A publishing platform authors get paid on
A reading and writing platform where authors publish chapter by chapter, sign contracts inside the product, lock chapters behind payment, and earn from subscriptions, coins and reader gifts.
- Web applications
- Product design
- Websites
- Next.js
- Node.js
- TypeScript
- PostgreSQL
- Paystack
By the numbers
What it does
Authors write and release work a chapter at a time rather than a book at a time. Each chapter can be free, locked behind a subscription, or unlocked individually with coins, and the author sets that per chapter rather than per title.
The publishing agreement is part of the product. An author signs it before their first paid chapter goes live, so the terms of the split are settled in writing before any money moves.
The money side
Three income routes run at once: recurring subscriptions, a coin balance readers spend chapter by chapter, and gifts sent directly to an author whose work someone liked. Each behaves differently in the ledger, and all three have to reconcile to a single balance the author can withdraw against.
That reconciliation is the hard part of a platform like this, and it is where most of the engineering went.
How it is built
Server-rendered pages so chapters are indexable and open quickly on a phone, with the paywall enforced on the server rather than hidden in the browser. Reading state, purchases and payouts all live in one relational database with an audit trail on every balance change.
