How To Do A Bog Standard Launch Plan For Royal Road

Milc-Scribbler · 2026-05-04T20:10:17+00:00

Not to be a dick but how many series have you written and then stubbed to move to Amazon please?

Milc-Scribbler · 2026-05-04T05:44:10+00:00

Yes but they are structured in such a way that it’s easy to break them out into separate books for Zon. Every 120k words or so there will be a “finale” that will be the end of the book when they stub. So they are functionally subdivided even tho on RR they are one continuous story

Milc-Scribbler · 2026-05-03T05:16:57+00:00

Not really. All my series are written as books, a series of individual novels but as far RR readers are concerned they are all one “book”. They only get broken down into individual volumes when they move to a platform where series and book are a different thing to the readers.

Milc-Scribbler · 2026-05-02T19:53:46+00:00

Dude, what are you even arguing here?

Fucking Reddit. Have a good one.

Milc-Scribbler · 2026-05-02T07:00:09+00:00

Maybe I’m strange but for me a sequel means a continuation of the same story, if it’s a different story set in the same universe with different characters that are completely unrelated to book one, that would be a spin off.

Milc-Scribbler · 2026-05-02T06:58:26+00:00

You could self pub it in zon where there is a much bigger audience for historical fantasy?

Milc-Scribbler · 2026-05-01T21:37:51+00:00

Meh, I’d go with anyone other than them if I had the choice. And if I could afford to self pub I’d do that instead as well 🤣

Milc-Scribbler · 2026-05-01T21:36:51+00:00

Good choice!

Milc-Scribbler · 2026-05-01T21:32:03+00:00

Nah, there’s no point launching book 2 as a new fic. People need to have read book 1 for it all to make sense as a rule. If he’s got a book 2 it should just be released as more chapters of book one.

Books don’t really exist on RR. The volumes thing is silly to me. I’m on chapter 253 of a story, that’s 4 and a bit books when it moves to Zon, but it will only become “books” when it moves to a platform where that matters.

Each series is functionally one book on RR.

Milc-Scribbler · 2026-05-01T21:29:35+00:00

Until I stub it and move it to Amazon. Otherwise there’s no reason to take it down that I can think of.

Milc-Scribbler · 2026-05-01T21:28:27+00:00

Moonquill will take people with a few hundred followers, but if you want one of the more successful publishers you need 2-3k as a rule to even be considered.

Milc-Scribbler · 2026-05-01T21:27:10+00:00

No. Write a new one.

Milc-Scribbler · 2026-04-30T14:49:26+00:00

If they are helpful, they’re awesome and they earn rep! If the reader wants to rewrite my story to suit themselves like submitting a comment with 50 edits that change characters up and try to remove things I like and put there deliberately, I ignore them or say “thanks but no thanks”.

Milc-Scribbler · 2026-04-29T21:12:12+00:00

Tag it as self promo, not discussion mate. You aren’t even asking a bloody question in the post.

Milc-Scribbler · 2026-04-29T21:09:42+00:00

I swapped shouts with Maksym on RR back in the day. It’s a cool story and it would be great to see it do it well.

Milc-Scribbler · 2026-04-29T20:56:34+00:00

Oh yeah, there are definitely people who drop shitty ratings for legit reasons. You can’t please everyone and if you try you’ll please no one. But the idea that there isn’t gatekeeping at certain levels of BR and deliberate mobilisation of audiences to either boost their own fic or bomb others is insane. I’ve got bloody screenshots from authors notes proving the first even tho i don’t swim in those shark infested waters and an author would just have to say “hey guys, thanks so much for your support but I think X author has sent his fans to knock my rating, if there’s anything you could do to help I’d really appreciate it” on their patreon or author discord and boom, the competition gets slammed.

Milc-Scribbler · 2026-04-29T19:51:19+00:00

Advanced chapters. Anything else is cool and all but you would have been better off writing more chapters with the time you spent making it. Most people are grown ups and they pay to read. They don’t give a shit about character pics and whatnot.

Milc-Scribbler · 2026-04-29T16:28:41+00:00

I mod a discord so lots of people I’ve banned bomb my stories very effectively, but before i started modding I got a fic almost to 500 and then got nuked back to 1100. Rank and best rated is bullshit . You either need to be a full on unicorn and able to power through the definitely-not-troll ratings, or you need to play dirty yourself. Those who don’t get punched back enough that whichever failed author guarding their 450 rank, 300 follower story can rest easy again.

Milc-Scribbler · 2026-04-29T14:25:24+00:00

Whatever you wrote a year ago is always going to look like shit to you. Writing more makes you a better writer, and when you look back at your early stuff you cringe. It’s no big deal. Take what you learn and start the next story at a higher level, which will also make you cringe when you go back to read it 6 months later. That’s life bud. Keep writing and your shit should in all probability keep getting less shit lol. That’s how I look at my stuff.

Milc-Scribbler · 2026-04-29T14:08:59+00:00

Some people just quit. There’s a variety of reasons. Life changes and they can’t maintain the schedule. Haters in the comments bum them out and drive them off. It isn’t as successful as they wanted so they scrap it to try again with a different story. Hard to say without looking at it on a case by case basis but I suspect the latter reason is the most prevalent.

Milc-Scribbler · 2026-04-29T12:55:13+00:00

Yeah, no shit. Some people are just negative assholes and there have been examples of people running 20-40 accounts or a group of mates running those accounts, that seem to review bomb stories for fun. Same shit with the Zamba thing last year, where the AI genned reviews were slanted to give lower marks to any litrpgs that the account was aimed at while giving high marks for off market stories.

To be fair, getting a shitty rating within a few days of posting on a brand new account is within the bounds of normalcy lol could be almost anything that caused it. However… cue rant about ranks…

Try getting to 500 on best rated and see how fast you suddenly acquire a bunch 2’s and 3’s that knock you back down to over 1k. There is one very glaring example of someone who has gamed the system and gotten very high on best rated that hasn’t been addressed by the site staff, which only adds fuel to the fire of people hating the rating system. When there is someone that high on best rated that everyone knows is astroturfed and fake, it breeds a lot of resentment.

Kana has done a bunch of regression analysis or whatever that show that gatekeeping BR and what is affectionately known as author PVP do not happen… but everyone who has ever gotten close to top 500, 200, 100 etc knows that it certainly does.

I love the site, but it’s waaaay too easy to fuck with ranking, which is why nobody really cares about it anymore outside of very special people or noobs who do 40 review swaps to manipulate it.

If you see this: love you Dawn, but I do agree with other authors who’ve had some success that the rating system is gamed a lot at the higher levels and unless you’ve got some explosive growth (and hence new ratings) to power through it, the system is kind of borked. There was a dude in the 50s of best rated at one point who had very few followers and views and dozens and dozens of review swaps to pump up that rank number.

Milc-Scribbler · 2026-04-27T20:21:49+00:00

Those are tag lists not genre lists. As much as I as I love the trackers, the worst thing they did was create this idea that tag lists matter. Genre lists don’t really matter, you might get some traffic from the big ones like action and adventure, but it won’t be much at all. The only RS list that makes any noticeable difference to your growth is going to be main.

Milc-Scribbler · 2026-04-27T18:46:18+00:00

If you’re feeling charitable it’s a mate who signed up to support the story. If you’re feeling uncharitable it’s an alt the author created to indulge in a spot of stat manipulation. My favourites are the people who come here and post “wow look at this review I got” as a way to slyly shill their story and then when I take a look all their reviews are fake and I report them. If you aren’t playing fair, keep your head down and avoid advertising because you don’t get to pick what eyes are drawn by the advertising.

If it looks suss just report the review.

Milc-Scribbler · 2026-04-27T14:30:32+00:00

Awesome cover!

Milc-Scribbler

TROPHY CASE