By Emilia Rose on October 31, 2022.
For this blog post, we’re analyzing what the top subscription authors do that make their businesses work. The authors we have analyzed come from our spreadsheet of top authors and may not include everyone who is thriving in subscriptions. The fiction authors in our database collectively make over $10 million per year in subscriptions and have over 125,000 individual readers subscribed to their memberships.
Main Benefits
For this specific analysis, we looked at the authors who had 2,000+ monthly supporters. Fourteen authors branded and marketed their subscription as early-access or advanced chapters. Three authors branded and marketed their subscription as bonus content. There were a few authors who weren’t branded or marketed their benefits clearly.
Nearly all authors offered some form of early access and bonus content (i.e. advanced books instead of advanced chapters, behind the scenes, exclusive artwork, etc.).
Tier Amount Breakdown
How much money should you set for each tier? Here is a breakdown of some bestsellers.
- Thirty-two authors priced their lowest tier at $3 per month or under.
- $100-$250 per month tends to be on the high end for tiers.
- A couple people include a $1000 per month tier, including: https://www.patreon.com/brokeassstuart, https://www.patreon.com/wenspencer, https://www.patreon.com/Macronomicon, and https://www.patreon.com/JamesTCallum
- One author has a $1 million per month tier, which you can check out here: https://www.patreon.com/pirateaba
- Authors rarely used a common $0.99 strategy. Most tier levels are an even and easy number.
Genres: The largest genres in subscriptions
These “genres” are what the authors branded themselves as in their tagline / subject line.
- Romance / Erotica / Steamy: 26
- LitRPG: 25
- Science Fiction: 13
- Webnovel / Webserials: 12
- Title: 11
- Comics / Graphic Novel / Webtoon: 7
Other Elements
Out of 19 selected subscription authors from our collection, here is the breakdown of their system:
7/19 people have tier images
18/19 people have unique tier names
10/19 people have community goals
7/19 people have annual memberships set up
If you liked this edition, let us know by reaching out at contact@ream.ink! We would love to do a more in-depth analysis and will also be releasing future updated, more comprehensive versions of this spreadsheet.