Don't worry — new chapters are still releasing on schedule! Chapter 29 releases on Tuesday the 8th of April 2025.

  Hello everyone,

  Last time I wrote an update, I included a poll to ask whether you'd like to read more, semi-regular updates. The overwhelming response was that you wanted to hear more from behind the scenes — so, here we go.

  How are we doing now?

  As I mentioned, Royal Road has somewhere in the region of 50,000 fictions. Ranking is determined by only three things: star ratings (minor bump to ranking), short reviews (moderate bump to ranking), and full reviews (big bump to ranking). On Friday the 21st of March we had reached 4,019th of all fictions on Royal Road.

  Two weeks later, as of Friday the 4th of April we've reached 2,324th of all fictions on Royal Road.

  Once again: thank you to everyone who has rated or reviewed TEWWBAD. You're making a huge difference to my life. As I said last time, once TEWWBAD is done I'm going to write a short story and upload it only on Royal Road — and to show my thanks, I'll dedicate it by name to everyone who posts a fair review before the story is complete. I'd happily include everyone who gives a rating as well, but unfortunately I can't see your names.

  Why does ranking matter?

  It's not about ego. Writing for a living is an ugly business.

  My ambition is to make a basic living from writing my stories. I'm disabled, and in the unlucky position where I'm not disabled enough to qualify for meaningful social support, but too disabled to safely do a lot of work. I only have the health to do only one significant thing each day. So I use the day to write, or I don't write at all. I don't tell you this because I want your sympathy — just to be honest about the situation I'm in.

  Would it surprise you to know that 99% of authors – even authors with dozens of award-winning books – do not make enough to write full time? I've been burning through savings and living off of the charity of devoted friends who believe in my work to write TEWWBAD. Writing professionally is incredibly rough to make a start in.

  ? Traditional publishing is tremendously exploitative: most authors only get around 9% of the sale price of their books in stores, and the publishers leave them to do all the promotional work. If the author is lucky, the publisher might arrange advance reviews with major book reviewers, but that's a matter of discretion. The only way to be treated fairly in traditional publishing is to show up with a large audience ready to go (we're talking hundreds of thousands of guaranteed sales). You also almost always need an agent, who takes 15% of that 9% — and actually getting a first manuscript accepted usually takes a minimum of a year, with usually another six months to a year again before it's published.

  ? Meanwhile, indie publishing is incredibly difficult: authors have to do (and pay upfront for) literally everything themselves, while 90% of the indie publishing market is sold through Amazon. Horribly, Amazon is notorious for automatically banning authors outright if they receive any complaints, no matter how spurious — they don't want to spend money paying people to moderate their marketplace. And even if Amazon ignore an author's work and let it sell, indie publishers are effectively frozen out of major review platforms, depend entirely on self-arranged promotion, and live at the mercy of the Amazon advertising system (which is a whole can of worms) and how it interacts with the Amazon algorithm that suggests books.

  This is just a small taste of the issues; the publishing industry is actually way worse than I'm making it sound.

  Help support creative writers by finding and reading their stories on the original site.

  All of this informs how I'm releasing TEWWBAD. The – I write this with a deep, deep sigh – monetisation model I'm pursuing is pretty simple.

  TEWWBAD is slowly but surely releasing for free, with the option to read ahead via the Patreon (and the more people who become patrons, the longer the read-ahead will grow). Once TEWWBAD is fully uploaded, we'll gauge interest for an eBook/print edition. If there's appetite for it, we'll see about launching it on Amazon. If a lot of readers have become patrons, we'll also see if there's also interest in a special edition print version... but that's a huge 'if.'

  So, how am I doing?

  Authors are not meant to tell people this. We're supposed to fake it until we make it, and keep the numbers vague.

  Financially? The combination of income from Patreon and theoretical eBook/print sales determines whether I can keep writing. As things stand, I've spent over $1,000 directly on TEWWBAD (not counting my actual living costs or the opportunity cost of hours and hours of writing) and made back about $50. I'm way down in the hole.

  Accounting for expenses, taxes, and all the things we hate to think about, I've modelled the magic number of paying patrons I need as ~890. That's the point where I think I can afford to cover production and promotion expenses for ongoing and future projects and live a modest life. It's also assuming I get a mixture of people subscribing at the $2 and $5 tiers (I'm ignoring the limited number of $4 subscribers, since that's a small promotional tier).

  For every patron short of that number, we have to sell around fourteen copies of a book each year — but properly preparing and launching just an eBook on Amazon costs money, too, so we have to be confident we'll get at least three hundred sales to risk it. For comparison, your typical indie-published book sells less than one hundred copies.

  Ah, but could we ditch Amazon and take TEWWBAD to a traditional publisher? Well, again, it comes down to demonstrable audience, which means patrons or indie sales figures. The bigger the audience, the easier it is to get an agent and sell a manuscript. I say "easier," because it's not easy. Even then, your typical traditionally-published book sells less than one thousand copies, and advances for new authors are usually only a couple of thousand dollars at best. Frankly? If we're doing well enough to draw a publisher's attention, we're probably doing well enough to succeed through Patreon and indie publishing, so it's a moot point.

  In short: the higher TEWWBAD rises in the rankings, the more people are exposed to the story by the algorithm, the more readers who come onboard, which translates to a greater chance I can keep going.

  To be clear: I don't expect you to join the Patreon. You know yourself what you can afford, and decide for yourself what you value; I trust your conscience. I believe that the people who're invested will care enough to support me however they can, and I'm endlessly grateful for whatever support I get — including non-financial support.

  Anyway, now you have a taste for how much being an author under Capitalism sucks. Sorry. This update was all a bit heavy, so I won't be touching this topic again for a while... unless there's good news.

  What's next?

  Thanks to the support of a wonderful friend, I'm currently in the process of getting a new cover made, and based on early sketches I'm very excited about how it's shaping up. TEWWBAD wasn't originally written specifically for Royal Road, and the cover style I went for doesn't fit usual expectations here, so the hope is that it'll help draw people's attention where the current art style would put them off. If you like the current version, don't worry — the dual-cover will be staying in the prologue.

  We're also looking at the possibility of getting character art done – perhaps of key moments from the story – so you'll maybe get a look at how I've pictured Saphienne (and others), and how she grows across the story. This isn't confirmed yet, but my fingers are crossed.

  Finally, since you sat through all of this, I'd like to ask you a question. How many chapters of read-ahead would be worth $5 a month to you? The current tiers are 2 and 4 chapters for $2 and $5 respectively, with an extra chapter periodically added to both tiers as the number of patrons grow. What do you think? Drop a comment below to let me know how you feel.

  That's all for now. My cat has been patiently sat watching me write to you, so I think I owe them some company.

  Thanks for reading,

  LJ

  P.S. As before, this is a temporary message. It was too long for an author's note in a chapter, so I'll delete it next week.