The file is already an EPUB
No conversion step and no format to learn. Upload what you already send your patrons; the listing writes itself from the file's own metadata and cover.
Chapters go up free, patrons pay for the ones that are ahead, and when a volume closes there is a file. That last step is usually a payment link and a folder somewhere, because the tools built for serials are built for the subscription and stop at the compiled book.
For that, you would not, and this does not pretend otherwise: there is no subscription tier, no per-chapter drip and no patron feed here, and Patreon and Ream do that job properly. This is the one moment they leave to you — the finished volume as a file, bought by the readers who never became patrons, and delivered without you emailing a link. Roughly half the top serials on Royal Road carry a Patreon; almost none of them have anywhere for a reader who just wants the book to buy the book.
No conversion step and no format to learn. Upload what you already send your patrons; the listing writes itself from the file's own metadata and cover.
Price each volume, then sell several as one collection at one price with its own page and its own link — the thing to paste into a chapter note when a single volume is too small an ask.
Checkout is an email address and a card. No account, no subscription, no monthly commitment for someone who wants one book — which is most of the people reading you for free.
Serials get edited after publication more than any other kind of book. Upload the corrected EPUB and every past buyer's permanent link serves it, without a re-purchase or an announcement half the list will miss.
One link that hands out a fixed number of free copies and then stops, for beta readers, an ARC team or a reviewer who asked. Every copy carries the name of whoever claimed it.
Cards are charged on your own Stripe account, so you are the merchant of record and the money is yours before we know the sale happened. Nothing here is exclusive and nothing here lists your shop.
However the volume gets compiled — pandoc from Markdown, Calibre, Vellum, Atticus, a scraper you wrote against your own chapters. This takes the EPUB at the end of it, validates it, and puts a checkout in front of it.
Gumroad is the fastest way to put a file behind a payment link and the most expensive way to leave it there. The headline is 10%, but it is 10% + 50¢ — 15% of a $9.99 book — and 30% if the buyer arrived through their marketplace. The crossover against $19 a month arrives at about $127 in monthly sales.