up subscription tiers that will determine what readers get. A $0.99 subscription will likely just be for access to your book, while higher amounts per month would include whatever perks you wish to offer, which we’ll discuss more in the next section.
A subscription option will give readers a continuous way to support your work and will help to create a community around your writing.
Perks for Your Supporters
In addition to access to your book, you can offer additional perks to your higher-paying supporters. These are little rewards your readers will have exclusive access to in exchange for paying more per month. These perks can be whatever you want—here are some suggestions for potential perks:
- Short Stories: Short stories are a great perk that allows your supporters to see more of your writing. It’s up to you whether you want to set the short stories in the world of your book, write standalone stories, or do a mix of the two.
- Exclusive Previews: If you’re working on a new project, you can give higher-paying supporters sneak peeks at your title, cover, excerpts, and more.
- Cut Scenes: If you have a scene that doesn’t end up making it into your book, this can be a wonderful perk to offer to your supporters. It will give readers an expanded look into your book’s world and insight into your writerly mind.
- Behind-the-Scenes Content: This sort of content will give your supporters an exclusive look into your writing process. You can share playlists, character sketches, outlines, your writing routine, etc. Providing behind-the-scenes content will help readers to feel closer to you and your writing.
- A Monthly Advice Column: Each month, you can write a column with writing advice for your supporters. Many of your supporters are likely writers themselves and will appreciate the guidance. If you need some inspiration, our blog here on Fictionate is chockfull of writing tips.
- Editing/Feedback: This one would require a lot of time and effort on your part, so it should be available to top-tier supporters only. These supporters will be able to submit a piece of writing to you and get your thoughts and suggestions. Writers are always looking for helpful feedback, so this would be a very attractive perk.
These are just some of the perks you can offer your higher-paying supporters. Put some thought into what you think your readers will most enjoy and work to make their subscription fees worth it each month.
Benefits
There are a ton of benefits to using Fictionate’s new subscription feature. Here are a few of them:
- Side Money: Offering access to your book on a subscription basis is a great way to earn some continuous money on the side. And as said, with Fictionate, you won’t get charged any extra fees for membership tiers.
- Quality Over Quantity: With subscription money coming in, you can take the time to craft quality work instead of rushing to get out chapters or episodes on a rapid schedule.
- Motivation: Creating bonus content for your readers will keep you writing new short stories and writing advice that you wouldn’t have made time for before. You may be surprised by the new ideas that will emerge as you keep a consistent writing schedule.
- Great for Serial Fiction: Fictionate.Me is already a fantastic site for serial fiction since readers like to check in regularly to see if there have been any updates to their favorite stories. This subscription feature makes things even better since you can earn continuous income as you update each chapter or episode of your story.
- The Newsletter Function: With Fictionate.Me’s new subscription service, you will be able to send a regular newsletter to your followers (not just subscribers). This will help to keep you in touch with your followers and share more of your writerly thoughts with them. Patreon has a newsletter function called Memberful, which charges 4.9% of your earnings plus a monthly rate of either $25 or $100, depending on the pricing plan. Fictionate won’t be charging you any of those pesky extra fees for your newsletter.
- Keep Track of Your Stats: Instead of hunting around the site for your statistics or having to check different pages, you have a dashboard where you can keep track of all your stats in one place. There you can see your number of active subscriptions, books read per day, profile views per day, book views per day, and new subscriptions.
- A Better Reading and Listening Experience for Your Subscribers: If you’ve ever used Patreon’s site or app for reading, you already know that it is not user-friendly or full of functions. Fictionate provides your readers with a sleek, streamlined app where they can read and listen to your creations. And there is no extra charge to readers or authors for AI narration for your works. To see how AI narration works on our site for authors, click here! You can also click here to listen to the 1st Place Grand Prize-winning story of our recent worldbuilding short fiction contest.
- The Community: Unlike Patreon, Fictionate already has a community of writers and readers. While you can post a multitude of genres on Fictionate, the most popular genre is definitely speculative fiction. This is also a genre that readers tend to build a community around with forums, social media, book clubs, and more. Using Fictionate’s subscription feature, you can connect with writers and readers.
- Increased Visibility: Fictionate gives you the chance to be on a smaller, niche platform just for speculative fiction where your work has more visibility, helping you find a more dedicated audience for your genre. As said, while Fictionate.Me welcomes all genres, our niche is speculative fiction: science fiction, fantasy, horror, etc., so keep this in mind when trying to grow your fanbase.
Tips for Success
Now that you know how our subscription service works, potential perks you can offer, and the benefits of using the service, here are some tips to help you achieve success:
- Don’t Get Wrapped Up in Your Perks: When creating bonus content for your supporters, it’s very easy to focus too much on that and not enough on your book. Remember that your book is the main event for all your subscribers and that it deserves the bulk of your attention.
- Experiment with Your Perks: As long as your perks don’t have any subscribers, you can change them any time you like. If a perk isn’t attracting any supporters, drop it and try something else. For more information on how to add and remove perks, check out this nifty how-to.
- Be Consistent: Your subscribers will expect a regular stream of content, and you need to make sure you can deliver. Be realistic when creating your timetable—supporters aren’t likely to stick around for long if you don’t stick to a consistent schedule.
- Connect with Your Supporters: Make sure to respond to comments both on your story and social media. Readers are far more likely to kick in the money for a subscription if they feel they have a relationship with you.
I hope you enjoyed this guide to Fictionate’s new subscription feature. If you want a subscription service for writers that will get you more readers and profits than Patreon, offering your own subscription service is an easy process. Click here for a helpful article on precisely how to use this new feature.
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