SO I have a friend with a few pretty popular stories. She was recently approached by a larger site (Dreame) about Hosting their story on their site, exclusively. In return, she would get a one time payment of $320 + royalties and a cut of Premium if it got popular enough. Or about $140 if the contract is Non-exclusive. On Wattpad right now the Stories currently all have; 556k view count, 9.79k votes ($150/$50) 485k view count, 14.1k votes ($100/$50) 280k view counts, 4.73k votes ($70/$40) My question is, is this even a good deal? Granted, she's not a too famous author (though she has about 17k followers) so she doesn't have a lot of pushing power. But I don't know what the going rates for this kind of thing are. Does anyone know? or know where I could find out?
She does get royalties and revenue from Premium, but thats only if it goes premium as far as I can see in the contract (so no Ad revenue for example). I COULD be wrong with this, but I'd need someone better than me to look through the contract.
Since idk the rates, i'm judging from her motivation.. How does she want to continue as an author? Non exclusive means more platform that she could push out to. Exclussive is good if your friend is pushing for a loyal or recurring reader.
I recommend posting this on Scribblehub instead. They write stories over there so they will have better insight.
Uh-uh? definitely not for me, especially since you said 'exclusive'. What the hell? It's already like selling your work to them and you only get this much? She's also pretty popular to get that many views on an extremely competetitive platform like Wattpad. If I were her, I'd demand non exclusive. Anyway, she should have a large following already. If she plans to migrate and monetize... er wait, doesn't wattpad also offer coin system?
What @Aina Seira said. The site seems to be looking for ways to bring in more dedicated readers. Your friend's stories seems to be their chosen method. I am not familiar with licensing rates, so I can't say if they're competitive or not. Most likely they started out with a very low figure to see if they got lucky and she agreed. There's another facet you haven't thought of, however. Has your friend ever thought of turning her stories into eBooks? I wouldn't be surprised if such an "exclusive" contract would preclude her from doing so in favor of the group. They may or may not even give her royalties if it wasn't specifically mentioned. There's lots of ways to monetize with original content. It's the group behind that site's job to maximize their ROI. It's your friend's job to ensure she doesn't become trampled. Delay talks and get as much information as possible before making a decision.
Yep, most likely the contract would forbid her from creating an ebook out of her work. All electronic rights will be theirs, only rights for paperback publication will be retained by her. Shady.
That is some pretty good viewership numbers. They aren't crazy good so I wouldn't say they could aggressively negotiate terms or anything with those stories. I dont think Dreame is the platform to make a name for yourself. I would not sign an exclusivity deal of any sort. Sure you may get some more money but it is nowhere near enough to compensate for the loss of exposure you will get by signing with them. Your books just won't be read by as many and it will stunt the growth of their fan base if not end it entirely. Dreams isn't the Amazon or audible of their industry where doing good there is a doorway to whatever you want. I just don't see the value in it. Wanna be small time or keep trying to make it bigger. I dont think dreame helps with the latter personally. As an aside. How about some promo. What stories?
Mathematically I'm going to say no. It looks like in 3-4 months she would earn the one time payment amount. Then without knowing how much the royalties and other compensation is, I'm going to assume they are less based on the onetime payment. So in the long run they would loose money. Though they do have ways she can make more money. If she can make hot enough of them to make more then she could at wattpad then she should switch. Here is the link https://www.dreame.com/act/authorWelfare
Does she have a Patreon? I've seen people with way less than 17k followers with decent earnings. (100$ - 2.000$ per month.) If money really matters that much to her, hosting the stories on several websites would do her well in a long term.
aigoo looking at the site the author welfare program, honestly daily release for max 100 per month doesn't sounds not great? (though idk if it's still applicable for your friend) but I definitely won't do exclusive with a max $100usd payout monthly thing... And tbh i think your friend would be safer with multiple platforms + patreon since friend could still do ebook and put it on amazon and/or google books which I feel has much more people using as reader platform