The Economics of Storytelling
How stories get paid for, by whom, at what scale.
Clusters
Historical economics of fiction
Penny dreadfuls, pulp magazines, mass-market paperbacks, bestseller economics decade by decade, mid-list death.
The streaming/TV analogy
TV cancellation math, the Netflix algorithm, reservation prices, why a 200k-reader Substack thrives where a 200k-viewer TV show fails.
Subscription economics
Subscription fatigue, the $9.99 ceiling, bundling vs. unbundling, cohort retention, LTV for AI fiction.
Microtransaction economics
Credit packs as pricing mechanism, anchoring and decoy pricing, lessons from mobile games.
Creator economics
Substack vs. Nuvvel, Patreon math, Royal Road labor, AI fiction and the demise of mid-list authorship.
Unit economics of generative fiction
Cost per chapter, margin curves, caching as the biggest lever, pricing power in AI fiction.
Macro forecasts
AI fiction as share of consumption (2027/2030/2035), the collapse-of-TV thesis, cannibalization questions.
No published pieces in this pillar yet.