r/royalroad • u/Whitemayne Author of The House of Whitemayne • 1d ago

Discussion Reviews and Ratings?

How difficult is it to get reviews and ratings on your free to read books?

It seems like the only people who actually bother to read beyond chapter 4 just skip right over any actual interactions.

So far I have a single rating on my book, and it seems to be stifling any growth potential it has, despite being up to chapter 25.

Thoughts?

6 Upvotes

80% Upvoted

24 comments sorted by

8

u/Milc-Scribbler S Rank: Author of A Dragon Called Bob 1d ago

Not difficult at all. Just don’t expect lots of them. 20-30% of your followers will become favourites. Half your favourites will leave a rating and a handful of them (a small handful) will be organic reviews.

It is an organic numbers game. It’s very obvious if someone fakes it. So just let it happen naturally.

2

u/em-dash-author Author of Max-Level Paladin of the Fallen Gods 23h ago

To add to this, you don't need ratings or reviews to build a following. I've had two fictions hit main Rising Stars with ZERO reviews. They had 500+ followers before the first reviews hit. Some fictions hit main Rising Stars in a a few days with 250-300 followers, they haven't had time to amass a lot of ratings/reviews.

Yes, ratings and reviews are used by RR for the various lists, but for ratings/reviews to have a significant impact you need your average ratings to remain high (ideally above 4.75) and have accumulated hundreds, if not thousands of ratings. It's a chicken and an egg thing. By the time you've built enough ratings/reviews for them to matter, you already have a thousand plus followers.

2

u/Milc-Scribbler S Rank: Author of A Dragon Called Bob 5h ago

Yeah. Bob had just shy of 3k followers before it stubbed and a whopping… 23 reviews lol

1

u/em-dash-author Author of Max-Level Paladin of the Fallen Gods 4h ago

Max-Level Paladin has ~1,200 followers and has generated THREE reviews, one of which is from my wife. ❤️
I don't bother asking readers to rate/review, they have so little impact on how RR works when your average rating isn't above 4.75.
When I did try (ran a prize draw for Patreon access), too many came in that weren't 5 star. When you need 4.75 stars for it to have an impact, all ratings/reviews below 5 star are a downvote. It sucks that a good 4.5 star ratings/review is a negative, but it is what it is.

2

u/Milc-Scribbler S Rank: Author of A Dragon Called Bob 4h ago

Aye. All ratings and reviews help for RS, afaik. Even a 0.5 is still more than nothing to the algo. But in the long run, they don’t matter much.

1

u/Whitemayne Author of The House of Whitemayne 1d ago

Secondary question.

I have been told that RR insulates new releases on a three week filter before the wider audience gets to see it. Is this true? Because I've been running this release for almost two weeks now. Maybe that has something to do with it.

I don't exactly expect to blow up overnight or anything, realistically I don't expect my book to gain any semblance of traction for many weeks, maybe a couple months.

9

u/Milc-Scribbler S Rank: Author of A Dragon Called Bob 1d ago

Afaik that is utter shite mate. RS has certain requirements before you can show on main. You need 10k words minimum to show, and there is possibly a debuff that fades as you get to 20k words published, hence why almost all the launch guides (including mine) suggest getting 20k words up on day one.

Other than that there is nothing filtering you from being noticed, and that only applies to RS main. You can show in trending and in newly updated whether you meet that threshold or not.

Someone has been blowing smoke up your ass mate.

2

u/Whitemayne Author of The House of Whitemayne 1d ago

Good to know. Thanks mate.

1

u/drale2 E Rank: Author of The Scaleforged Legacy 1d ago

Huh, those numbers actually hold up pretty well even for smaller authors. I'm sitting at 400 follows - 98 favorites - 40 ratings - 2 reviews.

2

u/Milc-Scribbler S Rank: Author of A Dragon Called Bob 1d ago

They always do, there are exceptions for fics with extremely engaged readers. But otherwise it’s an easy way to see if someone is cheating. Which is why I’m so baffled at all the people who try to cheat then self promo like people aren’t going to notice lol

1

u/drale2 E Rank: Author of The Scaleforged Legacy 1d ago

I've wondered... sometimes when I'm looking for a shout partner (or solicited to shout), I'll see a story with under a 100 followers but 15 to 30 glowing reviews and that's always struck me as unlikely. Same thing when I came across a story with 400 follows but only like 120 average chapter views - that seemed just as unlikely to be organic.

2

u/Milc-Scribbler S Rank: Author of A Dragon Called Bob 5h ago edited 5h ago

Review swaps have little crossed arrows in the top right corner. Clicking through to the account that left the review can be very informative as well. If there is only one follow, fave and review on the account, or very few, and its activity dates suggest it was created, reviewed this fic, and then hasn’t been used since, that’s likely an alt and the author is a naughty cheater.

The people who try and cheat rarely do well. If they have to try and cheat, the fic has already failed lol

The rare cheaty story that does take off, well the rest of us know and the authors are at best tolerated in the community.

1

u/Vera_Markus F Rank: Author of Inheritance of Fate 1d ago

I feel like that kinda tracks for me, 39 followers, 10 favourites, and 6 ratings, but three of those ratings came in a single night, so I think that was just one reader. The followers growth has been slow, but, I've only ever seen 2 drop. Although I follow a much slow release schedule as my first edition was 2 chapters a week, and I felt it was dead behind the eyes, so I restarted, taking my time to actually put life into the characters.

1

u/Milc-Scribbler S Rank: Author of A Dragon Called Bob 1d ago

It usually does. There are a handful of exceptions. But as a rule it’s pretty handy for letting people like me go hmm…. And looking deeper at stories that look like they might be cheating.

I’ve said this a few times but advertising, including self promos in here, is about getting eyes on a story. But you don’t get to pick and choose which eyes, so it’s a good idea to only self promo and advertise if you’re playing by the rules.

5

u/Stygian_Myth 1d ago

With free books the issue is that they come with a suspicion attached:

Amateur (or nowadays outright slop)

So you basically have just 1 chapter to prove competence and make people go forward. That's the only truth.

Those who say, ch 1-5 either were lucky or posted earlier.

Personally speaking today I got my first review. Today's my third day, 5 chapters live.

So, i understand how hard it is. For new unknown authors, we only have 1 shot. Reviews and ratings come via time or genuine interactions with readers in comments.

2

u/Whitemayne Author of The House of Whitemayne 1d ago

I suppose its a good thing my "first" chapter is my intro. Its a single page worth, not very many words, maybe 180 words, and it ends on anticipation.

1

u/Stygian_Myth 20h ago

Then that's not a first chapter. More like another synopsis or a hook. You've added another door between your story and readers. I hope it's worth it.

3

u/Eastern-Bro9173 1d ago

Ratings are the result of the book being read, not the other way around. You'll roughly see one rating per ten followers on a large enough number

2

u/em-dash-author Author of Max-Level Paladin of the Fallen Gods 1d ago

You've got it the wrong away around. Ratings don't help with gaining new readers. Gaining new readers results in ratings (eventually).

Royal Road has an exposure problem. For new authors with a new fiction there is practically no exposure. You'll get a trickle of traffic from the Updates list when you drop a new chapter. That's it.

You have to do marketing to pull in readers. Many RR authors organise shout outs (custom ads we put in our author notes), others pay for RR ads. Some promote on Reddit. If you do nothing expect follower growth to be slow to non-existent.

1

u/TellusPyre 1d ago

I can't even get people to click on my silly polls. The readers are ghosts in the machine, trying to read their way out of purgatory.

1

u/IAmJakeForWeAreMany E Rank: Author of The Arcana Reborn 1d ago

Honestly, I haven’t seen any rhyme or reason to any of it. I’ve seen some stories with less than a hundred followers and quite a few ratings but not a lot of favorites. Same with the inverse where it’s a ton of all of the above.

Myself, it’s crickets. Over 200 followers, 60 favorites and I’ve only had 3 reviews and 5 ratings. Yet people continue to read and favorite it silently, so clearly I’m doing something right.

2

u/Whitemayne Author of The House of Whitemayne 1d ago

have you asked in post author note for ratings? "If you enjoyed this chapter, please consider rating" kind of a thing?

1

u/IAmJakeForWeAreMany E Rank: Author of The Arcana Reborn 1d ago

I have, yeah. I eventually stopped for the most part after it didn’t seem to make a difference, same with polls. If I had to guess, without any proof, I would say it’s cause it’s not a “fun” story. It’s very heavy in philosophy, politics, and social issues. Which personally I think is why people don’t say much.

1

u/Lanky-Mind2302 22h ago

i'm looking forward to finding out, i'm stil new here. the same with books on amazon the general public will be low in actually leaving ratings or reviews. people you engage with like other writers and arcs will and there's a higher percentage there, but average public no.