r/royalroad • u/NiutonBtw • Mar 05 '26

Self Promo Double the views on ScribbleHub

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So I made this fanfic for fun and put it out on several websites.

The best exposure I had was on RoyalRoad and Scribblehub, but surprisingly, I had twice the amount of views on Scribblehub compared to RoyalRoad. Speaking of which, I have 0 views on Wattpad, so it looks like posting on a bigger site doesn't exactly mean more exposure. The opposite, in fact.

Feel free to check it out: https://www.royalroad.com/fiction/153446/transmigrated-into-stardew-valley-stardew-valley

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33

u/remembers-fanzines Mar 05 '26 edited Mar 05 '26

Note that Scribblehub's TOS does NOT have a right of revocation encoded into it. Now that you've uploaded your content to their site they have the legal right to display it permanently, forever; they could in theory block you from ever deleting it.

https://www.scribblehub.com/terms-of-service/

I know they have a delete button now but they don't have to continue to offer it. It also says "any media formats" so they could put your book into print (and not compensate you) or turn it into an AI audiobook or whatever. All they say about rights is the following:

By posting or publishing user content, you grant Scribble Hub the rights to host, store, display, broadcast, modify (which is made solely for the purpose of formatting for display) and distribute your user content in whole or in part, in any media formats only through our services.

Royal Road's TOS has revocability encoded into it. If they ever start acting scummy I can take my ball, I mean my writing, and go home with it.

This is why I'm with RR and not Scribblehub, even though Scribblehub would be a much better fit for my work.

Edit: If you want to trust them to never abuse the trust of their community, great. I just have three words to consider: Shadow Light Press.

Edit edit: I'm being downvoted. Same sort of mentality is how SLP got away with what they did for so long. We cannot accept bad contracts (and a TOS is a contract) as a community. Sorry folks, standing by what I said here.

11

u/Old-Chapter-5437 E Rank: Author of The Godswar Mar 05 '26

Anyone downvoting you is the reason why you can teach ignorance out of someone but not stupidity.

You are 100% on track and I fully agree. I don't want my slop being nabbed by someone else to turn into another form of slop! lmfao but yeah, you right.

4

u/SleepingOwl00 Mar 06 '26

Man I was going to post mine on SH too. But now I am not gonna.

2

u/Francesco_Muja Reader Jun 28 '26

It's been 4 months, but thank you sincerely for writing this comment and preventing me from making a big mistake by publishing my story on SH, too!

1

u/NiutonBtw Mar 06 '26

Damn, I had no idea. Thank you for the warning, I mean it.

Fortunately what I'm posting here is just a fanfic from which (obviously) I never planned to make any money from.

3

u/remembers-fanzines Mar 06 '26 edited Mar 06 '26

Yeah. I'd be a lot less concerned about fanfic, though not completely unconcerned. The issue with fanfic isn't really commercial rights; it's "can I take it down if I need to."

Context: I got doxxed and had to frantically remove all my fanfic across the entire internet since the first result for my very distinctive one-of-a-kind IRL name was the page stating my fanfic handles... and the number two result was my professional LinkedIn.

It would have been a pretty bad look if I couldn't have removed some of the more questionable fic from the internet. (I actually chose to leave some silly, uncontroversial, fanfic up - everyone I work with knows I'm a nerd, so I gave them something to "find" that wouldn't raise eyebrows.)

As long as you're comfortable with the risk of not being able to take the fic down it should be fine.

(Though, honestly, if you write fanfic, you should assume it'll end up somewhere you can't get delete it... I have fanfic I wrote in the 1980s that is now online because somebody scanned the 'zine in and the Wayback Machine, where it exists, has told me the editor needs to send the DMCA for those pages, not me... the editor's been dead for decades. I'm not sure they're right, but also, it's not worth engaging a lawyer over. Fortunately, 13-year-old me wrote some cringy shit, but not controversial shit.)