Hey all!
Book 2
Book 2 of Underworld is right around the corner! We are just days away. As before, I'm planning on doing something special, giveaway type thing, for those of you that have been following this story. I have to remove chapters from RoyalRoad.com to fullfill my contract obligations for KU. Stay tuned!
Leaving RoyalRoad
This is also bittersweet, because I have decided to stop posting future chapters of Underworld and Codename: Freedom on RoyalRoad.com. I am working on a few options so that you can still read chapters for free, but it will probably be a while before it is live through my website. There are a couple reasons for this.
Quality
When I post online, you are reading a inferior product. The revisions and rewriting that happen cause a lot of confusion and in a sense, depending on what version you read, different people are reading a different story.
Also, I am a professional writer now, so having an inferior product available will eventually come back and bite me.
Ratings and reviews.
Every since I first published on Amazon and had to take chapters off of royalroad.com, I have gotten dozens of ratings and a few reviews greatly lowering my ranking. When you post a Publishing Update and get three .5 ratings in less than a day... I went from the top 100 to just under the top 300 since I first hit the publish button. This means that when I publish a chapter, I'm not getting near the number of views that I used to. Which also means that the time I spend readying chapters for this site do not reach as many people.
Note: There is also the question as to whether it is necessary to publsh here for free to gain an audience when I already have one purchasing my books.
The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.
Now, perhaps some of these ratings are because people aren't liking the direction the story is going. That's fine and understandable. But, there is a group of readers on royalroad.com that are hostile to authors trying to make money. Some are very vocal about it. I have discussed it with many, more reasonable persons, who would like me to keep my fiction up and focus on Patreon. Thank you for reaching out to me and trying to find a compromise. This isn't a bad idea, and I do have a Patreon up, but to be as honest as possible, it isn't enough.
Money
I hate mentioning money, but some of you have been with me for over two years so I want to give you some context. I'm going to talk in generalities that are based on facts, but I'm not going to mention how much money I, or any individual makes. As you can imagine there is a lot of variables, but these numbers aren't fictional or fabricated. I could give you names and figures, but that would be betraying trust and also tacky. Lol. I already feel kind of of dirty even going this far.
So, take the amount of money that the most popular authors on royalroad.com make through Patreon in a year. You have probably seen some making in the realm of 20-30k a year. This will be our example. We won't even mention the 10% that Patreon takes out of their paycheck each month. If that same author published on Amazon using KU, assuming they published 2 books a year minimum, they would make 2-5 times that amount. Possibly more if they published an insane number of books.
Yes, the range is huge, but please understand that even those with the best Patreon following are leaving tens of thousands to as much as a hundred thousand dollars on the table; depending on how many books they could publish in a year and how popular their series is. That is why almost every successful series is slowly disappearing from royalroad.com. Treat those that are still here well, because I couldn't in my right mind recommend that they stay. Not because I'm greedy, but you've probably heard me say it before. I have a family and I have to put them first.
Not Finished With RoyalRoad Entirely
I am seriously considering writing something just for royal road, or possibly putting the first book up in any new series when I do start them in the future. If it wasn't for RoyalRoad.com I probably wouldn't have publshed this early in life. Your feedback and encouragement since October of 2015 has been incredible. Thanks you guys.
For those of you worried about not being able to continue reading and you can't afford the books, Patreon, or can't buy from Amazon, I haven't forgotten you. I'm working on it.
Also, sorry for so many unanswered comments recently. I'm in crunch time, getting ready to publish, so I'm havign difficulty getting to respond. I have read all of them though. You are getting through to me.
Thanks to all. You will probably hear from me again later this week!