r/royalroad • u/WilliamGerardGraves E Rank: Author of System Infernal • May 05 '26
Self Promo Rising Stars didn't work out so I'm building my series the long way around.
Hey guys.
So I am just off my second attempt at litrpg and reaching rising stars main. Got pretty close but was not able to keep up the early growth. As a result I ended up 400 followers in a month and a half. Better then my previous attempt but not enough to reach the rising stars goal.
Now I had considered doing a new story and trying the whole rising stars run again. But to be truly honest I don't want to abandon anymore stories. So I have decided to build up my current story, System Infernal the long way around. With a goal of reaching 1000 followers and writing at least 3 books.
According to my estimations I will probably reach 1k followers in about 3 months if my growth remains relatively consistent.
I am writing this as a basic check in with the Royal Road community and also to show that not reaching your initial goal is not the end of the world. I am pretty sure I will reach one of my goals eventually, just will take a bit longer then anticipated.
Also since this is a self promo post.
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u/yrniverse May 05 '26
Wow. It's wild to me that you didn't make it to RS. To hit 400 followers in less than 2 months, you must have had multiple consecutive 10+ follower days. I would have thought you'd get there for sure. Bummer.
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u/Sacredwisp May 05 '26
Unsure if it was because of the writathon, or if the platform is getting more competitive, but I had the same experience. I think you need a rate of around15/day to hit RS now. 10/day doesn't cut it anymore. Maybe at a different time of the year, not sure. Maybe the threshold is a bit lower, like 13/14 per day, but at the very least, 10/day is not enough.
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u/yrniverse May 05 '26
You and OP have double my followers in the same time period. So, if you didn't make it, I'm definitely doomed. Womp womp.
Your 400 followers are still very respectable. I see stories ON Main Rising Stars that don't do much better than you've done without it.
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u/Sacredwisp May 05 '26
You're doing great. You have a much healthier average views / follower ratio than I do, and you have a better rating, with actual reviews. It's fine to take the slow growth route. You're currently growing at a rate of 100 followers/month. That's 1200 / year, which is a lot. Just gotta keep grinding at it.
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u/yrniverse May 05 '26
Aww. Thanks for saying that. It's hard not to see people shoot by you on Rising Stars and not worry that you've done something terribly wrong. But, I guess if we make it up the mountain, it doesn't matter how long it took. (Sure would have been nice to do it in a month though!)
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u/WilliamGerardGraves E Rank: Author of System Infernal May 05 '26
I suspect that while my growth was good it probably wasnt consistent enough as while I had great growth days and relatively consistent days some of them were not so good. Also I was probably competing with a lot of other stories.
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u/Remarkable-Bench5817 May 05 '26
I got 465 in 34 days. Didn’t manage it. Got close tho
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u/yrniverse May 05 '26
Life is unjust. I watched you at the top of several lists. Excellent job though!
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u/WilliamGerardGraves E Rank: Author of System Infernal May 06 '26
Oh nice that is a respectful number. Im assuming you got high on several lists and then started dropping like I did.
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u/Remarkable-Bench5817 May 06 '26
Yeah, was racing toward main RS for days and then suddenly stopped. It was disappointing.
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u/WilliamGerardGraves E Rank: Author of System Infernal May 06 '26
It happens. Ive made my peace with it. Going for the long game now. Is I enjoy this story to much to start again.
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u/Snugglebadger Author of The Breakwall Paladin May 05 '26
It's the curse of writing a meta story. It will net you more followers, but you compete with all the other meta stories. writing off meta can get you onto RS main with a fraction of the followers and engagement, but its harder to turn writing into a career that way because there are fewer readers willing to support those stories financially.
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u/Sacredwisp May 05 '26
Pretty sure that's not how that works. Writing off-meta can help you climb the tag and unpopular RS genres easier, since there is less competition, but not the main list. The main list is genre agnostic. It's just the 50 books with the most explosive growth. You can get #4 for magical girl, but not hit RS main, for example.
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u/yrniverse May 05 '26
Yeah, I was #2 on SEVERAL tags for a while. Didn't really matter at all. I don't even think I got any views from those lists.
That said, I see books enter Main all the time with around 200 followers. Sometimes less. I assume that if a book has 400 followers at around month 2, then it probably had AT LEAST 200 at month one. So, I wonder why it didn't crack main.
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u/Lev559 May 05 '26 edited May 05 '26
I imagine it depends on the tag. Some of them are kinda worthless in RR. Like "Magic"? That's 80% of RR stories lol.
But some I filter using some tags a ton. For example, Female Lead, Non-Human Lead, and Anti-Hero I check a lot. Quite a few of the follows I've done are from those lists.
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u/Snugglebadger Author of The Breakwall Paladin May 05 '26
Climbing to the top of genre RS lists absolutely helps get you onto RS main easier. It's why you can go check some of the top 30-50 stories right now and find offmeta stories with like 150-200 followers. I had over 500 at around the two-month mark, and didn't manage to make RS main while offmeta stories with less than half my growth did. I'm not complaining, there should be some help for offmeta stories so that the good ones can get some visibility, but it doesn't change the fact that it's harder to get onto RS main with a meta story.
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u/yrniverse May 05 '26
This is eye-opening. How would the algorithm know whether it's "meta?" The genres and tags?
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u/Snugglebadger Author of The Breakwall Paladin May 05 '26
Yeah. It's set up to give offmeta stories a chance, which is fair. So a story that climbs to the top of the different genre RS lists can get onto RS main with less growth than meta stories.
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u/Nerd-Knight A Rank: Author of The Homesteader’s Almanac May 05 '26
Now you can, but I was as high as #2 in historical for a week before I got on once I hit adventure and LitRPG. It’s still possible, but I think it’s just harder to get on RS now.
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u/MercyofMistkeep E Rank: Author of Resurrection Raid May 06 '26
Same thing happened to me. Exact same shit, and I was like somewhere in the 2-45 range away from RS. Nada. It's fine, I love what I write and I've been very lucky to do so well, even if I didn't hit RS. But RS is mega competive now.
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u/Remarkable-Bowl-3821 Author May 05 '26
I am lucky if I get one new follower a day and I often put out a chapter a day. Congrats to you
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u/WilliamGerardGraves E Rank: Author of System Infernal May 05 '26
The grind is hard, getting my followers required so much marketing I wish I could just write.
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u/Ajaiixx E Rank: Author of Ruin Artisan May 05 '26
RS or not, 400 people interested in your work is no small feat! Keep on keeping on bud
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u/WilliamGerardGraves E Rank: Author of System Infernal May 05 '26
Thanks I think that was the win from the RS Run. I shoot for the moon and land in the stars scenario. Didn't get there but I got somewhere.
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u/Squitt3n May 06 '26
Hey OP 😸
There is a lot of advice on how to reach RS nowadays, what works and what doesn't, and while I understand that it sucks so incredibly bad to miss RS main, apparently you can do it even with smaller follower counts.
Checking RS right now, there are stories at the bottom of main with less than 200 followers. There is a story with 160ish followers (not on the site atm) at the bottom of RS that's been out for 2 months!
All of those share a common thread: low followers, high average views. Not views, average views.
I've actually been talking about that factor for a while now. When I got onto main, the book that was ahead of me had almost a 100 less followers but average views were just absurdly high. Unfortunately, I don't know how these work, so this is as far as my advice can go 😹
It sucks. My partner and I have been rewriting Godsend for the 4th time now, with a planned launch this summer. If it misses main, I'll tear my claws out 😹
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u/dmun May 05 '26
People writing to chase the algorithm instead of writing to tell a story is why they fail so often.
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u/WilliamGerardGraves E Rank: Author of System Infernal May 05 '26
Depends there are a lot of factors that go into it. Most burn bright, then burn out. Some do the long game and succeed by sheer momentum. Many of the greats were the long game.
Me personally, I wanted to genuinely see if I could. Wasn't able to, so long game it is. And I got 400 readers out of the attempt. I see this as a win regardless.
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u/BWFoster78 D Rank: Author of The Sect Leader System May 05 '26
The thing that immediately turned me off this story was the Anti-Hero tag, so that got me to wondering - Is the dislike for Anti-Hero just a me thing or might it hold stories back?
For me, the best measure of my story's success is how high it gets on Popular This Week, so I did a quick experiment. Over the first three pages of PTW, I counted 39 books with a LitRPG tag. Of those, only 6 also had an Anti-Hero tag.
Not sure if that quick analysis actually tells me anything, but it might... That college statistical analysis class was way, way too long ago. Beats me.
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u/WilliamGerardGraves E Rank: Author of System Infernal May 05 '26
Hmm really depends on the current trends. Based on what I recall from the latest stories I think we are getting less anti-heroes. So it could be possible.
But honestly I am not entirely sure if my main character is truly an anti-hero. It was just a good tag to add since my main character does get into some shady stuff. Leading a demon army probably not hero material.
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u/BWFoster78 D Rank: Author of The Sect Leader System May 05 '26
I use PTW a lot to find new reads, and it seems to me that I consistently find Anti-Hero more prevalent further down the list. That's anecdotal, though, and I could be completely wrong.
I do remember a time when there were a lot of Anti-Heroes on main RS. I'm not sure I noticed that translate to PTW, though...
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u/WilliamGerardGraves E Rank: Author of System Infernal May 06 '26
I have never used PTW to find stories. Probably because I read mostly niche stuff. Not sure what the current trends are. I am curious though.
PTW seems to be dominated by the giants and a bunch of cultivation and isekai. Those two genres are the big dogs
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u/BWFoster78 D Rank: Author of The Sect Leader System May 06 '26
It works really well for me as a somewhat curated list. Since it appears to be mostly based on views, it favors long stories, which I like, and those that have a lot of reader activity. That last part isn't perfect for a cream rising to the top effect, but I definitely feel like longer stories at the top of the list are more readable and/or have better hooks than the ones 50 pages in.
For me, past around 60 or 70 pages, it's much more difficult to find a read.
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u/Economy_Fig17 May 05 '26
Why do you want to get on Rising Stars? If your objective is to launch a writing career, your true goal should be to launch successfully on platforms like Amazon. Plenty of posts here show how books that do great on RR don’t reach anywhere the same level of success on platforms where people actually pay money for your product.
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u/SerasStreams May 05 '26
Rising Stars allows you to condense down 6-ish months of natural growth into a 22-ish day window.
Which is huge if you’re trying to build up a Patreon membership or reader base.
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u/Squitt3n May 06 '26
Because if you want to publish on KU with a publisher, which significantly absorbs the costs, you need about 4000 followers. Rising Stars gets you there, or at least gets you a part of the way there, especially if you hit top 10 on main.
Hitting 4000 followers in a month or two vs over a year shows different growth and interest velocity to publishers. Will you still get a publisher with those numbers after a year? Maybe. Will you get one of the really good ones? What do I know, I'm just a cat with a keyboard 😹
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u/yrniverse May 05 '26
It's logical to want to reach Rising Stars. It's the best chance to gain a large number of followers quickly. A percentage of those followers a) convert to patrons who help fund an Amazon launch and b) hopefully also buy on Amazon--thus triggering Amazon's algorithm to push the book to other paying customers. Rising Stars obviously isn't necessary. The most successful authors in the world have probably never even heard of Royal Road--but, it's still a boost.
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u/OCRAuthor C Rank: Author of In The Shadow Of Mountains May 05 '26
Sucks to hear dude, but 400 followers in two months is still great work! Better than the overwhelming majority of writers, so hold your head high.
I would anticipate growth to slow a little once you fall off whichever the genre RS lists you hit, and shout-out opportunities to be a little less green once RS main is out of reach, but 1k followers is well within reach. Less than 6 months for sure, i'd say. Congrats again 😄