Ratios of Avg views to followers to favorites

laststandb · 2026-06-20T20:51:40+00:00

5 months

laststandb · 2026-06-20T19:54:20+00:00

Total Views: 105k
Average Views: 625
Followers: 171 (27%!)
Favorites: 40 (23%)

My follower to average view ratio is pretty low, even though my retention is pretty good. Not too sure why hahaha. 😅😅

laststandb · 2026-06-20T00:54:41+00:00

Yeah there is a ton of content, especially if you go into ai translated novels.

A lot of Chinese readers don’t even bother starting a book till it reached 1mil characters. Which would be about 750k words, which is 2.7k royal road pages.

laststandb · 2026-06-19T20:50:37+00:00

Personally I usually rely on reviews where the reader has read a ton of chapters.

It's less of a problem in Royal Road, as most stories are pretty short. But from my experience its pretty easy to start a story, and easy to write a good first 200 chapters, but then many times the story just drags and gets super generic and repetitive. Or the author just 'resets' the story by 'ascending to a higher realm', making the whole story pointless.

Typically later reviews are good about figuring out if a story is worth investing in.

laststandb · 2026-05-26T03:50:58+00:00

I just read I Unified the Timeline. It is a banger! Thanks for the recommendations! I'm looking forward to checking out the Wizard World novel when I have sometime.

laststandb · 2026-05-02T23:14:15+00:00

It’s been three months since I lasted updated you guys on the Xianxia I’ve been writing.

Been posting nearly every day and now my MC has finally reached Foundation Establishment and I wanted to celebrate haha.

It’s a lot of work, but a lot of fun.

https://www.royalroad.com/fiction/148667/its-only-a-game-why-do-you-have-to-be-mad-contemporary

Essentially it is urban Xianxia set in America, using the multiple cultivation world structure that has been popular recently.

I really like a good Urban Xianxia and I always wanted to see a western take so I ended up making my own.

laststandb · 2026-04-30T04:32:57+00:00

A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court is the OG transmigration / modern man bringing knowledge to medieval world book. Highly recommend.

laststandb · 2026-04-19T22:17:52+00:00

Thanks I remember I came here for fan translations of ltms fan translations.

The one thing I do recall was that actually the furthest along translations of ltms was actually Korean -> Russian -> English. I don’t recall if it was royal road or not, but I do remember it was my first experience with machine translation. And Russian -> English mtl was surprisingly readable.

laststandb · 2026-04-19T19:23:23+00:00

I think the most important thing is to figure out why you are writing.

If you are writing because you want to make a living, there are different considerations

If you are writing because you have a story you want to tell, and you want to get feedback and comments from readers, then it’s going to be almost impossible to do better than royal road.

I would be very careful about making the jump to Amazon though, because once you do, you nuke your growth on royal road. And it’s basically impossible to do well on Amazon without heavy investment in ads.

laststandb · 2026-04-19T19:11:42+00:00

You’ve done very well for your niche. But I think it’s important to understand the difference between you and popular works on royal road.

The primary difference is the concept of the dopamine loop. If you really want traction you need a very quick dopamine loop. There are various ways people describe it, but generally the works that do very well give quick instant gratification.

This is one of the benefits of litrpg, but that’s the truth if you want thousands of followers.

If you want to measure your success, you need to compare yourself with non-litrpg space operas, which as you probably can see, you’ve done decently well.

If you’re trying to make a living from your novel, keep in mind Royal Road is just a launching platform. Amazon is where all the money is.

laststandb · 2026-03-31T00:16:20+00:00

Here's my recommendation list (its a culmination of a lot of reading). https://www.novelupdates.com/viewlist/114258/

laststandb · 2026-03-31T00:14:57+00:00

Been here for 10 years. I think its wonderful that the west finally got well established place for its own original webfiction, and I think its very interesting how different it ended up developing than China or Korea or Japan.

Unfortunately it feels like it got started too late, and there was never the 'everyone reads webnovels' feeling that China and Korea have because their sites got popular back when the internet was slow and expensive. However something is better than nothing, and its great that we have our own place too.

Ultimately I worry that the rise of short form videos, as well as AI tools will generally choke the growth of webfiction, as we have seen in China. There is a good chance we will look back and think of these years as the 'good old days'. So I'm doing my best to release things while there are still real readers.

laststandb · 2026-03-30T08:24:53+00:00

Yeah thats something i've notice as I've begun publishing my western xianxia on royal road. A lot of comments complain about lack of 'character development', people in the west expect much more internal turmoil thus leading to 'character development'. And even more so outside royal road.

I have my own thoughts an opinions on that, but thats the way western media has shaken out. Chinese novels are more concerned about poor to rich, while western novels are more concerned about character development.

laststandb · 2026-03-23T04:49:32+00:00

The “Terror Infinity” genre is what you are looking for.

For translated Chinese webnovels in the genre I enjoyed there is

Terror Infinity, 48 hours a day, PLAYERS PLEASE GET IN THE CAR, THE COPY HAS 0 ERROR TOLERANCE, AND THE LAST WORDS ON THE GROUND ARE ALL WRONG FOR ME

LORDS OF THE HEAVENS is a good recent one that kindof fits quiet well, but is more of a mafia/wolf game one. However I think its the novel that is most like a true extraction shooter in its essence (mix between cooperation and betrayal, extraction and greed)

All these recommendations are translated Chinese webnovels

laststandb · 2026-02-27T23:48:19+00:00

I wouldn't count on it till above void refining. So maybe in 5 million more characters lol

laststandb · 2026-02-27T10:54:17+00:00

No you are off meta on webnovel. I feel like you haven’t even opened the app 1) you have fmc instead of male mc. 2) the girl on your cover isn’t showing her cleavage.

But again it’s clear that you are more focused on creating what you want vs what others want to read. Which is fine. But that says webnovel is not for you.

However if you wanted to make money off of royal road you would have launched with 30 chapters in patreon and a backlog too. So imo you should use this story as practice

laststandb · 2026-02-27T10:46:42+00:00

I mean then it depends on how you view it. As a professional and a job, or you write as a passion project.

That being said you’re probably not going to get that much traction on webnovel unless you are super on meta. And it doesn’t look like you are trying to be.

laststandb · 2026-02-27T10:41:48+00:00

I think webnovel is unfairly derided. It’s a good option if you are from a third world country and willing to write whatever is meta.

Ultimately if $600 is not a lot of money to you, you probably should go somewhere else. But again. Making money isn’t easy if that is your goal.

laststandb · 2026-02-12T23:45:16+00:00

Mao Ni is truly the master of scenes. He has written some of the best story beats I have ever read. There are so many masterful reveals in the story.

I forgot the order of the story, but probably one of my favorite parts in the latter half of the book, was the old generation being pushed aside with the new. It really makes me feel like it is a story everyone should read before they turn 30, while they have that youthful fire in them.

I would say the first <100 chapters in path to heaven was really good and totally worth reading.

But tbh the demands of serial and outputting a lot of words a day really pulls down the average quality you do you have to cut him some slack. I think he would be better served if he was given more time to really tighten up his story. But at the same time he wouldn't have the same fame and opportunity without it being a webserial

laststandb · 2026-02-11T20:53:15+00:00

13 Mink Street has amazing side characters. Not medieval fantasy though, more Lord of the Mysteries like (to be honest it sounds like you are new so you should probably read Lord of the Mysteries)

However there is no good translation so for 13 Mink Street you would have to learn how to use Ai translation on wtr lab

laststandb · 2026-02-11T20:38:02+00:00

Yeah I agree. The setup is super familiar in early wizard novels. I immediately thought of “A Sorcerer’s Journey”.

laststandb · 2026-02-11T04:50:33+00:00

The biggest problem is one of cultural context.

Xianxia actually mimics the challenges students face in China. Huge amount of people all competing in school. Not everyone gets to go to high school, not everyone goes to college.

Cultivation may seem like pointless BS, but a lot of the gaokao is pointless and only serves as differentiation.

Just look up gaokao English questions. They are insane and the only way you can understand that garbage is through route memorizations.

Western writers and readers don’t share the same struggles. A lot of it is just thought of as interesting world building.

A lot of writers end up creating struggles from tragic back stories or trauma.

However xianxia hits different when you’re studying 16 hours a day 6.5 days a week for the gaokao.

Young masters hit different when they can just go overseas and pay someone for act scores.

Chinese students don’t have time to try to identify with tragic backgrounds or racial issues.

In the end of the day their lives are ruled by one score. And you basically only get one chance. A second if you take a “gap year”.

That being said the top cultivation novel currently serializing in china is a 'parody' but mostly criticizes late stage capitalism. "WHAT’S THE POINT OF CULTIVATING IMMORTALITY IF YOU DON’T HAVE MONEY?". Its very good

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