Selling books is challenging, especially if you’re a new Author. The market is saturated, and it’s increasingly difficult to convince readers to spend their hard-earned money on you rather than a household name.

Authors have sought to monetize their books by submitting them to Amazon Kindle Select. Authors’ payments from Kindle Select depend on the page numbers readers have read, and Amazon splits the pool of funds raised from subscriptions.

Making money from Kindle Select has become challenging. Amazon expects exclusive rights, so you can’t sell your book anywhere else.

The perfect solution would be posting parts of your book and getting paid. But is that even possible?

Yes.

Several platforms allow authors to post short stories, book chapters, or the entire book and get monetized. You decide how much your want to post.

It’s perfect if you want to monetize only certain parts of your book and maintain exclusive rights.

The first of such platforms is…

Simily

Simily is a relatively new website that aims to connect authors with readers. Fiction and non-fiction authors are welcome to submit their work. The best part about Simily is that your story is immediately published on the platform as soon as you hit the publish button. But they expect your work to be grammatically-correct.

If your story is longer than 15 minutes of reading time, Simily suggests breaking it down into smaller chapters. That’s potentially more income for you as you’ll have more stories posted. You can add a featured photo, category and tags to your story to help get it discovered to the right audience.

As for payment, Simily pays authors monthly based on views. Your account needs to have a minimum of $10 to qualify for payment; otherwise, it rolls over to the next month.

For every 1,000 monthly views you receive, Simily pays $20. Every 10,000 unique views per month get a $200 monthly payout, and if you have 100,00 unique views in a month, you’ll get $2000.

Those figures are decent, but keep in mind that Simily is still building up its reader base. So getting a lot of views may be challenging. But it’s better to get in early so that you can build up an audience.

Simily also plans to do a revenue-sharing model with authors once they have enough paying readers. They plan to share a percentage of subscriptions with authors as royalty payments.

At the time we published this article, Simily didn’t accept erotic stories because of their agreement with Stripe. But they stated their wishes to include erotic content in the future.

Wattpad

Wattpad is specifically a book publishing platform with more than 90 million users. Authors can post a chapter at a time or the entire book.

Although Wattpad has a large collection of free books, it provides authors an opportunity to make money. Their Futures Program, integrating ads for readers to click on a company’s ad, wasn’t successful in monetizing writers, but Wattpad’s Paid Stories program was a huge success.

Readers who wish to unlock chapters of an author’s book need to purchase coins through Apple or Google Play accounts. Readers support authors by unlocking a chapter or an entire book with coins.

To optimize your earnings, you might consider offering a free book to readers so that they sample your writing. Read my article about how best to use a free book to gain attention to a paid one. 

Coil

Coil founders established the platform to ensure that authors get paid for the work they publish. The site doesn’t rely on advertising to generate revenue; instead, subscribers pay a $5 monthly fee to access content on the platform. Creators don’t have to pay a fee.

Coil welcomes an array of content from various industries. Gaming and cryptocurrency have become extremely popular, and if your content is in those niches, you’ll find a home at Coil.

The best part about Coil is that you can integrate your personal website, Youtube channel, and Twitch channel to get paid. Those are three potential revenue sources for the same content you can receive on Coil.

From the monthly fee that members pay, Coil streams your payment to a digital wallet. Yes, you have to have a digital wallet to get paid. Coil pays out in USD also, not only in XRP cryptocurrency. But your digital wallet converts their payment into the currency you selected.

Coil pays $0.36 for every hour a Coil member spends on your content. Coil sends out micropayments every second for each visiting member.

Medium

One of the most prominent monetized content platforms is Medium. In 2019, Medium had about 400,00 subscribers and now has more than 720,000. In two years, Medium had almost doubled.

Since they have a large subscriber pool and look set to grow, finding readers on Medium isn’t a challenge, especially since the platform has more than 60 million monthly readers.

Medium subscribers pay $5 monthly to access content, and the platform pays authors based on the time that readers spend on your work.

The perk of posting on Medium is you can post articles, short stories, chapters or an entire book. The downside is that getting readers to view your work is challenging. Since Medium has plenty of content, directing readers to yours is best achieved if you market it through social media and other avenues.

Medium has a curated list of stories that its editors send to members as a newsletter. Being featured in that newsletter will significantly boost exposure to your work. To be featured in the newsletter, your work has to be exceptional and popular amongst readers. Posting regularly on Medium helps authors receive exposure.

I hope this article sets you on a journey to earning money from your writing. You may also want to read “How to sell books using Amazon advertising.“

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