Legal

Author Earnings Schedule

Last updated: September 24, 2026

Tellura Author Earnings Schedule

Version 1.3 — effective 24 September 2026

This Schedule sets out the terms referred to in the Author Agreement: your share of the revenue your work earns, how it is worked out, and how and when you are paid. It forms part of that Agreement. Where a word is defined in the Agreement, it means the same thing here, and where this Schedule and the Agreement disagree, the Agreement wins.

1. The short version

Your share starts at 60% of the revenue your work earns.
It rises to 65% and then 70% as you publish more.
Your tier is worked out once a month, from what you published the month before, and applies to the following month.
Payouts are paused. We are changing the route money takes to reach authors, and until that is finished nobody can be paid. Your earnings still accrue, they are never forfeited, and section 5 says what happens next.
When payouts reopen, your minimum payout and any fee depend on where you live. Below your minimum the balance rolls forward and is never lost.
If we ever reduce your share, you get 30 days' notice and it never applies to anything you have already earned.

2. Your share

Tier	Your share	You reach it by publishing, in one calendar month
Base	60%	anything at all
1	65%	30 or more qualifying chapters, averaging 2,000 words or more
2	70%	60 or more qualifying chapters, averaging 2,000 words or more

Both conditions have to be met for a tier. Publishing 60 chapters that average 1,800 words is Base, not Tier 2.

This is a share of the revenue your work earns — what readers pay, after the five deductions listed in Author Agreement 6.2 and nothing else. That list is closed.

We may agree a higher share with an individual author or for an individual work. We never agree a lower one; 60% is a floor, not a starting position in a negotiation.

3. What counts

3.1 A qualifying chapter

A chapter counts toward your tier if all of these are true:

it was published during the calendar month being measured;
it is at least 500 words;
it is on a work of yours that is live on Tellura — ongoing, completed or on hiatus. Drafts and works still under review do not count.

A chapter scheduled for a future date counts in the month it actually publishes, not the month you scheduled it.

3.2 The average

The 2,000-word average is taken across your qualifying chapters only. Chapters under 500 words are not counted anywhere: they do not raise your chapter count and they do not drag your average down.

3.3 Why length is part of it

The tiers reward sustained output, and a chapter count on its own can be met by splitting the same writing into smaller pieces. Requiring an average length means the tiers respond to how much you actually write rather than how you divide it up.

We know this has a real cost: if you write in short chapters, you stay at 60% however much you publish. That is a deliberate choice and not an oversight, and we would rather say so here than let you discover it from a dashboard.

4. When your tier applies

Your tier is calculated at the start of each month, from the month before, and applies to the whole of the month that follows.

So chapters you publish in January set the tier that applies to everything you earn in February.

Your tier is not permanent. It is recalculated every month, so a quiet month moves you back down, and a productive one moves you back up. Nothing you have already earned is ever recalculated.

Your share is worked out on the whole of a calendar month, not sale by sale. Everything you earn in a month is added together and that month's percentage is applied to the total. Worked out sale by sale, each one would be rounded to a whole cent, and at these amounts that rounding is worth more than the difference between the tiers, which would leave the tiers meaning nothing.

If your share goes up part-way through a month, the whole of that month is worked out at the higher figure. If it goes down, the lower figure applies from the next month: a reduction is never retroactive, as section 6 says.

Worked example. In January you publish 34 chapters averaging 2,400 words. That is Tier 1, so through February your share is 65%. If readers pay US$100.00 for your work in February, US$65.00 is yours before the deductions in Author Agreement 6.2 and before any tax withholding. In February you publish 12 chapters, so in March you are back to 60% — but the February earnings stay at 65%.

5. Payouts

Payouts are paused, and we are not going to describe them as though money is moving. We are changing the route by which earnings reach authors. Until that work is finished there is no live payout route at all, so no author can be paid, in any country, whatever their balance. New paid monetization is closed for the same reason: we are not opening a way to earn money we currently have no way to send.

What the pause does not change:

Your earnings keep accruing. Everything you earn is recorded as money we owe you. It is never forfeited and never expires, and it is paid in full once a route is open, or when you close your account.
Your share is untouched. The tiers in section 2 apply to everything you earn, paid out or not.
Earnings for a calendar month are still finalised on the 1st of the following month. Finalising is the calculation. Releasing the money is the part that is paused.
Nothing is deducted for the pause. Author Agreement 6.2's list stays closed. There is no holding charge and no administration fee.

We will tell you which route applies to you, what your minimum payout is and what it costs, before you publish anything paid. That is a promise in Author Agreement 6.3 and it does not depend on a route being live today. We are not going to let you earn into a route we cannot settle.

We are not naming a date. We would rather say we do not know than give you one and miss it. When the route changes, this Schedule is republished, and you are notified.

The route being brought up is Stripe Global Payouts, and it is global. We are a global platform. When payouts are open, we will pay authors wherever our payout partner can reach them. That is not a promise about a list we wrote: the list is Stripe's, it covers Europe, North America, Asia, Africa and Latin America, and it changes when Stripe's does. We deliberately do not print country names in this Schedule, because a list written into a contract is wrong the day the partner adds or drops a country, and a previous version of this Schedule proved exactly that by naming six.

What we do instead is tell you, before you publish anything paid, whether your country is reached, what your minimum payout is and what the corridor fee is. Your minimum payout is set by us, and the corridor fee is what our payout partner charges to move money into your country. Both are shown on your payout settings page, where they stay correct, rather than in a table here that could stop being true.

The corridor fee is what Stripe charges to move money into your country, not a platform fee. We pass it through at cost and take no margin on it, and it is the fifth and last item in Author Agreement 6.2's closed list.
Below your minimum, your balance rolls forward to the next month. It is never forfeited and never expires, and it is paid out in full when you close your account.
A payout also needs your onboarding completed and your tax documentation current, as set out in Author Agreement 6.3 and 6.5. Until then the balance accrues; it is not lost.
Thresholds and fees are quoted in US dollars. Where your payout is in another currency, Stripe converts it at its own rates, which we do not set and do not take a margin on.

6. Changes to this Schedule

We may change this Schedule. Author Agreement 6.7 governs how, and nothing here narrows it:

a change that reduces your share takes at least 30 days, notified by email and in your dashboard;
during that period you may withdraw any or all of your works immediately, with no waiting period and no penalty;
a reduction is never retroactive — everything earned before it takes effect is calculated at the old rate, including money not yet paid out;
an increase takes effect as soon as we say it does.

Every version of this Schedule is published, versioned and dated, and previous versions stay available at their own addresses.

7. Version history

Version	Effective	What changed
1.0	4 August 2026	First publication. Sets out the tiers, thresholds and payout terms already operating on Tellura. No author's share changes, so there is nothing here that needs a notice period before it starts.
1.1	Withdrawn before taking effect	Payout routing only. Removes Stripe Connect, which no longer exists as a payout route, and says plainly that payouts are paused while the route is changed. Corrects India, which version 1.0 listed at the wrong minimum and with no corridor fee and which has in fact always been a local-rail corridor carrying a fee. No tier, share or threshold in sections 2 to 4 changes.
1.2	21 September 2026	Removes the six-country payout table and the claim that we cannot pay authors outside it. That claim was false: the payout route is global, and the list of countries it reaches belongs to our payment partner, not to us, and it changes when theirs does. Your minimum payout is set by us and the corridor fee is what our payout partner charges, and both are shown to you before you publish anything paid, on your payout settings page rather than in a table here. No share, tier or threshold changes.
1.3	24 September 2026	States how the share is worked out in time. Your earnings for a calendar month are added together and that month's percentage is applied to the total, rather than the percentage being applied sale by sale, where rounding would erase the difference between the tiers. Also states that a share increase part-way through a month applies to the whole of that month, and a decrease applies from the next month. No tier, share, threshold or payout term changes.

Version 1.3 changes no percentage and no threshold. Every share and tier is exactly as it was in version 1.2. What it adds is the timing rule the platform already applies, stated plainly so that you can see why your monthly figure is what it is, and nothing in it is adverse to any author.

Version 1.2 corrects what version 1.1 published, before it ever took effect. No author was ever bound by version 1.1 and no author has ever been paid under it. Every share and every tier threshold is exactly as it was in version 1.0. Two things about payouts changed, and both are corrections to statements that were already untrue when they were published:

The Stripe Connect row described a route Tellura no longer has. It has been removed, no money can move along it, and leaving it in a published contract would have promised authors a payout method that does not exist.
The six-country table understated the platform's reach: it named six countries and said authors outside them could not be paid. That was false. The route is global, and the list of countries it reaches belongs to our payment partner, not to us.

The notice period in Author Agreement 6.7 is protection against a reduction in your share, and there is no reduction here to be protected from. It applies in full to any future version of this Schedule that lowers what you earn.