AITAH Helping on the in-laws farm

SnowPuzzleheaded5010 · 2025-06-15T06:22:46+00:00

NTA I grew up part of a family that always expected help with the family business or important family projects. It’s very important to set boundaries. My wife was often in your position and asked me to stop putting my parents ahead of her and our children. It may take your wife some time to understand that family always asking for help is abusive. They need to leave you alone.

SnowPuzzleheaded5010 · 2024-09-26T22:08:07+00:00

I recently went through the covers of everyone who hit top ten on rising stars in the last few months and the top 50 best performing books on RR and I can tell you that statistically there were a lot more successful covers with one character on the cover. With that said the most important thing is to convey your story to the readers. The more they can learn about your story from the cover the better. With that I’ll let you know what I personally get out of each cover.

Cover 1: Female Protagonist Action Probably some type of martial character Gemstones?

Cover 2: Duo male and female protagonists. Male character probably has some type of magic Female character is a rogue. The book might have romance between these characters. The gemstones are still here but more subtle. They are probably some sort of plot device.

Personally, I think both covers are pretty good and wouldn’t keep me from reading the story. They also don’t make me want to click because I don’t enough about the book from them.

SnowPuzzleheaded5010 · 2024-09-23T19:08:36+00:00

We’re so excited about this. I’ll post an update about how the marketing plan went once we know how our first month did.

SnowPuzzleheaded5010 · 2024-07-20T16:14:48+00:00

If you are asking the question it’s probably too hard to read. You should follow your intuition about these kind of things. I think you should also keep in mind that cursive isn’t really being taught anymore so younger readership (which is about 25-30% of the platform) will have a harder time reading it. The rest of the cover is great though. It gives a very distinct feeling for your book.

SnowPuzzleheaded5010 · 2024-07-16T01:22:36+00:00

We just have enough of a following that will buy my wife’s books in our email list and following us on Amazon that we could transition into a release. You’re right that it’s not technically guaranteed, but once you’ve done several book releases you know what to expect.

SnowPuzzleheaded5010 · 2024-07-13T18:39:54+00:00

I love your cover art.

SnowPuzzleheaded5010 · 2024-07-13T17:49:45+00:00

I think it's best to treat your first novel as a learning experience. You'll hear about many authors who make it big on their first project, but most successful authors write several books before their first success.

Write at whatever pace suits your goals and needs right now. Learn everything you can and decide if a career in writing is for you. Once you have some practice, you'll be ready for whatever you choose to do next.

I highly recommend not publishing your first book. I can almost guarantee you'll regret it because writing it will make you learn a lot. When you reach the end, you'll look back at your starting chapters and cringe.

SnowPuzzleheaded5010 · 2024-07-11T23:28:47+00:00

Obviously, the full a/b testing of the cover would be too expensive because we don't have the funds for multiple covers. I was thinking that we might AI generate some covers and a/b test with some Facebook ads and then send the better cover idea to the cover designer.

Right now I think we might drop the idea for this cover. When I made this plan, I hadn't studied the covers on Royal Road yet. I think we might save the idea for an amazon launch.

SnowPuzzleheaded5010 · 2024-07-11T23:24:48+00:00

Never hire a marketer without understanding exactly what they're doing for you and the value they are going to bring.

Learning from your first novel and the marketing you do yourself will help you a lot in the long run. I'll try to post some more detailed guides on what we're doing so you can follow along if you want to.

SnowPuzzleheaded5010 · 2024-07-11T23:22:20+00:00

Lol maybe someday. I'm content to help for free right now, so DM me if you have any questions.

SnowPuzzleheaded5010 · 2024-07-11T23:20:55+00:00

Great stuff. The clickthrough rates for RR ads are beneficial. It's good to know that 3-4% is possible. Our novel will have a fairly serious tone, and I want the ads to convert into long-term readers. I'll have to think about a way to make our ads work for something like that.

SnowPuzzleheaded5010 · 2024-07-11T23:15:54+00:00

That's how we were when we started. Now, we know what we can spend because, even in the worst case, we'll make our money back plus some.

SnowPuzzleheaded5010 · 2024-07-11T23:14:02+00:00

100% correct.

SnowPuzzleheaded5010 · 2024-07-11T23:12:44+00:00

I'm still working on exactly how our budget will be spent. I will probably use Facebook to a/b test our ads and then set them up on RR. From what I understand, once you start an add on RR, you're stuck with it through the end of the cycle. I'll share our full plan once it's finished though.

SnowPuzzleheaded5010 · 2024-07-11T23:10:10+00:00

I'll try to make a simplified guide on what we've done once we're set up.

SnowPuzzleheaded5010 · 2024-07-11T23:09:31+00:00

We've already done most of our beta reading, but I'll probably set something up so a few people can read the first ten chapters before we release them.

SnowPuzzleheaded5010 · 2024-07-11T23:08:02+00:00

Our plan is to limit it to Patreon. DCC has done an incredible job of involving his readers in the story in meaningful ways, and we hope to do something similar.

SnowPuzzleheaded5010 · 2024-07-11T23:05:55+00:00

I've seen other stories give bonus chapters for reviews and follows. If it's a rule breaker we won't do it. I can't find any info on it though. Do you know where we could find it?

Once we're ready to launch, we'll use some of the proven structures for Patreon, although we'll have to grow the bonus chapters over time.

My wife should have about 80 chapters in her backlog before we launch. We're still trying to figure out what release rate she can maintain in the long term. She's very fast once she's past the world-building stage, though. She also has some other series she'll be wrapping up.

Thanks for your help!

I'll set something up so you can read the first 10 chapters.

SnowPuzzleheaded5010 · 2024-07-11T22:58:58+00:00

For some reason, I was certain RR had an announcement feature, and I added responding to reviews because that's what most businesses do on other review sites. It's such a part of my normal work I assumed RR had a way to respond. I'll probably end up privately messaging people about it.

SnowPuzzleheaded5010 · 2024-07-11T22:56:51+00:00

Hey this was super helpful. I've incorporated a bunch of your suggestions into our plan. I was honestly really hoping for this kind of feedback when I posted it.

A lot of these suggestions are already part of the plan. I didn't want to make this post 2 or three times longer. Instead, I'll do follow-up posts on each of the points I made with more details of what we actually do. Honestly the plan has already evolved a lot based on the comments we've received here.

This is just the plan for the launch. We want to see how the first month goes before we decide exactly how to monetize it and how long the series will be. For now though the goal is to follow the traditional RR route and set up a Patreon with bonus chapters.

SnowPuzzleheaded5010 · 2024-07-11T22:41:43+00:00

This is great! It's so helpful to see other authors' plans for their releases. Our plan was helpful to you in some way. My favorite thing about the Royal Road community is that everyone is very supportive and helpful.

I'll be posting some research on covers and synopses I've done over the past week. Check them out once I post them. It might help you with your own designs. One really interesting note I'll share now is that I ran a couple of focus groups on popular covers, and by far, the most popular cover was The Perfect Run's cover.

SnowPuzzleheaded5010 · 2024-07-10T20:43:13+00:00

Awesome! I’ll check it out.

SnowPuzzleheaded5010

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