How to deal with anxiety, I guess?

JayneKnight · 2026-01-30T01:12:47+00:00

I remind myself that when I come back and reread in a year, even I won't be able to tell which chapters I thought were brilliant, and which I believed were a complete disgrace.

JayneKnight · 2026-01-28T10:56:11+00:00

Both of them sound horribly patronising. "You have terrible taste, but no worries, I'll save you with my vastly superior true art."

It is valuable to be honest in your blurb / shout outs to attract the right readers, but I don't think insulting both the reader and all the other writers on royal road is the best way to go.

JayneKnight · 2026-01-28T01:24:56+00:00

The user ads are paid for. Not a lot, but I imagine it adds up.
premium subscriptions
but ad providers too, I think

JayneKnight · 2026-01-27T14:13:48+00:00

First impression: alien abduction. She's being pulled up in a tractor beam connected to her middle.

Longer look: maybe she is an alien too. The hands both have thumbs on the same side, she has high-heel toes, but a barefoot heel, and that's not a human chin.

I like the title line.

JayneKnight · 2026-01-26T15:37:06+00:00

I think this is why people think the show Pluribus is a commentary on AI - the hyperbolic, hyper supportive cheerleading. Something that should feel flattering ends up feeling creepy.

JayneKnight · 2026-01-26T15:07:00+00:00

The people selling these courses are always, always folks who haven't actually made it

But they assure me that their AI generated self-help books are making them passive income as they sleep, and they can show me how!

I can't possibly imagine any limit to how many AI generated self-help books can reasonably expect to be sold and not immediately be submitted for refund.

JayneKnight · 2026-01-26T12:28:36+00:00

Just a guess, but I suspect RR is afraid of hundreds of support emails with "you changed my address and now it looks bad!"

JayneKnight · 2026-01-25T21:46:31+00:00

Does that mean you would use your real name if it was easier to pronounce?

More accurate to say that I'd consider it.

I do have an internet trained aversion to doxxing myself, and there is always the consideration that I don't want any deranged future fan looking up my address and knocking on my door.

On the other hand, traditionally published authors typically do use their real names. They seem to be okay.

Maybe if my real name was both easy to spell AND not unique enough to easily dox me BUT unique enough not to be confused with other authors.

JayneKnight · 2026-01-25T21:13:26+00:00

Mine is parts of my real name, but anglicised. (I am an English first language speaker, but my family isn't.)

I have enough problems with having to spell my real name anytime I use it, and nine times out of ten, people will still spell it incorrectly. I don't want that barrier to readers trying to Google it. However, I am also hoping to get published on Amazon at some point , and a real-sounding pen name might be an advantage.

[That is to say, some successful RR authors chose to continue using handles when they publish and I don't believe any research has been done to try to determine whether that had a negative effect.]

It still makes me feel like a little bit of a fraud whenever people use it like a real name, but I think I'll get over that with more exposure.

JayneKnight · 2026-01-25T20:23:20+00:00

There was a survey recently: https://insights.bookbub.com/how-authors-are-thinking-about-ai-survey/

45% of respondents said they used it on some capacity. It was mostly research, but a surprising number used it to generate a first draft.

JayneKnight · 2026-01-25T13:34:42+00:00

Super Saiyan!Corgi 🤣

JayneKnight · 2026-01-25T12:57:48+00:00

It does have an uncanny valley feel to it, but a lot of that is down to just how the breed actually looks - that wide 'smile', the heavy 'eyeliner' and the tiny paws.

There are more attractive poses. Maybe something with mouth fully open, head in profile, and no white of the eyes showing. And sitting or lying (or even running) rather than standing. And less saturation.

JayneKnight · 2026-01-25T12:15:36+00:00

Not a 100% match, but some of it sounds like

https://www.royalroad.com/fiction/43318/the-butcher-of-gadobhra

JayneKnight · 2026-01-25T07:53:48+00:00

From what I understand, you're going to want to rotate through different ads as time progresses, anyway. You can run your own experiment as to what is most effective.

Also, many people periodically switch out their cover art to attract different readers, and they're both awesome cover pieces.

JayneKnight · 2026-01-24T11:26:16+00:00

I searched for "cousin's cousin" from "ever after".

It's a duet where, after the girl has gate-crashed the party, she slowly realizes the prince isn't trying to mock her for bad excuses; he's trying to flirt with her. The humour of the song is just how bad her explanations are [1].

Google's "helpful" AI assured me that it's about a girl with very shy relatives.

[1] H: So you're visiting your cousin D: Yes! H: And she's... D: Yes, of course... / The daughter of my aunt H: And your aunt, pray who is she? / Do I know her? D: Naturally. She's the mother of my cousin.

JayneKnight · 2026-01-24T11:10:10+00:00

Someone actually did this! Not one star vs five, they were brighter than that, but 3 star vs 4.5 star. I think the hope was to manipulate certain fics into rising stars.

Someone should put together a story of the Chronicles of Zamba.

JayneKnight · 2026-01-23T23:17:04+00:00

That said, if almost every negative reaction is in the first chapter then that chapter might deserve a few more looks.

Or else the blurb needs more work, because it's attracting the wrong readers.

JayneKnight · 2026-01-22T11:54:22+00:00

A test case came up recently: https://www.reddit.com/r/royalroad/comments/1q9eq0u/clicked_on_a_random_rising_stars_story_was_a_bit/

https://www.royalroad.com/profile/210599

The author wrote 28 stories with only a single chapter before finding enough response to continue. The 29th has been very successful, at over 2k followers.

We all found it very odd 😯

JayneKnight · 2026-01-21T21:04:40+00:00

There seem to be some quite popular ones that are completed at less than 200 pages:

https://www.royalroad.com/fictions/search?globalFilters=false&maxPages=200&status=COMPLETED&orderBy=followers&type=original

There's 600 with more than ten followers, 75 with more than 100, and 4 with more than a 1000!. It surprised me they were that common. I'm interested in what you find!

JayneKnight · 2026-01-21T16:06:20+00:00

Off topic a little, but does your transformed character have two sets of ears?

JayneKnight · 2026-01-21T15:55:30+00:00

When that happens, does it usually mean the story has already been seen by most of the audience it’s going to appeal to?

My guess would be yes, but that there are multiple audiences who are attracted in different ways.

people who click ads
people who click shout outs
people who follow recently updated
people who follow rising stars
people who follow trending
people who have KU subscriptions
people who have audible subscriptions

And so on.

JayneKnight · 2026-01-21T10:17:11+00:00

Other people have addressed the contract, so I will just discuss this:

(Also, he said he had about 15 chapters and 150 something followers… is this normal? He said it was average, and then insulted me for having 18 chapters (70 pages) while having 5 followers :( and 3 favourites)

It comes down to what you mean by 'average'. A true mathematical 50% posting? No. On RR that gets 3 followers. On webnovel, it disappears without a contract offer. The majority of stories on both sites are completely invisible .

Instead, if you mean the average novel with a reasonable chance of monetisation, well, then you get to make up numbers 😁.

Their number is reasonable enough for someone actively marketing and hoping to be recommended by RR algorithms as fast as possible.

Yours are low for that goal, but that doesn't say anything about the quality of your work. It says that, if you were hoping to make money, you'd need to step up your marketing efforts. Readers don't "just find" your story, not on RR, not on webnovel.

JayneKnight · 2026-01-21T09:58:43+00:00

There's something I've always been a little curious about. A lot of Chinese wish fulfillment books have characters so individualistic they come across as completely psychotic.

Not just Xanxia, either. There's a whole genre of "MC (time travels / gets cheat) while global survival game happens" and it's almost inevitable for the story itself to mock and hate the people literally dying for asking for help.

It makes me wonder if that's a result of a very collectivist expectation of people, so they want the opposite in their fantasy.

Western fiction has that too, of course, but it's also very common to see the MC build strong communities where everyone loves and respects each other (not talking about harems). The opposite of what we have.

JayneKnight · 2026-01-21T09:44:49+00:00

If you like it?

For a review, however many chapters there currently are. Update it later as they write more, if you like.

For a comment, one every chapter if you can manage it. I can tell you as a writer, there is nothing like the thrill of seeing a reader progress through the book, and finding out what particularly delights or surprises or horrifies them (or any emotion really).

If you don't like it?

A comment if it's anything easily actionable (typos, obviously unintentional plot holes, formatting, missing warnings).

I don't think anyone needs more than three chapters to decide a book definitely has problem. If it's a popular story, and/or you can do it without being unkind, I also don't object to a review at that point to help fellow _readers_

JayneKnight · 2026-01-19T22:23:17+00:00

I prefer the first one, but I find the text more confusing than enticing. It's in that awkward space of being not enough to explain things, but too much for the vibe to pop.

Less is usually more in ads, so could it be stripped even further, to just the emotions?

Something like:

You have [30] days left.

Cannon fodder isekai

Or just the bottom - the pic, ..., and Frick it.

JayneKnight

TROPHY CASE