Recently I met with friends who are now successful e-book writers. Together they publish a web novel, five chapters every week, with weeks worth of chapters in advance available on their Patreon. For them, this is a full-time endeavor, but it supports their family. I can’t write full-time, but to some extent they invited me to follow suit.
While I have some stories to publish via traditional publishing when the time comes, there are others I might e-publish via free websites like whatever has replaced FictionPress. According to my friends that is Wattpad and Royal Road and Tapas (though the last one is perhaps for web comics rather).
What is published as web novel is unlikely to be picked up by traditional publishing due to the lack of exclusivity. Similarly, what is traditionally published already makes no sense to be made available for free online (except through Amazon’s Kindle Unlimited, which pays writers based on number of reads).
There are also stories of webnovels that are so successful that upon completion, a major chunk is removed from the free sites to be published online via Kindle Unlimited. So there’s that, too. Monetization of a previously free work. It doesn’t work for all, but it has been a way for some writers to earn after they’ve built up a large following.
And curiously enough, not all stories will work for traditional publishing or for web novel. It depends on various factors and writing techniques. More on that tomorrow.