Building a Marketplace for Self-Published Authors: Architecture Decisions

Most writing platforms treat publishing as an afterthought. Write your story, export a file, figure out distribution yourself. I wanted TaleForge to close that loop — write, publish, and sell in one place. The Marketplace Model The marketplace needed to support several publishing models: Free publications (exposure-focused) Paid publications (fixed price via Stripe) Freemium (first N chapters free, rest behind paywall) Tips (readers can tip authors they appreciate) The freemium model turned out to be the most popular. It mirrors how web novel platforms like Royal Road and Tapas work: hook readers with free chapters, convert them on quality. Stripe Integration Payments run through Stripe Connect (Custom accounts). Each author is a connected account. When a reader buys a book: Payment goes to the platform's Stripe account Platform takes a cut (15%) Rest is transferred to the author's connected account The webhook handling was surprisingly tricky. Stripe sends events to your webhook URL,