THE NO-NUANCE ROYALROAD QUICK-START GUIDE:
If your goal is a meaningful readership (4k+ followers) then you need to get onto Rising Stars. That means 200-250 followers in ~4 weeks from launch. If you're retarded enough to not do your own thorough market research, here's a quick-launch guide by an anon you can trust (I have a lot more than 4k followers):
- Post twice a day for the first week, once a day for the next three weeks. This means a 35 chapter backlog. After this, you can settle into your regular posting schedule.
- Chapter updates between 2000-2500 words in length
- Create an eye-catching cover, title, and blurb. (Use AI for the cover if you can't afford a proper cover.)
- Have a chapter 1 that opens strong, is engaging throughout, and ends with a solid hook into chapter 2
- Run a site advertisement (55 USD) or several
- If you can't run an ad, you need to network and get shout out swaps from big authors. (I don't do this, networking is gay)
*If you're poor and hate networking, roll over and die like a dog.
**or write the best story the website has seen in years
*IGNORE THE RETARDS ON PUBLIC FORUMS. THERE IS SO MUCH MISINFORMATION AND NONSENSE. Including in /wng/. If I haven't mentioned it here, it doesn't fucking matter (or matter enough)
*You can adjust your strategy depending on how you're performing. Meaning less or more chapters, or run more ads, if you're not on track for that 200-250 follower goal.
*If you're already running an ad and not growing, your story probably just sucks. don't waste your money throwing more ads in
*If at the end of 2 months, you haven't hit RS, but want a serious readerbase, then give up and try again. There is almost no natural visibility on RoyalRoad; you HAVE to launch well and get at least 2-3k followers to then show up on searches/other lists/be spread through word of mouth
*Most trad authors have to write several novels before succeeding. It's no different in this space. It's okay to write a book 1 of different series over and over, dumping via the launch strategy mentioned, and keep trying again until you finally get a "hit".
***All of the above has exceptions and asterisks, but holds generally true. It's a quick-launch one-size-fits-all guide for that special sort of retard who refuses to actually do their own research.
***If you already released your story and got <100 followers, it's fine to take the story down and relaunch, doing it right this time.
***If you launched a story correctly and didn't pick up traction, it's a stinker, don't rewrite or relaunch. Go again with a different story
FAQ/INFO DUMP (READ IF YOU WANT TO UNDERSTAND HOW THE WEBSITE AND RR AUDIENCE WORKS AT A DEEPER LEVEL):
What is Rising Stars?
Rising Stars is an algorithm that tracks growing stories. It selects (mostly new) stories and displays them on a special list that gets by far the most traffic on the website. Hitting top 7 in Rising Stars gets you onto the front page, and you'll receive more views/clicks than even if you had a spot in the top 5 of Best Rated or Popular This Week—it's seriously the biggest traffic source on the website by an order of magnitude.
With that in mind, when you first launch, you need to GROW FAST so you get onto RS. And with people gaming the system (since there's serious money to be made), unless you have the next biggest hit of the year on your hands, you NEED to have a solid game plan going in—lots of early chapters, shout outs, ads.
- The only natural traffic you'll get as a newbie is through "Latest Updates" and "New Releases". Plus, there's a 20k word soft limit on RS entries. This is why it's normal to dump loads of chapters.
- Arranging shout-out swaps with big authors is a great way to get early traffic. Shoutout swaps with tiny authors...not so much. But I guess if you get a million of them lined up, it can help?
- Only run an ad once you have like 30k words posted (any shorter and it'll piss people off). Ads are massive traffic-drivers and if you have one going, much less 2 or 3, you really should hit RS unless you wrote a total stinker
What stories do well on RR?
In descending order:
- LitRPG
- Cultivation/Xianxia
- Progression Fantasy
- Other Power Fantasies (that aren't one of the above; all stories on RR are power fantasies of some sort)
- Other Genre Fiction (very rarely)
The Algorithm / How do readers find your story?
This is not TikTok. There is no universal algorithm that spits out stories tailored to the user's tastes onto the homepage. You get views from a few places:
- New Releases
- Latest Updates
- Rising Stars (only for new and rising stories)
- Best Rated (the highest-rated stories)
- Searches (default sorted by highest-rated, but searches are pretty varied)
What's the ideal posting schedule?
ON LAUNCH:
- Whatever gets you onto Rising Stars. The more the better, your entire life purpose is getting onto RS
- Spread them out, retard, don't drop them at the same time. The goal here is frequent chapter releases to get some (minimal, admittedly) traffic through Latest Updates.
- You can also NOT post a lot frequently if you have huge shout outs/are going to run several ads. But you should at least get 30-40k words posted before running ads or you'll annoy the people who click in
REGULAR SCHEDULE:
- Basically, it's more about a weekly word count. You want like 8k+ a week
- The more the better. Daily would be best, 5x weekly of 2k words is common
- 3x of like 2.5-3k can work fine
- Even 1 fatty chapter a week has several successful stories
- However, daily chapters drive the most traffic and can get you onto Popular This Week (which tracks total weekly views), so it's undoubtedly the best from a meta perspective. More=better