I’m interested in starting an ongoing fiction series for my patrons, but I’m unsure how to post it. Would you:
A.) Post the text directly into a Patreon post.
B.) Post a patron-only link to something else like a drive document or private server.
Interested to know your ideas!
B. I don’t have a Patreon for my writing, but my art. As a reader, it would be much easier to click a link to an updated document as opposed to looking through Patreon posts to find the next chapter or update in case I missed one. It would make it easier for new patrons to jump in and get caught up.
You may find this blog insightful as it covers how you can link Patreon to Wordpress, which might be perfect for this kind of idea 
There are a few other successful fiction writers on Patreon you might also want to check out and see how they operate: NK Jemisin & Stant Litore come to mind.
I post a 2,000+ update to one of my stories once every four days.
The best way I find to do it is to write the update in Word and attach it to a new text post. It then shows up as an attachment for people to click on and open.
I write at least 2000 words a day, and I post a link to a Pastebin file in the initial post, then provide updates in the comments. I then use Calibre to make an Ebook once the story is complete and provide that for download.
One option would be to provide a Wordpress or Pastebin link for free, and then have the Ebook as a Patron-only thing. In my experience an equal number of people read the daily updates as wait for the story to be completed, so I think a lot of people would appreciate that second step.
You could also use your Patreon income to buy book covers for your Ebooks, which is what I do, with the hopes of either providing a more attractive incentive for Patrons or getting your stories published on sites like Amazon and Smashwords.
I have a Patron-only feature where I post a chapter of my book series each month. At the top, I link to the beginning of the series. At the bottom of each chapter I link to the next one when it’s posted.
Not sure if that was what you had in mind, but it’s certainly not necessary to shell out for another website/blog in order to post a series.
Author Tobias Buckell has a “Table of Contents” where he has links to all his Patreon stories (and he has A LOT of them), which I think is a tidy way to do it.
Now I also have a similar TOC but this links to BookFunnel copies of my books (another Patron-only perk) in which only active Patrons can download my books (easy to set up).
Hope that helps!
Patty
I’m about to launch, after long stupid delays, some serial fiction. Since I’ve got publishing background, I’m going to offer it as a Kindle file (.mobi), an epub (for all other readers), and as a PDF … and when a particular story is complete and I self-pub it on Amazon, all 3-month-or-more Patrons will get a print copy for free (through CreateSpace) if they want it. I’ll have made more from them at that point that a straight CreateSpace sale would have gotten me, so … s’all good.
Hi @bmunson00! Welcome. You should head over to Introductions and introduce yourself. I’d love to check out what you are doing.
Do you wait to post any of your serial content until it is done? If so, how do you keep interest in the time between?
Alas, that plugin isn’t compatible with all Wordpress themes.
Hello! I am a fellow fiction writer as well, specifically Webnovel with Eastern fantasy as my genre. I post my text directly to Patreon. However, I also published on Webnovel platform for my free readers! I haven’t made a poll with my patrons yet regarding how they find the format on Patreon, but I think its fine! 
For general short stories I paste the text in the post, keeping some decent formatting. For patrons in higher tiers with access to exclusive stories, I upload a PDF to their own personal Dropbox folder to which I provide them access at the start of their subscription.
Welcome @Ramzey_Ramzo! So glad you hear you and your patrons and enjoying Patreon’s format. Here’s some extra info about polling your patrons, just in case you find you need to do that one day.
I started doing this by posting a link to the document, but found it was more difficult for patrons. So I just post the chapters directly into the text box. Once the series is finished I’ll post a link to the full novel as a PDF. Hope that helps you out!
Oooo this is actually a great idea…I might try doing that for my higher tiers…
I tried pasting into the text box, but my formatting disappears and it’s actually important for my content. Any advice out there? Tanx!
I add the files to my posts as attachments. That seems to work the best. I post in .txt, .pdf, .mobi, and .epub and I’ve never had a problem.
I also provide my top tiers with access to all the files via Sync (think Dropbox, but encrypted end-to-end). See sync.com for details.
Great hack @Michael_Loucks, thanks for sharing!
I’ll make a note that formatting is lost when you paste into the text box though, to share with the team. Thanks for flagging @Tia_Vellani
Thanks @Michael_Loucks
Hey everybody!!! I’m really new to Patreon and I write fiction and essays. Any suggestions on benefits for patrons? I’m only really having trouble with 1 specific benefit, which is a Defense Report (a document with all my drafts and why I changed what I did). I’m always looking for suggestions
I have a special, limited tier which I call ‘Collaborators’ which receives rough drafts, plus material such as @Matthew_Jarrett mentioned. They provide feedback, and often give very good ideas for story directions. A few of them even have provided character sketches which I’ve worked into the story.