I worked closely in beta with more than 50 authors for a year before Theo Reads launched publicly in the first quarter of 2026. To the authors who have helped shape the platform into what it is today, I owe you a tremendous debt of gratitude. Supporting a new platform, especially with the headwinds Romance faces today, takes vision and a big leap of faith and I don’t take that lightly.

We’ve been building so fast since then that I looked up recently and realized there’s nothing current on our site explaining why a romance or erotica author should publish on theoreads.com. So here I am.  

But first, since you’re new to us, these three concepts have been foundational to how we operate at Theo Reads:

I will always do my damnedest to be fair. To authors, to readers, to this genre we all love. Profitability matters, it’s how we pay you long-term, but profitability on the backs of authors is no bueno. So, if you see or hear something here you don’t agree with, I hope you’ll reach out or grab some time on my calendar, and we’ll talk about it. 

Our feelings around the use of AI are unambiguous. At Theo Reads, we know the story is sacred. And it’s sacred not just because of the words used to tell the story, but because the author felt something and found the right words to share it. That is irreplaceable and we will protect it always - we cannot outsource our feelings to AI. AI is a tool some of us use, and we support using it for the labor that surrounds storytelling (grammar check and such) but never for the storytelling itself. You can read our AI Policy here.

And last, as a community, we believe in the concept of “the commons”, which is the shared trust, reputation, and reader attention that every author on Theo Reads benefits from and has a responsibility to protect. The healthiest communities are the ones where members feel ownership over the shared resource - not just compliance with rules, but genuine care for what they’re building together. We’re building Theo Reads together with you.

Thank you for indulging me. Onward.

Theo Reads is building the infrastructure for romance authors

We don’t just host your stories for you. We are also building the infrastructure around these stories and investing in your future as an author.

What does that even mean?

An indie author needs four things to “make it”.

1. Writing the story.

   On Theo Reads, authors get access to a world-class, pro-level editor. Free. So you can continue using Atticus or other software, or you can just use our pro-level editor- your choice. The Theo Reads editor has built-in front and back matter.

• Front matter: This includes the usual placeholders for copyright info, dedication etc. It also includes a “No AI Training” statement to protect your work, and a placeholder for content warnings (increasingly important in more explicit stories but equally as important in low-to-no-spice stories that include triggers such as suicide, mental illess, or domestic violence).

• The story itself: You can pick from several font types and sizes - we’ll continue building this selection out. You can also specify where you want the reader preview to end for each book (preferably at the first cliffhanger, wherever it lands). You can save several versions of a story. And, you can share your story draft with friends or editors for feedback via comments or co-editing directly in the editor.

• Back matter: One click to pick the story or reader magnet you’d like to send your readers to once they’re done reading the book. And an incredibly easy way to add all your other stories for readers to browse, including their book covers (book covers continue to be one of the most important ways to get readers to click on your story).

2. Marketing the story.

   Look, I believe it verges on criminal how many middlemen exist to “sell” their services to authors who aren't making much money to begin with. On a more pragmatic note, if a platform is hosting your stories, shouldn’t we also make it easy for you to market these stories? 

   So, we’ve given you the ability to create and host ARCs and create reader magnets, for free. The only requirement, of course, is that you can only create ARCs and reader magnets for stories that are already published on Theo Reads (that’s the pragmatism I mentioned earlier). You can read more about how to create ARCs here, and about reader magnets here. I apologize in advance that both links sit behind login. We haven’t built the public versions yet. Small team, long list of things to do.

   I have a high-speed 3D printer at home and a husband who loves tinkering with it, so we started an author loyalty program. Published authors can request 3D bookmarks to hand out at reader events. We hear that they work embarrassingly well at getting people to stop at your table. They come for the bookmarks, they stay for your books. Submit your bookmark order here.

3. Selling the story.

   A lot of planning goes into a book before a word gets written. What are readers actually reading right now, and what will they want six months from now? What does a book this length usually sell for? What covers are selling? We put all of this in a monthly trend report. You can grab your latest trend report here.

   All of this planning is great, but as many writers of explicit works know, I haven’t yet addressed the elephant in the room. Many a platform has failed because they couldn’t get approved by a reliable payment processor at a reasonable rate. Fortunately, I’ve been able to leverage my +20 years in the business world to get approved by three payment processors. And we don’t pay our authors through PayPal, so your PayPal account will never see a dollar of “adult content” income (how platforms like PayPal categorize income from romance and erotica)…which means it will never get frozen over one.

4. The certainty that your story won’t be banned, shadow banned, or taken down overnight.

   We believe all stories about love and desire deserve to be read. If we’ve accepted your story, it will be visible in search results. Our content guidelines are quite straightforward - do no harm. This means no minors, hate speech, incest, bestiality, or true non con/assault. Everything else is clearly labeled for safe reading. Read Theo Reads’ Content Guidelines.

   To authors of low-to-no-spice romance: our entire reason for being is that all stories about love and desire are welcome, and that includes closed door and low spice stories.

What you earn in royalties on Theo Reads

I’m going to do comparative math here because we’re talking about royalties, and I know you’ll compare Theo Reads to other platforms anyway. So, I’ll make it easy for you.

• Authors on Theo Reads get up to 50% royalties (depending on how much of your full-length books and novella backlist you bring with you) on non-exclusive stories, and up to 70% on exclusive stories on Theo Reads. The exclusivity period is six months only. Read the full terms here.

• Draft2Digital is a pure wholesale distributor (distributes your works to big retailers) and not a reading platform like Theo Reads, and they don’t offer many author benefits for that reason. The readers you get through them? They’re not your readers. They’re Amazon's readers, Kobo's readers, Apple's readers, who happened to land on your title this time because the algorithm felt like it. Because next time you publish, that same algorithm may not surface you at all. You'll start from zero again. New book, new launch, same hamster wheel, same frantic search for readers who have no particular reason to be loyal to you specifically. In fact, the same hamster wheel of discount readers looking for a discounted deal, who may never be ready to pay full-price for any of your future books. 

  So D2D doesn’t build your audience; it gives you access to someone else's. As a reminder, you can actually build your own audience on Theo Reads using our ARCs and reader magnets. Details on Theo Reads vs. Draft2Digital and Smashwords. Moving on. 

• KU does not pay a percentage of your list price. It pays per page read from a shared monthly pool, roughly $0.0045 per page right now. On a standard 300-page romance at $4.99, that's about $1.35 per full read. An effective royalty of around 27%. KU also requires you to pull your book from Kobo, Apple, Barnes & Noble, and everywhere else just to participate. On top of that, many authors pay an Amazon tx by buying ads. So, no book covers, no community, no trend analysis AND your books have to be exclusive AND you pay a tax.

  Don't even get me started on the AI-written titles that are now flooding Amazon and tanking your earnings, because that's what happens when supply (stories) grows faster than demand (readers).

  Look, Amazon is not a book platform. Amazon sells everything. Ebooks are a rounding error in a business built on cloud infrastructure, advertising, logistics, hardware, and Prime memberships. Apple's real margin is in hardware. Apple Books exists to make Apple devices feel worth buying, not to make your $4.99 romance profitable. Kobo is Rakuten's strategic chess piece against Amazon in international markets. Books are not their business - their 70% actually buys you a file hosting service and a transaction processor. Everything else, you pay for yourself, or you go without. Details on Theo Reads vs. Amazon/Apple/Kobo.

• Inkitt is free, no royalties. Once a story gets enough readers on Inkitt, their paying arm, Galatea comes calling, and that’s when things go sideways. If an author accepts the invitation to join Galatea, you sign a publishing agreement that signs over rights to ebooks, audiobooks, film, TV, merchandise. They can edit your book at their discretion, or write sequels with ghostwriters. Galatea allocates 6% of their net revenue for author royalties - this is even lower than the 25% authors get from trad publishing. Details on Theo Reads vs. Inkitt/Galatea.

I won’t get into Wattpad. I happen to know much of the former team that managed Wattpad during its most successful years, and out of respect for them, I’ll say: Wattpad had a wonderful run. 

Detailed royalty comparison below.

One more thing.

We're newer and smaller than Amazon, but growing fast, specifically focused on the romance and erotica reader. Every reader here came specifically to pay for stories about love and desire. Nobody wandered in looking for paper towels. Equally as important, we’re taking care that this growth doesn’t happen on the backs of authors.

If you like what you've read, you can start publishing on Theo Reads right away… our publishing tools are that easy. Import your backlist into the editor, we accept Word, PDF and EPUB formats, and you can have your first story live in ten minutes. If you’re a wide author, you’re not giving up anything by doing this - in fact, you’re only increasing your earning potential.

And if you know an author who needs to read this, send it to them. Word of mouth is how most people here found us.

→ Start publishing your backlist

With love,

Parneet, Founder, Theo Reads 🤍