How to Set Up Ream for Fiction Authors
Ream (reamstories.com) is the fiction-native alternative to Patreon — built by authors who experienced Patreon's limitations for serial fiction and designed the platform they wished existed. Its chapter-native posting, series organization, and reading-app-quality subscriber interface produce a meaningfully different reader experience than anything Patreon's general-creator infrastructure can provide.
This guide covers the complete Ream setup workflow — from account creation through series organization, tier design, chapter posting, and launch strategy.
Why Ream Instead of Patreon for Fiction
Step 1: Create Your Ream Account
Go to reamstories.com and click Get Started or Sign Up as an Author. Create your account with your email. After email verification, complete your author profile setup.
Payment and Tax Setup
From your account settings, connect your payment method for receiving subscriber income. Ream pays on a monthly schedule via Stripe. Complete any required tax documentation — US authors provide W-9 equivalent information; non-US authors provide applicable documentation. Without completed tax information, Ream withholds applicable taxes.
Ream's fee structure: check the current platform fee and payment processing rates at reamstories.com, as these have evolved since the platform launched. The effective take-home per subscriber is generally competitive with Patreon for fiction-focused authors.
Step 2: Build Your Author Profile
From your dashboard, navigate to Profile settings.
Author name: your pen name or author name exactly as you use it everywhere
Author photo: professional headshot — same photo as Amazon Author Central and your website
Cover image: wide banner image representing your author brand — your book covers, atmospheric imagery, or custom branding
Biography: write for readers, not publishers — what you write, what your fictional world feels like, why readers love your stories
Author website and social links: add these so readers can find you beyond Ream
Your Ream author profile appears on your public author page, visible to both subscribers and non-subscribers browsing Ream. Make it compelling — it's your sales page.
Step 3: Organize Your Series
Ream's series organization is one of its primary differentiators from Patreon. Before posting any chapters, create your series structure.
Creating a Series
From your dashboard, navigate to Stories or Series (terminology may vary in current Ream interface)
Click Create New Story/Series
Enter your series title — the name readers will see
Add a series description — the marketing copy that tells potential subscribers what this series is about
Upload a series cover image — can be your book cover for that series
Set series status: Ongoing (chapters posting regularly), Completed (series finished), or Coming Soon
Save
Create a series for each distinct work you plan to post on Ream. A subscriber navigating to your Ream page sees your series organized as separate works, each with its chapters in sequence — like a digital bookshelf rather than a reverse-chronological post feed.
Step 4: Design Your Tier Structure
Tiers are the subscription levels readers choose. Design them around what fiction readers specifically value.
Recommended Tier Structure for Fiction Authors on Ream
Early Access as the Core Benefit
Early chapter access — reading chapters of an in-progress novel as they are written, weeks or months before the book publishes — is Ream's signature benefit and the reason readers subscribe to fiction authors specifically. A subscriber who reads your next novel chapter by chapter as you write it experiences a fundamentally different relationship with your work than a reader who waits for the finished book.
This benefit is only possible on Ream (or Patreon with workarounds). It is the clearest competitive advantage Ream-subscribing authors have over their wide-retail-only peers. Build your primary tier around it.
Bonus Stories as Exclusive Content
Bonus stories — short fiction set in the same world as your series, told from alternate perspectives, exploring backstory, or covering events that happen between books — are high-value Ream content that never need to be published elsewhere. These can be Ream-exclusive permanently, giving subscribers a reason to maintain their subscription even during periods when you're not actively posting a new novel.
⚠ Do not include KDP Select-enrolled titles in any Ream subscription benefit — early access to enrolled ebooks, backlist reading access, or any other form of digital distribution of enrolled content violates KDP Select's exclusivity terms. Only non-enrolled, non-exclusive titles should be offered through Ream.
Backlist Library Access
Offering access to your completed, non-exclusive backlist titles as part of a subscription tier is a compelling benefit for new subscribers who are discovering your work. A reader who joins your Ream subscription and can immediately read your first three published novels before they're hooked on your ongoing serial is converting as a fan much more deeply than a reader who only gets future content.
Note the KDP Select restriction above — only non-exclusive titles eligible for this benefit.
Setting Up Tiers in Ream
From your dashboard, navigate to Membership or Tiers
Click Add Tier
Set the tier name, monthly price, and description
Add benefits — specify what each tier includes
Assign which series content is accessible at each tier (e.g., early access chapters are tier-locked to the Early Access tier and above)
Set any patron limits for premium tiers
Save and repeat for each tier
Step 5: Configure Chapter Access and Locking
Ream allows you to control which chapters are accessible at which tier levels. This is how the early access model works: you post a chapter, lock it to your Early Access tier (and above), and subscribers at that tier can read it while lower-tier subscribers and non-subscribers cannot.
When a book completes and publishes to wide retail, you can choose to unlock the posted chapters on Ream for all subscribers, or keep them locked as an exclusive benefit. Many authors unlock completed novels for lower tiers or make them publicly readable as a sample of what the subscription offers.
Step 6: The Chapter Posting Workflow
This is the core activity of your Ream author life — posting chapters as you write them. From your dashboard:
Navigate to the series you're currently writing
Click Add Chapter or Post New Chapter
Enter the chapter title and chapter number (Ream's system tracks these sequentially)
Write or paste your chapter content into Ream's text editor
Set the access level — which tier minimum can read this chapter
Preview how the chapter will appear in the reader interface
Publish
Subscribers at the appropriate tier receive a notification that a new chapter has posted. They open Ream's reading interface — which displays your chapter with clean typography, chapter navigation, and reading progress tracking — and read. This reading experience is qualitatively different from reading a Patreon post.
Chapter Release Cadence
Your chapter release cadence is the most important factor in subscriber retention. Establish a cadence you can sustain before launching — one chapter per week, two per week, bi-weekly — and communicate it clearly in your tier descriptions. Subscribers who join expecting weekly chapters and receive them stay. Subscribers who join expecting weekly chapters and receive nothing after two weeks cancel.
⚠ Irregular or infrequent posting is the primary cause of Ream subscriber cancellations. Set a realistic cadence based on your actual writing speed, not your aspirational speed. A sustainable bi-weekly chapter is better than a promised weekly chapter you can't deliver. Communicate any breaks in your cadence proactively — unexpected silence kills subscriber trust faster than anything else.
Step 7: Set Up Your Welcome Message
Configure an automated welcome message that new subscribers receive when they join. From account or membership settings, create a welcome message for each tier that:
Thanks them by tier name
Tells them exactly where to start — which series to read first, where to find the early access chapters
Sets expectations for posting cadence — when they can expect the next chapter
Includes any community links (Discord, etc.)
The welcome message is the first subscriber experience after payment. Make it warm, specific, and immediately useful — tell them how to get the value they just paid for within the first 30 seconds of reading.
Step 8: Connect to Your Email List
Export your subscriber email addresses from Ream periodically and maintain a backup outside the platform. Use Zapier or any available direct integration to add new Ream subscribers to your email list automatically — this protects the subscriber relationship from any future platform changes.
Step 9: Launch Strategy
Launch Ream to your existing audience — your email list is the primary channel. Send an announcement email that leads with the reader benefit: the chance to read your next novel as you write it, chapter by chapter, before anyone else. Include your tier options and clear direct links to join. Don't bury the lead in explanation of how Ream works — lead with what they receive.
Set a launch goal (50 subscribers in 30 days, $500/month in 60 days) and share your progress with your email list. Authors who share transparent progress updates consistently report that readers rally to help them reach goals — they feel invested in the author's success.
Ream subscription income connects to ScribeCount as part of your direct revenue tracking. For fiction authors building a layered income strategy — Ream for recurring subscriber income, wide retail for new reader acquisition, Kickstarter for special edition campaigns — seeing all income streams in ScribeCount shows how the recurring Ream baseline stabilizes the variable retail royalty picture month over month.
Common Ream Mistakes
Not establishing a posting cadence before launching — then posting irregularly and losing subscribers
Including KDP Select-enrolled titles in subscription access — violating KDP Select's exclusivity terms
Under-pricing the early access tier relative to its genuine value — many authors charge too little for access to their in-progress novels
Launching without any chapters posted — subscribers who arrive to an empty series have nothing to read
Not setting up a welcome message — missing the most important first-impression opportunity
Not connecting Ream to ScribeCount — losing visibility into how subscription income fits into your total author income
Ream exists because fiction readers wanted something Patreon couldn't provide: a platform that treats serial novel chapters as the first-class content they are. The reading interface, the series organization, the chapter-native posting — these are not cosmetic differences from Patreon. They reflect what fiction readers actually want from a subscription. Set your cadence, post consistently, build your series, and let the reading experience do the selling.
-Randall Wood