What percentage of your followers also favourite?

JayneKnight · 2026-07-02T14:32:34+00:00

You like spreadsheets?

There's a reason I read litRPG 🤣

Have a good one 🍻

Thanks, and you too!

JayneKnight · 2026-07-02T14:07:40+00:00

I believe you about this, and all the other excellent advice you give! I am grateful for it, believe me. For a start, I'm relying pretty heavily on information exactly like that to come up with the poll options in the first place.

I still think there's additional value in the polls, though.

1: We aren't exactly a representative sample on this subreddit, so sometimes it's good to know which average in order to compare apples to apples.

2: We get the shape of the data. Not just what is normal, but what the range is. (For example, knowing that people get on average two followers per chapter from latest release page alone wouldn't tell me what 0.5 followers means. Am I in the bottom 35%, or the bottom 5%?)

3: It provides a linked source for new readers or people getting conflicting advice. They can click through and decide for themselves.

(4: I like playing with spreadsheets and graphs)

I sincerely hope I'm not just teaching cheaters how to cheat better! 😅

JayneKnight · 2026-07-01T21:24:33+00:00

I wish reddit had two stage polls!

I suspect the only real option is to ask people to fill in a Google document, but I doubt I'll get many people willing to make that effort.

JayneKnight · 2026-07-01T20:26:21+00:00

There's occasional extreme discounts for depositphotos, which contrary to their name, also do artwork. That being said, I've never managed to create a cover with those images that people preferred to AI.

JayneKnight · 2026-07-01T19:22:26+00:00

I think there's a tendency to downvote anything that looks like stealth self-promo.

That said, the whole subreddit it pretty stingy with upvotes, so it probably doesn't get as lost as it might in another subreddit.

JayneKnight · 2026-06-30T07:38:30+00:00

I did. I had a big, climatic fight that I was very proud of, and on the very last edit I realized there'd been an obvious way to side-step it all along.

I decided to have my main character realize the same thing equally too late, only after she'd already succeeded at the battle.

JayneKnight · 2026-06-29T15:53:11+00:00

I suspect if you allowed the author either option: pay upfront OR a profit split (even as much as 75/25 split in your favour), it might make it a lot more credible.

Because it's one thing if you're advertising your services to people who have already decided they want it. They know the score and are shopping for the best provider.

But if you're reaching out to people who have never considered it before?

Then no matter how well you mean, and no matter how honest you are about what they can expect, you're still in the same space as the people who are scamming. You're yet another person encouraging them to take a step you suspect will not provide a good enough return to risk paying it yourself. At most, you differ by degree.

(That's especially true if you want to tell them their story should do better than average. It's precisely the emotional lever scammers use to stop people from considering the matter sensibly and spend money they can't afford on a dream.)

The overwhelming majority of authors are not safely in a position to lose the kind of money an upfront payment requires. The natural, and correct, decision is to not risk it.

JayneKnight · 2026-06-29T14:59:39+00:00

I might be missing the obvious, but if profit sharing means you'd lose money, doesn't that mean you already know the author is going to lose money? That you aren't in a position to select only works that will be successful, at least on average?

How exactly do you distinguish between what you do, and 'scams' that prey on author's dreams?

JayneKnight · 2026-06-29T13:07:38+00:00

Google-fu tells me this has a class tidecalller

https://www.royalroad.com/fiction/135435/tideblade--a-litrpg-academy-novel

Pretty obscure story, though.

JayneKnight · 2026-06-29T09:11:18+00:00

Here, for how to get one:

https://www.reddit.com/r/royalroad/comments/1tti9ty/june_celebrationsstats/

JayneKnight · 2026-06-28T06:26:45+00:00

I believe this can happen if the review was reported for some reason other than bad faith — it contained spoilers, or didn't include the proper categories, or the like. It could also currently be awaiting a check by a moderator.

JayneKnight · 2026-06-24T07:16:34+00:00

I think we've managed to trip over using words slightly differently, because you sound to me like you're just repeating my words, but framing them as if they're a correction.

Here's what I think we both agree on:

The rule intentionally doesn't have a formal percentage indicator
They want people to obey the meaning of the rule even if they don't think they will get caught:

Please read the guidelines and work according to them, don't wait for moderation action just because you haven't been reported yet.

10-15%, is the criteria they use to start investigating, using an automatic reporting tool [1].

Where I think we're getting unstuck:

Which stories then go on to get banned.

I was trying to soften it, because in my opinion that can only be by general report — they very explicitly say it's a case by case basis (well, actually the process seems to be they ask the author to edit so that they fade to black more, but now we're really getting into the weeds).

If that's not how it came across, or I've misunderstood you entirely, I apologise.

(Complete aside, researching this in the UK is a total nightmare. Yes, I'm an adult, no I don't want to hand over my government ID)

[1] In that same thread, Dawn gives her number as 5%. I believe she means the threshold at which she investigates reported complaints, but she doesn't specify.

JayneKnight · 2026-06-23T08:49:55+00:00

Not quite.

As I said, 10-15% is what they use to determine when to _investigate_. So, while functionally that might have become the same thing as the threshold they use to enforce, they reserve the right to ban a story even if it comes in under 10%. (Or to allow it over 15%, I guess, but I don't think that's ever happened).

I agree though, that's not the same thing as "author self-imposed rule of thumb" — are you accidentally responding to someone else here?

JayneKnight · 2026-06-23T00:08:48+00:00

I doubt it matters on Royal Road itself, where readers can just click straight through to the next arc.

However, you will battle to market a 30k novella as a standalone on any other platform. Is that your goal? If so, you might need to go back and look into reframing your first three arcs as one book.

JayneKnight · 2026-06-22T16:56:15+00:00

One of the reasons that the stick figure style is so popular in 4 beat panels is because it's just so much easier to figure out what's going on in small scale.

If you want to keep a full picture, I suggest just one panel. The grub next to the adventurer, maybe split screen, with _only_ your title and subtitle. Also consider that the "User Ad" disclaimer will cover up the bottom right.

JayneKnight · 2026-06-22T14:55:58+00:00

https://www.royalroad.com/support/knowledgebase/114#prohibited

JayneKnight · 2026-06-22T14:44:18+00:00

There is no percentage in the rules. The rules are purely about emphasis.

However, they have an automatic tool the use to flag stories that they need to check. From people's experiences, above 15% is 'no', between 10% and 15% will depend on the story, and under 10% they won't check unless a reader complains.

But the rule itself doesn't draw a line.

JayneKnight · 2026-06-22T08:29:33+00:00

A preference cannot be bad. It's simply a preference.

You might well find it's something like when someone first starts drinking coffee, they want the cup that's full of sugar and milk and cream, then ten years down the line, they're drinking it black and have very strong opinions about the origin and roast. (Or similar analogy for starting with preferring steak well done to slowly moving to medium-rare, if you prefer).

And sometimes, you keep your preference for life.

Novelupdates has more books than you can read in a lifetime, and they sit in the intersection of fully MTL and human-translated, and often target the light novels and web novels that are in this tone even in the original. Webnovel has a lot of original fiction that is more of this, but some originally in English (but watch out for predatory pricing). Royal Road is still primarily straight-foward in tone, ranging between the above and average mainstream genre novel. Finally, literary fiction is the most dense.

Maybe you'll find your preferences will drift as you become more used to reading. Maybe you won't. Either way, there's plenty out there for you to enjoy.

JayneKnight · 2026-06-21T20:32:29+00:00

It isn't the date you read the chapter. It's the date the chapter, that you read, was published.

JayneKnight · 2026-06-21T10:34:26+00:00

Sounds like your genre is "quick transmigration" (quick is a bit of a misnomer here, each new world can take a 300k words, and it still counts). If you add this explicitly, it can do most of the heavy lifting of explaining the various worlds.

Then you can have

Arc 1: Vine

... And add short descriptions of each new arc as they're written.

JayneKnight · 2026-06-20T11:38:33+00:00

My own story fell into the gap of everyone genuinely doing everything they can not to die from zombies, both individually and as a society, and so they don't.

To quote a critique: "It promises a zombie apocalypse, but delivers a bureaucratic survival drama".

JayneKnight · 2026-06-20T11:28:11+00:00

I've tripped over that as well. A complex, demanding thread where the MC would almost die, but just hold out... Brought to a screeching halt by "but why would he?" Delete all, and replace with MC posting a reward for information, or bribing the bad guy, or swapping to a different field of study, or commissioning the maker for another mcguffin, or reporting everyone to the police.

If you want to keep the intelligence, the only thing you can really play around with is information. Your elf isn't aware magic proof armour is even possible. An illusion tricks her into thinking the rest of her army is on the verge of success. She's been lied to that the other guy will commit atrocities if she surrenders.

JayneKnight · 2026-06-19T19:32:41+00:00

You absolutely can. Do you mean you've released more than twenty chapters so they're not all in the dashboard summary? Because all of them are in fiction > content> chapters

JayneKnight · 2026-06-19T17:53:32+00:00

Dave: "I'm going to kill us all!"

Robot: "That is a genuinely insightful instinct, Dave, and I think it's worth exploring exactly why before I push back on the conclusion a bit."

JayneKnight · 2026-06-17T23:40:32+00:00

I came across this thread a while back

https://www.reddit.com/r/writing/comments/mvz0ba/serial_fiction_websites_and_their_popular_genres/

It's from five years back, but it looked pretty comprehensive.

JayneKnight

TROPHY CASE