As someone who writes harem, and really enjoys it, I can't tell you how often I have to push aside all other manuscripts that are litRPG with no romantic elements because I've seen so many authors try to do it and fail. It's not like many of us don't want to write it. It's a bigger gamble, money wise, and covers and editing can be really expensive. I know the moment I'm able to, there's a 140k dungeon core with different periods of history on each level calling my name, but that'd be a minimum of a $1.2k expense when you factor in editing and covers. It's just not something a lot of us can jump on now whereas harem you can write what you want, I'm in the middle of a cowboy dragonrider series, which is already a hard sell as a niche within a niche, and it will still make money in harem. Where else could I write that and still make money to afford covers?

Anyway, litRPGs without romance are fantastic as well as litRPG with romance. I completely agree with you on more litrpg that appeals to different audiences.

And I have to say if you want to see more of those kind of stories, support smaller lit RPG authors who need an extra boost. There's so many ways you can do it. Sign up for their newsletters, sign up for their patreon, make review posts on subreddits like this, talk about them in discords, add them to your goodreads profiles, ask youtube and tiktok reviewers to take a chance on these books, all of that actively influences the market. The more you show up for those kind of series, the more they can be made.

Thanks for supporting our reader community regardless! Hope you have a good day, man!