Tapas is probably just trying to survive right now. $10M of financing at 8% yield is $800,000 just in interest/dividends. Plus a staff of 20ish... there are a lot of expenses with no guaranteed income.
They've found out Premium is the only way to make money since readers aren't doing the tipping thing and for whatever reason they can't get ads to preform like Hiveworks does and they can't land any corporate sponsors like Coca-Cola.
In X number of years once they become massively revenue positive, it will be interesting to see what happens to Free-to-Read series. Will they see the value we bring to the platform in terms of content and readers and support us, or will they just continue on with Premium and forget us?
No idea.