Patreon AND Amazon?

[ThisAdamGuy]

Over the years, my method of doing webfiction has been to publish the entire book on Amazon (print and Kindle) and then upload it one chapter per week to the internet, letting people know that the full book is for sale if they ever get tired of waiting for new chapters.

Most webfiction authors use Patreon, offering advance chapters in exchange for a monthly donation of a certain amount. I'm not telling you anything you don't here.

My question is, is there any point in doing both? If the entire book is for sale for, say, $5, then why would anyone donate $3 on Patreon to get a limited number of chapters in advance? Not to mention that buying the book is a one time cost, but Patreon is a monthly charge if you want to keep getting advance chapters.

It seems obvious to me that one would make the other redundant, but people have told me that I should use both. How would that work? Why would someone pay repeatedly for Patreon when they could just buy the book once on Amazon?

 

[HungrySheep]

Because people who do this are generally releasing in reverse order. Serial releases first, Amazon after. The Patreon subs pay for the advance chapters while the series is still releasing chapters and any volumes released on Amazon are already chapters they've previously read at that point.

Then, when it comes time for the whole novel to be ported to Amazon, chapters on RR/SH/Whatever will be removed. Some authors will keep only part 1 of the novel there, some remove all of the chapters but keep the series there, directing people to Amazon/KU instead.

These are people who generally work on multiple stories simultaneously as well because they are likely making 4k+ a month just off Patreon which gives them ample time to write three stories at once which means at least one of their stories will be ongoing.

 

[CharlesEBrown]

Yeah, as far as I can tell, for authors (and some artists) Patreon is similar to Kickstarter - you use it to fund the project in development, then use more "traditional" marketing streams when it is complete. Patreon is often more of a marketing tool in many cases than a revenue stream it seems (I think that's how I plan to use mine as soon as I figure out some wrinkles).

 

[Jocelyn_Uasal]

If you're going to promote and produce content exclusive to Patron then yes, otherwise no. Double dipping readers for the same content will just make them upset I think

 

[Tyranomaster]

I plan on doing it. In fact, many do. I'm serializing the first draft of my current story. Then I'll go back and edit the first draft, make changes, and make it a book. Patrons read ahead of where free serialization occurs, and I'm setting aside some of their money for any project fees (like art) for the final product. Then, the heavily rewritten work will show up on Amazon to monetize it again.

This also has the benefit of me not wasting time on bad stories. If a serialization does poorly, I can just drop it. If I wrote multiple novels in a series, and they do bad, I'd have wasted all that time. This way I can guage the appetite for a story easily.

 

[ThisAdamGuy]

This also has the benefit of me not wasting time on bad stories. If a serialization does poorly, I can just drop it. If I wrote multiple novels in a series, and they do bad, I'd have wasted all that time. This way I can guage the appetite for a story easily.

This is how I'd like to do it, but unless I have the entire book written and ready to go beforehand, I'd never be able to keep up with my own release schedule and I'd have to go on hiatus when I run out of chapters.

 

[Tyranomaster]

This is how I'd like to do it, but unless I have the entire book written and ready to go beforehand, I'd never be able to keep up with my own release schedule and I'd have to go on hiatus when I run out of chapters.

If you've written a few books already, you can do it. You just need to see how long it takes you to write a chapter normally, then give yourself some wiggle room.
Say you write a 30 chapter book in 6 months. First, break each chapter into at least 2 parts (since web serialization benefits from about 1500 words in a chapter, and cliffhangers help, not hurt, your story.)

10 "Chapters" a month. You could probably reasonably do 2 chapters a week, and be fine. As long as you keep to your initial writing schedule at least. You'll write ahead of where you are, and then go on an internal haitus, and go through some of your backlog, and come back before anyone realizes you weren't there, because you were still publishing chapters from the backlog. As long as you do good analysis of how quickly you write, and maybe give yourself a bit of time at the start to build up extra backlog, it shouldn't be an issue.

That said, it definitely doesn't work for everyone, and some stories serialize a lot better than others.