Author earnings calculator
Most earnings calculators multiply a price by an audience. This one starts a step earlier, with what the book costs to put on the shelf, and runs through to the point where it has paid that back. Set the platform stage, the shape of your book, and the readership you expect, and it returns cost, earnings per reader, break-even, and the curve where the two cross.
Chapter one is free to every reader, so only later chapters earn. Two tabs: Author Earnings models a book of your own, and Referral Program models what recruiting other authors pays. Nothing is sent anywhere - the math runs in your browser.
Key takeaways
- Authors keep 70% of every chapter unlock. A 5 credit unlock is 5 cents of reader spend, of which 3.5 cents reaches the author.
- Publishing a book has a cost as well as a return: the AI pipeline that builds it, plus optional audio narration and translation. An imported book skips the pipeline cost entirely.
- Audio is the larger per-reader line. A listener unlocks narration at 75 credits a chapter against 5 for text, and the same 70% share applies.
- Break-even is the honest number: how many readers it takes before a book has repaid what it cost to publish.
- The referral tab is a separate mechanism - referring authors pays 1% to 10% of their spend by tier, on top of anything your own books earn.
How it works
The mechanics behind the numbers
Pick a platform stage
Launch, Growing and Established set the readership assumptions to ranges drawn from comparable web-fiction platforms. The stage matters more than any other input, because reader volume dominates the result.
Describe the book
Chapter count, whether the prose came from the AI pipeline or an import, and whether you are adding translation or narration. Each choice moves the cost line, and audio and translation also move the earnings line.
Readers unlock chapters
Chapter one is free. After that a reader spends credits per chapter at a price you set, and 70% of every unlock is credited to you.
Read the crossing point
The chart plots cumulative earnings against what the book cost. Where they cross is break-even; everything past it is profit on a book that is already written.
Questions
Frequently asked
- How much does an author earn per chapter?
- You keep 70% of every unlock. At the default 5 credits per chapter, and a credit being a penny, that is 3.5 cents per reader per chapter. An audio unlock is 75 credits, so a listener is worth about 52 cents a chapter at the same share.
- Why does the calculator ask what the book cost to publish?
- Because an earnings figure on its own is not a decision. Building a book through the AI pipeline costs credits, and narration and translation cost more, so the useful number is not what a book earns but how long it takes to earn back what it took to make. Importing a finished manuscript sets that cost to zero, which is why an imported book breaks even on its first reader.
- How are credits worth real money?
- Credits are priced at a penny each, so $10 buys 1,000 credits. A 5 credit unlock is 5 cents of reader spend and your share of it is 3.5 cents.
- Is chapter one free?
- Yes, permanently, for every story. It is the on-ramp that lets a reader try you at no cost, so it never earns an unlock and the calculator excludes it.
- What does the Referral Program tab model?
- Earnings from authors you bring to the platform rather than from your own books. There are four tiers, Bronze through Platinum, paying between 1% and 10% of what those authors spend, with a one-off bonus at each threshold. The tab projects it over the number of months you choose, since referral income compounds as recruits start publishing.
- Are these figures guaranteed?
- No. They are an illustration built from the inputs you set. Real earnings depend on how many readers reach your book and how far they read, neither of which any calculator can promise.
- How do I get paid?
- Earnings accrue in your account and are withdrawn through Stripe Connect where Stripe operates, or by Wise bank transfer where it does not. You can also convert them back into credits to fund more writing.
What this page does not claim
- The figures are an illustration from your inputs, not a prediction or a guarantee of income.
- Platform stage presets are modeled on comparable web-fiction platforms. They describe plausible ranges, not Novelmint’s current traffic.
- It does not estimate how many readers your book will actually reach. That depends on the book and on your audience.
- Credit pricing, the 70% share and the referral tiers are current at time of writing; the pricing page carries the live figures.
- It does not account for taxes, payout fees, or currency conversion.
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Reading time calculator
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Word count by genre
See the target length for your genre — and whether you’re in range.
Run the numbers, then write the chapters.
No card. Your first chapter is free to write and publish.