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Comment by nvarsj | Hacker News Reader

It's interesting considering other markets where Amazon isn't so dominant. Web novel websites are really popular in Asia for example - the content is completely free to read and anyone can upload a novel. The best novels get ranked really high, are easily discoverable, and end up getting publishing deals. Due to the low barrier to entry, good UX, and popularity of the sites, even new authors can get a lot of exposure. I feel like there isn't really anything similar in the US. Amazon has basically extinguished all innovation in this area (like they did with the audio market too, e.g. CDNow which was one of the best curated music sites of all time... and now we have Amazon Music and Spotify).

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There's quite a lot on sites like fanfiction.net and (the newer) Archive of Our own (https://archiveofourown.org/), and RoyalRoad. I've read millions of words of web serials posted on these sites, and would happily buy a published version of them as well.

Other than that, a lot of self-published authors start by uploading their works onto the Kindle (Unlimited) platform, and then marketing via personal blogs, twitter, reddit, etc. These authors can often draw small but devoted audiences – enough to make a reasonable career out of it. Admittedly this is, as you said, an Amazon thing, rather than an independent innovation, but it still works for many.

Royalroad has been growing like crazy, and pretty much anything that makes it to the trending page will get a couple people in the comments asking the author to hurry up and make a patreon page for themselves. WNs definitely seem like a great way for a decent writer to side-hustle without having to write and publish an entire book first, since you can just publish chapters as you go.

RavensDagger, One of the authors that I follow, posted an infographic of their 2020 work & earnings: https://i.redd.it/0cur92r6ll861.jpg

No actual earnings numbers, but Pirateaba is probably the highest paid person on the platform with north of 4k patrons at various tiers, although they recently switched to publishing on their own website only rather than using RR.

> I feel like there isn't really anything similar in the US.

I'm not super familiar with the space, but I think this is what WattPad seeks to achieve. I know there have been at least a few stories on there that struck it big via Netflix deals.

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