Arwy has an internal currency called coins. Readers buy them; writers earn them; earned coins can be converted into real money and paid out. Everything below is set out formally in the Creator Payment Terms — this is the readable version.
The rule underneath all of it: every payment comes from money already received. Nothing is promised that isn't backed by actual revenue.
1. Donations — a reader sends you coins
The simplest one. A reader who liked your work sends coins directly. A 15% service fee is deducted and the rest lands in your wallet. There's a holding period before donated earnings become withdrawable, which exists so refunds and chargebacks can settle first.
2. The reading pool — a share of revenue, split by reads
Each month Arwy sets aside a share of its coin-sales revenue as a pool, and that pool is divided across all valid reads on the platform for that period. If your chapters were read more, your slice is larger.
Two things worth being clear about. The value of a read isn't fixed — it's only known once the period closes, because it depends on how much revenue came in and how much reading happened. And a valid read counts once per reader per chapter; re-reading the same chapter doesn't multiply anything, and reading your own books earns nothing.
3. Paid chapters — set a price on a chapter
You can lock individual chapters behind a coin price. A reader unlocks it, you get the coins minus the service fee. There are guard rails: the first three chapters of any book are always free, so nobody pays before they can judge the writing, and once a chapter has sold you can't shrink it dramatically — readers keep what they paid for.
Paid chapters don't also earn from the reading pool. You've already been paid directly for that read; taking a second cut would mean the same reading is paid for twice.
Who can charge for chapters
Paid chapters aren't switched on for brand-new accounts. You need to accept the payment terms and meet a few thresholds — a minimum number of followers, published chapters, and total reads. It isn't a quality judgement; it's there so a reader paying for chapter four has some reason to believe chapter five is coming. The exact numbers are shown in the app, with your current progress against each one.
When the money arrives
Payouts run about three months behind. This is standard on music and digital royalty platforms, and the reason is unglamorous but important: refunds, chargebacks and fraud all surface in that window. Paying out immediately would mean sometimes paying out money that later has to be reversed.
To cash out you complete identity verification, and the minimum withdrawal is 500 coins. Payouts are made by bank transfer, and every deduction — service fee, bank charge, any tax withheld — is itemised in the email you receive.
The honest expectation
This is not a replacement for an income, and anyone telling you otherwise about any platform is selling something. What it is: a way for readers to say thank you with something more concrete than a comment, and a way for writing that gets read a lot to return something. Treat it as a bonus on top of the reason you were writing anyway.
If you're at the earlier stage — no audience yet — that's the real bottleneck, and money won't fix it. Start with how to get your first readers and publishing your first book.
Publish a chapter and see how it works. Start on Arwy.
Writing something yourself? Everything we know about publishing it — free guides, how rights work, and what you can actually earn — is collected on Arwy for writers.
← All posts