Project 1: Royal Roads; Ch. 2: Authors, part 1

Hello, Comms here!

I’m still trying to find things like the exact dates, etc. etc. for the history section, so I figured it would be best to explain something else in the meantime.

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Authors.

What are they? What does that mean?

Well, it’s kind of obvious, but an author is someone who is creating a story.

But, how do you become one?

Easy! You write.

Not what you meant?

Then let’s explain the authors of RR.

On Royal Road, authors upload their work for free.

It costs absolutely nothing to read any of the stories on RR at all, for anybody.

What the heck am I talking about? You see authors on RR making a living off of their work all the time? There’s no way it can be free, you say?

Well, there’s patreon. People genuinely enjoy the stories RR’s authors weave.

So much so that some people don’t mind giving a little bit of money so that authors can turn their full attention to writing the stories that everyone loves to read.

Also, this thread has good info: https://www.royalroad.com/forums/thread/103055

That doesn’t sound like that much of a benefit to you as a reader? Just faster releases?

Well, aside from allowing them to release chapters faster, lessening the stress of financial burdens, general improvements in quality and editing, and helping give them motivation…..Patreon has benefits. Usually.

You can, for example, read chapters early.

I get it, that still doesn’t seem like that much.

Other than that just being a general and common example, a lot of authors add their own personalized benefits. Access to a patreon only discord is another one that I’ve seen.

Now, if you just shove some story up on RR for a quick cash grab or something, you’ll lose a lot of respect from the community.

It’s allowed, but RR is meant to be a place for authors to enjoy writing and readers to enjoy reading.

Almost everyone on the site is extremely passionate about stories.

If you sincerely wish to become an author for a living, and you genuinely enjoy it, that is 100% acceptable. A career is different from a cash grab.

In fact, I quite respect the people who have dedicated themselves to their work on this site.

So, how do you go about that?

Becoming an author on RR is as easy as making an account and uploading a new fiction when you click on the write tab on the top of the screen.

(Read everything in the rules before recklessly posting, please.)

Now, this part is very important.

Fictions can be rejected.

If your fiction is rejected, that is NOT the end of the world.

It does not mean you are a failure of an author.

It means that you most likely broke one of the rules and regulations.

Luckily, they include a reason why your fiction was rejected when they reject it.

I tested this, and it was actually very interesting.

I didn’t exactly do it intentionally, but it is a good example.

The staff on this site are geniuses. Almost godly.

They go through so much of the site and do a nearly unimaginable amount of work.

In the reason for the rejection, it was thorough enough to ask if it should be included in this fiction, or if it was another separate fiction.

On the note they even said that if I uploaded it again it would be accepted.

It may seem weird in a way. As far as I can tell it didn’t break any rules, right?

In my opinion, that doesn’t matter. While it was phrased as a question, it was still sound advice.

So it’s better to say that it was accepted, yes. But it gave me a chance to rethink whether I should upload it, and to decide whether I should or shouldn’t do it.

As you can probably tell, I only have one fiction.

I agreed with the reason for the rejection.

Completely.

This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.

That’s cool and all, but that doesn’t give all that much info, right?

How do you actually make a living out of being an author?

I already mentioned the patreon, but just having it doesn’t mean people will pay you.

You have to write a story that people will enjoy.

This is MUCH harder than you would imagine.

On RR, LitRPG seems to do incredibly well, but nothing will guarantee that people will enjoy it.

This part is an unfortunate mix of both skill and luck.

As for the skill part, that’s not too hard to improve if you actually put your mind to it.

Reading a lot of different books is a good start.

I recommend looking through the forums:

https://www.royalroad.com/forums/155

This is the Writing: Tips & Discussions section of the forums.

https://www.royalroad.com/forums/1124

This is the Assistance Request section of the forums.

The tips and discussions being here is rather obvious, but why would the assistance request section be included?

Well, it has a good number of very specific questions that are answered perfectly.

Not only that, but it is a good idea to ask people anything you’re unsure of.

Obviously, don’t pester them all the time. Do your own research first. If you still can’t find anything, it’s a good idea to ask then.

But the luck part is another issue entirely.

The visibility that your story gets, the attention it draws, and the community that it breeds can all go horribly awry, no matter how hard you try.

As for visibility and attention, there are still heated debates and desperate questions, both old and new.

This includes topics such as:

Ranking, Views, Best Rated, Trending, and more.

But that’s all really complicated. I'll leave that for another time. It deserves it's own part anyway.

There are the obvious things, too, thankfully.

Uploading consistently and often tends to increase the amount of people who notice your story. There is a good chance that the time you release a chapter also matters, but it’s hard to figure out exactly what to do about that. I recommend just trying to find whatever works best for you.

When your fiction is accepted, it goes into new releases under read on the navigation bar.

You will also get a notification saying whether your fiction was rejected or accepted. This can take up to 48 hours, so don’t be too nervous or impatient. It can be bad for your mental health.

Every time you release a chapter it is displayed in the latest updates section, also under read on the navigation bar.

Now, from there you just need to get people interested, right?

Well, here are some basic things to take note of.

A lot of people won’t touch a story until it has a certain amount of chapters(often 10-15)

Your synopsis only shows up in the new releases section and the fiction page, but it’s still important for the people who click on the page to see a description.

So the synopsis is quite important. If you look around the forums they have some advice as to how you should craft a good synopsis.

Explain what the story is about without being too cryptic and not spoiling anything, is pretty much what it usually boils down to.

As for latest updates, it’s the newest chapter that was released which is displayed. That means that chapter titles become incredibly important for drawing attention.

On both of these sections, however, two incredibly important things are always there.

First is the title.

The title of a fiction is pretty important to draw in attention, be it praise or ridicule.

However!

The most important part to draw somebody’s wandering eyes to your fiction is the cover.

The cover of this fiction, for example, sucks. It isn’t all that eye catching. Rather, it’s probably an eyesore.

But a good cover?

If it’s interesting and eye catching as they scroll past, their eyes will probably rest on it for a second.

After that, they’ll look at the title of the fiction.

If that still holds their interest, they’ll likely go to look at the title of the newest chapter. I’d say that chapter names can be either harmful or beneficial.

In general, it’s probably best to just number them unless otherwise required/desired.

Anyway, after that.

This is where the path diverges.

Some people read the last chapter/ most recent chapters first, to check on the quality, then proceed from there(this causes your views in your dashboard to become incredibly skewed, so if you ever wanted to know why, it’s usually because of that)

Some people go to the actual fiction page.

They look at things like the synopsis, statistics, ratings, and reviews.

They might also decide to look in the comments after every chapter if they do decide to read it.

(That’s where having a nontoxic community is very important. Oftentimes the community is influenced by the author's behavior, so be careful of that.)

But other times they just click on chapter one and read as much as they can stomach, or all of it and develop a craving for more.

As for reviews, ratings, and views.

Views are only really affected by the aforementioned problems.

Reviews and ratings, however, are a different beast entirely.

Some people do things that the RR community has come to dub a “Drive-by .5”.

You aren’t a real RR author until you’ve experienced this at least once.

Well, at least that’s what everybody usually says.

Try to avoid posting on controversial forum threads if you don’t have an incredibly good reason to. That, or you can use an alt. (Alt means alternate account, for any of you non-gamers out there.)

Continuing with the visibility thing, however.

There are a few other ways to generate more interest.

One is through your forum signature:

https://www.royalroad.com/forums/thread/107061

That should explain it quite well. It was written in December of 2020.

There are also “Promote your fiction” Threads.

There is one that is a monthly promotion:

https://www.royalroad.com/forums/5689

Remember to read the rules of every section in the forums before posting anything, by the way.

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That’s all the time I have for today, sorry. I’ll see you guys later, and I’m sorry this took so long. There’s more to this, so I’ll do the rest of it later.

~Comms, out!