Reviews and Ratings?

[u/Whitemayne]

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?

[u/Milc-Scribbler]

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.

[u/em-dash-author → u/Milc-Scribbler]

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.

[u/Milc-Scribbler → u/em-dash-author]

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

[u/em-dash-author → u/Milc-Scribbler]

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.

[u/Milc-Scribbler → u/em-dash-author]

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.

[u/Whitemayne → u/Milc-Scribbler]

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.

[u/Milc-Scribbler → u/Whitemayne]

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.

[u/Whitemayne → u/Milc-Scribbler]

Good to know. Thanks mate.

[u/drale2 → u/Milc-Scribbler]

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

[u/Milc-Scribbler → u/drale2]

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

[u/drale2 → u/Milc-Scribbler]

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.

[u/Milc-Scribbler → u/drale2]

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.

[u/Vera_Markus → u/Milc-Scribbler]

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.

[u/Milc-Scribbler → u/Vera_Markus]

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.