Hi Guys,
I’m so excited I had to post this.
I keep hearing how bad Wattpad is and how they don’t protect against people stealing other’s works. Also, it’s a popularity game there. I have 0 viewers. Royal Road probably doesn’t protect your work either, so I would not suggest putting the whole book on if you’re thinking of monetizing your work.
Back to me praising Royal Road (RR).
Royal Road is great for fantasy writers to share their work, even without a following. Even if you don’t participate in Royal Road other than posting your work. That means 0 socializing required. haha Albeit, socializing would do wonders, such as swapping reviews, sharing who you are (so if possible, don’t stay a stranger), but I haven’t even gotten to that point (swapping reviews).
So how do you gain viewers?
Being on RR’s homepage pretty much guarantees viewership and new followers.
How do you get on the homepage without being popular?
Post. Every day.
From my experience, my first post received 50 views. I had already received one comment and one follower (I assume it was the poster) before I found out my book was approved! I was ecstatic! The second post gathered 20 views. I kept this up for 5 more times. If you have a lot written, you could post as many times in a day as you please. [edit: two max in a day for maximum exposure]
RR’s FAQ says:
“In order to gain as many readers as possible, we recommend publishing chapters at different hours, which will allow you to gain readers from different time zones. Also, do not publish more than two chapters a day. Instead, do so on consecutive days, which will allow you to maximize the exposure your fiction receives from the Latest Update list.
It’s better this way, rather than pushing out a bunch of chapters at the same time followed by a gap of several days without publishing. Consistency is key and will maximize your exposure.”
As for same post in the same day, the strategy is to wait until you disappear from the homepage and post again so you stay on the home page!
Edit: I just learned how to schedule a release at different times! When you make a new chapter, after the ‘post chapter author notes’ is a bar for ‘scheduled release’. On the far end of it is a little calendar where you can choose the day and time (in increments of 15 minutes) for the chapter to become available. A bit below you can choose to have the draft delete itself on publishing.
Here’s your necessary reading:
How To Gain Traction On RoyalRoad And How To Potentially Turn Your Writing Into A Career#1
It will take you farther than my post would.
So… I’m shameless to admit. I game the system.
What’s my hack?
People normally post their 2000 word chapter in a single post. But the positive side to my writing is that I break them down into small chunks. I mean super small. I would say 500 words small. But some of mine is as low as 300 just because of the scene itself. Interestingly, on RR’s FAQ, “The minimum word count on chapter length is currently 500 characters.” 🤣 So glad they changed that.
Find me at Royal Road to see what I’m talking about. Click -> @meltong
Anywho, this may sacrifice me some readers but it has worked for my overall publicity.
How do you know how many viewers you have looking at your work?
Google’s not that great so I asked RR on their forum. Here’s the answer I got. Very thorough.
“In the MyFictions section of your profile or on any of your own fictions you can find your way to the Dashboard of any specific one of your fictions. The Chapters tab has some stats for specific chapters like word count and view count, while the Stats tab mostly focuses on ratings across a graph and stuff. More analytics are available through Author Premium subscriptions that are also snazzier looking as well as being more useful as far as I have been aware. More than that you can just throw the data into a spreadsheet and do some math like OP above having calculated a indicator for “Retention Rate” and the like.
Though, depending on how adapt you are at using statistics, they aren’t really useful as information just by looking at them- a lot of the time at least; and stats can be misleading at times without the correct analysis, interpretation, or context.”
The next step is to find people willing to trade reviews with you on RR.
How? Lurk the RR forums or reddit’s r/royalroad
Also on one of the top forums, they advise:
“3. Promote your book
Actually, mine kind of grew organically so I have no clue other than
1. Add your book to topwebfiction.com
2. I made a post in the forum that was viewed 50 times!
That’s all I did.”
OMG why am I shamelessly starting all these marketing things when I haven’t even finished a single book guys! Stop me! Or help me! hahaha
Good luck!
For those of you who aren’t reading my story yet, here’s the link.
https://www.royalroad.com/fiction/33823/still-untitled
meltongblog 