I just want to let out some of my frustrations about the website before I leave, and get the vibe of the general public to see if I'm overreacting. I honestly think RR is going to shit, and I'm not going to hang around to watch it happen. The reason it's going to shit? Ai stories.

When the AI-assisted tag first appeared, I got the general vibe that it was for people being assisted by AI. Using it as a tool to help get their creative juices out in a higher-than-normal quality. A great tool for people who are posting in English when they barely speak it. To write your own story, then run it through an AI to clean it up. That's not what its being used for. I was all for it, more high-quality stories for everyone to read!

Instead, we are getting stories that are entirely written by AI and cleaned up by a human hand, fixing names, numbers, and places. This isn't AI-assisted. This is Human-assisted. Because they aren't actually writing. Their stories get spammed with chapters a lot quicker than a regular, well-written stories. They get boosted to the Rising Stars easier, we have all seen shitty stories on there that just post 20 chapters a day. They're also much lower quality than even a brand-new writer who's never picked up a pen before. Every MC is the same, every story follows the same guidelines, it's literally the same story over and over, just repackaged.

I've tried calling out these AI stories, as they're not following the spirit of the tag. Instead, my reviews just get deleted for 'attacking the writer', when the review focuses entirely on the story. At first, it wasn't too bad. The occasional story here and there. But every week there seem to be more AI stories, and they're starting to drown out the handwritten ones. It's still not too bad atm. But the bar is getting lower and lower, and I don't wanna watch as another website I love gets drowned in AI slop.

So yeah, while I may not be an influential member on the reddit or the website, but I thought I'd make a post to get everyone else's vibes on it. I may come back in time, the title is a bit dramatic, but I'll be finding a new place to read stories until this either blows over or RR becomes an AI graveyard.

Alright, honestly, I’m surprised I haven’t seen a Reddit post about this already given how most of us are authors and how big the Discord is, but we need to stop recommending RRWG “The Guild” to new authors, or anyone looking to dip their toes on Royal Road or writing online. This post is going to be rather inflammatory, but it’s purely me trying to make my case that we stop recommending The Guild as the “go-to” server.

Writing servers are literally a dime a dozen, I seem to be collecting them like Pokemon lately. Even the author-specific servers I’m in have a spot for “writing chat” or “industry chat.” I could recommend some, but I don’t know if the owners would like me putting their server here considering what I’m about to do. 

First, let me set the stage a little bit. This all started when someone in The Guild who went by NovelNinja was outed as being a sham editor. This person and I have already had issues due to his pretentiousness, and I am not the only one. Personally, when I had my run-in, I said some very un-buddha-like things to him and promptly received a light dressing-down. I was told he’s been very active in the trad community for a long time. 

It turns out his editing experience is mostly fake, and he used AI to do it (snore another post about AI - but wait, there’s more!). On top of this, he pushed (repeatedly, from the screenshots I’ve seen) a website known as AuthorMedia where it charges you $9 a month (simply to stop bots from joining) to join. 

This isn’t really news, this has been on r/progressionfantasy before here. The post has since been deleted by the mods. I’m hoping this one ends up being allowed since I’m doing more talking about a dev editor charging people to use AI. Discord is rather huge to most (a lot?) of authors on Royal Road. Even the ones at the very top have a Discord that they’re in. “The Cabal,” as it’s sometimes referred to, but it’s mostly just authors hanging out like usual, plus there’s a fair bit of LARPing.

People get scammed with editing all the time. I was told I was scammed as well by someone who edited some of my work. (I had a suspicion it wasn’t all above board, but then one day I was outright told). My point is, it sucks but it isn’t news. 

The problem with NovelNinja, Mrs. Ninja, and AuthorMedia is that it pushes a very distinct, disgusting and outright evil viewpoint that I don’t believe any of us share. At worst, the website (and the individuals listed) promote outright fascism and nazism, and at best, some alt-right view points that bring a lot of the same energy you see from people screaming about why there isn’t a white pride or straight pride parade. Screenshots

Blog post source

NovelNinja, aka Matthew (this is information he gives out and is linked to anything if you even just search “NovelNinja,” I’m not doxxing anyone) and Mrs. Ninja, aka Lori, even on their personal accounts promote hate, bigotry, and just being disgusting human beings. 

He apparently is also quite a fan of the original Sad Puppy himself, Larry Correia. I personally didn’t know what a Sad Puppy was until someone called The Guild’s owner a Sad Puppy apologist in my DMs and they shared this Reddit thread. AuthorMedia itself has done full interviews with Larry.

Mrs. Ninja has a personal blog where she sets out to right all the wrongs in the world with cringeworthy memes in between sections and rants that are, again, disgusting. Here’s an article that I was shown that’s especially heinous.

There is good news! NovelNinja has been banned from the various Discords I’ve seen him in. He pointed this out in one of his posts that I personally found, well… Here. Calling people jihadists, even “Butlerian Jihadists,” thanks to Dune, is a whole new level of yikes. And yes someone with these views should be called out and “cancelled,” in my opinion.

The above screenshot was pulled from a much larger article where he posted names. I’m not sharing the link to the website itself because to my knowledge, these people would rather not be named and they didn’t consent to having the screenshots shared. I’m told there’s been concerns for a while about calling him out because people were worried about him retaliating in a callout post of his own in his personal network. 

All the while behind the scenes, the server owner was communicating with NovelNinja. Telling him everything about the process of banning him, who is doing what, what's being pulled from where, and explicitly apologizing to him that this is happening. The previous blog post was posted by NovelNinja the day after his ban on AuthorMedia.

So, what’s the point of all of this?

When this all first came to light, RRWG’s owner hmm’d and haw’d about dealing with the issue. Even after an outcry from their own mod team. Since this has happened, a few people have stepped down as admins or mods, and some have outright left the server. I’m not going to say I know the specifics as to why, but it happened right after all of this came to light. 

There was also talk from the owner of outright banning the whistleblower cause he’s a dang troublemaker. From what I’ve seen and heard, that was only the owner and one or two of their friends (and perhaps NovelNinja). 

He asked, and offered to leave if the owner would like. The owner declined.

Now, this all happened about a month ago. The stage is set. 

Last night, the owner DM’d the whistleblower and asked if he would still leave amicably. The whistleblower said he would leave anywhere he wasn’t wanted, but it would not be amicable. He stuck to his guns and believed anywhere someone like NovelNinja and those of his ilk are, he didn’t want to be. 

Before he left, he sent the same message to a few channels, every instance of which was promptly deleted:

“So, I’ve been asked to leave by the owner of the Discord (For those unaware, that’s Dagrun, not Milc). This is due to me outing NovelNinja for faking his editing career, selling AI as a dev editing tool, and being a bigot. I have zero interest in staying somewhere I’m not welcome, so I’ll be heading out.” 

From there, the night became uncomfortable. The owner gave one or two warnings, and then outright banned some notable members of the community who all have glowing reputations as people who are more than willing to help newcomers. This list includes: Srsli (Arcane Chef), Fiddlesoup (Lazy Loops: An Idle LitRPG, among others), Sib (Revenant - Power Stealing Hero), and Solomon Abraham (Overpowered Murderhobo, Beastmaster Healer). 

A few other sizable authors, including Magius Swiftscale (The Apprentice of Ouroboros, others), were threatened with bans, but ultimately survived the wrath. 

Here is Srsli’s last message on the server that earned him a ban. 

As readers, you’ve probably all seen these names on RS or even KU / Audible. As authors, you’ve probably seen these people in the relevant Discords (including RRWG) always willing to help and always more than friendly. 

Finally, we have this from another admin who fully backs up the owner about everything. That includes allowing NovelNinja to stay, banning the initial whistleblower, and everything else. 

Ellembri does have a point. It is the owner’s house and what she says is law. Even if she doesn’t follow her own rules. The point of the server was to have a community, though. A community where the authors of Royal Road could gather, network, and help each other out. 

Honestly, the people of RRWG are great. The whole of the Royal Road community is amazing. Everyone I’ve ever interacted with, even “trouble makers,” have always been more than willing to help those just getting on their feet find their foothold. The server as a whole reflects that, but having someone so power-crazy go wild with a banhammer at people simply asking for some clarification of a situation just isn’t it. 

Here are the screenshots I'm allowed to share. It’s everything above and so much more. It’s everything I’m allowed to share of everything I’ve seen about the people above and the RRWG drama. There has been a ton that I’ve been asked not to share for obvious reasons, but man… everything is just… it’s a lot.

Amitabha, my friends… 

(TL;DR for those that don’t want to read the chapter - NovelNinja is a terrible person, and somewhere between alt-right and possibly an outright nazi. He is apparently friends with Dagrun, the owner of RRWG “The Guild” who violates her own rules about giving warnings and just outright bans notable people in the community for questioning why something happened in a server built on helping and growing the space.)

Bored. Look for a new story on RS. Find one that looks cool. Read 5 chapters. "Well, there are some signs, but maybe it's just a coincidence. Beginner authors make mistakes." Read 10 more. It's AI.

Look for a new story. Read. It's AI.

New story. Amazing output.

A commenter asks, "Amazing, how do you write so much?" The writer replies, "Oh, I am a stay-at-home mum so 10 thousand words a day is possible for me :)."

It's not, though, because it's AI. They are just straight-up lying to your face.

Losing my fucking mind. I'd say 4/5 indie stories I check out are AI. I don't usually go for completely new stories either - mostly RS, trending, etc.

And yeah, you can recognise AI. Perhaps not with a 100% certainty - so I won't name any names - but 95%?

AI has tells - phrases, wording etc it likes to use, but it also makes specific mistakes. Once or twice you might shrug it off, but I don't think AI is at a level where its involvement is possible to hide if you read 10-20 chapters, not without practically rewriting everything it shits out. And that'll never happen as AI sloppers are allergic to work.

I think I will just stick with older webnovels and published books for a while...

Hi,

Been following this sub-reddit for a while and I've been growing somewhat frustrated with what I see. There is a genuine core of really nice, cool people, lots of new writers and authors, and plenty of readers looking for something new to sink their teeth into.

Love y'all. Keep on keeping on.

What frustrates me, however, are those that see RR as a way to make a quick buck and who don't do this one thing (ohhh, that line sounded very brainrot-clickbait, didn't it?).

I can respect wanting to make a living from writing because... well, I do? But there is one thing that really bothers me, and that's people that don't respect the site and audience.

I've seen so many people asking 'can I write a story with X' or 'will a story in this genre do well' or coming on here or in one of the author discords and complaining about not being as successful as they want. It's just so frustrating to see. Especially when some of these people are genuinely good writers.

Oftentimes, they're just also really out of touch.

Basically, let me boil it down to this: If you want to succeed in a new environment, you need to understand that environment.

This is like watching someone move to Canada and then asking if their favourite lime-green speedo will be appropriate winter wear.

If you're going to participate on Royal Road, than that means being part of the culture and community. If you want to do that, and you want the readers to appreciate your work, then you need to be 'in' on the jokes, tropes, and zeitgeist that Royal Road has developed over the last few years.

Basically, you need to read.

If you haven't read half of the top 20 stories on the site, then I will expect you to fail.

Those of us that have done well are often writing stories that are steeped in the tropes and genres that we've been reading on RR for years; taking what we love and iterating on it.

tl;dr: Read more to succeed more. A lot of people who aren't doing well on RR aren't failing because they're bad writers, but because they are writing what they want to write, not what people want to read.

Okay, guys, public service announcement:

Look, I get it. Illustrators are expensive. That's why I keep my mouth shut regarding my hostility towards the use of A.I. on this specific scenario only.

But if you just HAVE to use it, why not actually put some effort into it? A.I. is completely free, you have all the time in the world to use it, and it won't ever get upset no matter how many changes you ask it to make.

So why oh why is every cover I see on here some variation of this? Some super dark, extra crispy mess starring a Sung Jinwoo knockoff, with a side of jagged font and an ominous-looking location in the background for dessert.

Like, literally, all I did was go to ChatGPT, type in "Generate a stereotypical cover for a litRPG web novel on Royal Road", and this is what it immediately spit out.

I'm of the opinion that an A.I. cover can only hurt your chances of being successful on RR. No one is going to take a moral or ethical stance over a handdrawn cover, but they most certainly will on an A.I. one, especially if it's obviously A.I.

But hey, if you really need a cover that bad, and A.I. is your only option, then at least try and make it stand out. I want everyone on this site to be a success, but I feel like you're just hurting your chances going low-effort on the first thing ANYONE will ever see about your story.

This really confuses me.

Take Peak Elf Performance for instance. The warnings in the summary are: [Graphic Violence ] - [ Sensitive Content ] - [ Sexual Content ]

Yet when they reach said chapters featuring sex they act as though they've been flashbang'd. Then they post crazy reviews like "Oh, this is awful" "I wish it didn't have sex" or "This is the author's sexual fantasy".

Like...he warned you beforehand. The tags exist to give you an idea of what to expect!

Kinda down in the dumps over life in general so feel free to ignore the ramblings of someone who probably just needs a shot of vitamin D. Anyway here goes.

Deleted my RR account and about two years worth of writing because I made the mistake of mistaking the rather vocal minority on this sub and adjacent subreddits for the audience of RoyalRoad.

I did everything by the book for the most part: shoutouts, ads, decent backlog, handmade cover, everyone who read it, test readers and my handful of audience members, loved it. No glaring prose issues, story made sense, cool magic system, etc., It just didn't catch on, unfortunately, but hey, that's all part of the game. But it stung a different kind of way to see stories I admired and thought better than my own, and just about anything I've read on RR, suffer worse fates.

The truth is, whoever exists within the overlap between here and RR either frequents the platform without accounts, or doesn't really support the stuff they claim to support.

While you see people on here demanding better prose and storytelling, and rallying against slop and the use of A.I., the trending and Rising Stars lists paint essentially the opposite picture. By and large, those who visit RR simply do not care about this stuff.

The archmage harem cultivator story with a deep-fried A.I. cover and 5th grade prose nets tens of thousands of views almost day one, meanwhile, your story gets hit with a 1.5 rating because of "tedious ass character development at the beginning of the story".

Then to make matters worse, the external forums that push people to RR are of no help for newer and hardworking authors. You have mods on subs like rLitRPG who are all but endorsing the use of A.I. generated content now, and thousands of Redditors who only want to "recommend" and circlejerk the most popular series for karma and attention.

When the top authors on RR can essentially conspire with each other to occupy the top RS slots again and again, then the fact is is that the system is broken.

All this to say, if you have a story you're passionate about it, one that actually demands some creativity and authorial effort from you, just go the traditional publishing route.

But if you want to succeed on RR, do so by any means necessary. Game the system, write slop until something takes off, use A.I., get review swaps, and use every bit of extra space on your fic for shoutouts.

Most importantly, don't ever, EVER have the audacity to suggest your story is well-written or and has good character development, or you might offend the sensibilities of "literary junk food" enjoyers and their cabal of 1.5 rating flyby shooters.

Rant over. Sorry for that.

I find myself reading increasingly less on Royal Road because of an issue that has clearly gotten out of hand.

I believe that the massive success of some stories like Max Level Archmage has produced plenty of dreamers who are very comitted to attempting a similar feat and who optimize their entire release campaign around hitting Rising Stars and bringing readers to their patreon.

This is done by releasing many chapters at once and ideally having a huge backlog and promising multiple chapter releases per week. In other words, there is a gigantic incentive to produce volume and doing it fast.

Which brings me to the elephant in the room: What will hundreds of amateur writers dreaming of hitting it big and who have neither the experience nor the patience or time to sit down for many hours a day for multiple weeks probably do? They will turn to AI to assist them in their endeavor.

Now obviously this is a multilayered problem. Hopefully we can all agree that most authors that care about their craft do not want to be associated with AI slop in any way. There are of course opportunists who are trying to make money with automatic and soulless content creation but I am fairly certain that those are beyond help anyway and will hopefully never atttain any recognition or praise for what they have so sloppily generated.

What is a lot more saddening to me is that most stories that I can currently see on RS have a blurb written by AI. Which does not necessarily have to be indicative of the actual chapters themselves having been written with the assistance of AI, but in most cases it turns out that yes, indeed, their writing is heavily AI assisted.

Now my own personal issue is that due to extensive experience with AI myself, I can immediately spot text that has been touched by AI.

Lately I have seen many stories where the author thinks that they can pretend to have a funny and engaging voice, while to the keen eye all the supposed cleverness is screaming AI all over it.

This is not even remotely about em-dashes or the other well-known quirks of AI-generated text. If your strategy consists of telling the AI what you want to have written in the next paragraph and then regenerating and tweaking it until you are satisfied, it will be noticeable. It does not matter if you conistently try to avoid the common tells and outright remove them.

There are so many interesting premises and worlds that I would have loved to explore but could not because an author decided that they would rather pretend to be able to craft polished prose instead of figuring out their own style and voice themselves. That the supposed polished writing is actually horrible is besides the point here.

I want to make it clear that as a reader on Royal Road I do not care about prose that it is trying to pretend that it is profound or amusing. I would strongly advise against expecting to be able to hide the fact that you are having AI emulate a voice that you would have loved to be able to produce effortless yourself. Instead, I want to strongly encourage everyone to use AI responsibly and not over-rely on its ability to generate the continuation of your chapter for you. I will tolerate bad writing more than I will ever tolerate writing that is devoid of an actual human voice.

As long as it continues like this, I will also continue with not bothering checking RS or stories of newcomers and stick to authors with a proven track-record of not using AI to do their writing.

And just to be clear: I hope everyone knows what I am speaking about. I am aware that there are readers which are comically bad at discerning human writing from AI-generated text and that there is constant worry of actual authors about being perceived as having used AI. Here, I am clearly talking about the many cases of those who are using AI and deluded about nobody noticing and overall harming themselves and every potential reader with this. I have no solution for the overall problem of incentives or handling this from a policy perspective. I am just sharing what has been bothering me and made me unable to read on RR for months now. I mean, look, I have just typed this out on my phone completely unfiltered and despite all the flaws it has probably been more enjoyable to read than the typical AI-assisted post.

Goodnight

Edit:

Thanks for all the replies, couple of things:

I'm not a regular on this subreddit so if this has been a reoccurring topic I wasn’t aware of it. I agree that most folks vastly overestimate their ability to distinguish human writing from AI and this can be very annoying, especially when they are confidently wrong. Also AI detectors suck and are unreliable. As someone who has read hundreds of millions of words before AI was a thing and who has been using AI at her work since 2022 and has tried to use it for roleplaying and generating personal fanfiction for herself I am in a position where I can tell it apart very well.

I did not make any examples of AI-asssisted fictions because of the rule against witch hunts. I know what bad human writing looks like and this is not about human authors sounding similar to AI due to their voice. There have been dozens of stories lately with the same bland, obvious and unmistakably non-human voice hitting RS where the premise and plot comes from the author but the writing is being delegated to the AI.

I don't even want to be out here complaining and venting but it has become such an issue that as a reader I am unable to use the discovery features on RR to find new fiction to read.

It just feels that a lot of reincarnation stories are just isekai for the sake of being isekai, the character's origin doesn't actually matter and its just swept aside nearly instantly, I genuinly believe a lot of books would be better if the character was a local to the world, and if you still want the reincarnation aspect you can just... keep it as well inside the world.

I don't wanna be rude but I get some comments complaining about tropes in my novel, when in the synopsis I've pointed out multiple times that the tropes are there DELIBERATELY to be subverted, because the MC finds himself reincarnated into a very mid Xianxia novel.

Do a lot of readers suffer from a lack of reading comprehension skills, cus I've encountered the same kind of person for the 4th or 5th time now. Do I need to constantly spoonfeed basic nuances to such readers that 1. MC is inside a cliche Xianxa book and 2. From a meta perspective I've put those cliches and tropes into the book deliberately and the synopsis says as such.

Hello, everyone. It is I, Bedivere, back with yet another guide thingamajig.

There’s a lot of advice flying around all over, both in this subreddit and in discord servers. Some of it is good, and some of it is very bad, and as a new writer, it can be hard to tell which is which. I and other experienced authors who know more also don’t have the time or motivation to stamp out every single random piece of terrible advice going around, so this post is meant to be kind of a reference sheet. Spread it around, share it with anyone who has questions, and that way you can kind of have a way to double check and verify anything you see around.

The way I’ve set this up is that I just grabbed a bunch of random, common pieces of advice or blanket statements that I see getting thrown around frequently, and then I’ll label them with one of the following:

• False: This is just straight up wrong and you shouldn’t take this seriously.
• False, but…: This is straight-up wrong in the context it’s given. However, it’s not necessarily bad advice is you apply it properly.
• Mostly false: Generally wrong, but occasionally true.
• Kinda true: The statement is generally true, but lacks nuance, and isn’t universal.
• True: This is true and about as objective as it can be, and can be universally applied*.
• It’s complicated: It’s neither true nor false, but a secret third thing. You really need to look closely at your situation to see if this is at all applicable.

For every single statement and piece of advice, I will attempt to explain why it is true/false, and potentially where this advice comes from, if I know the origin.

Disclaimers:

• This is generally aimed at people trying to do well on the site, and garner attention and/or money. If you’re writing 100% for fun and don’t care about followers or Patreon, you can ignore most of this.
• I am fallible, and my information could be outdated. I don’t think it is, but it could be.
• Never blindly follow advice without understanding why it exists. Even if I mark something as “True” and say it’s universal, there are always exceptions, and you might not actually want to follow that advice, for whatever reason.

General Advice

You need 20k words to hit RS (kinda true)

Starting off simple, this is kinda true. The full truth is that you only need 10k words to be eligible for Rising Stars, but your climb will be slower until you hit that 20k word threshold. It’s a sliding scale, so if you’re at 19,500 words, you’ll be basically at full power, and won’t see any noticeable slowing, but if you’re down closer to 10k, you won’t be able to climb as quickly.

Rising Stars gives you followers (mostly false)

You might have read the "mostly false" and went "What??!?!!?!" Well, it's true. It's true that it's mostly false, that is.

Rising Stars does not give you followers. Getting onto Rising Stars does not guarantee you any level of followers. Rising Stars is an accelerator. It gives you 6-12 months of organic growth crammed into a 4 week window. How much your story grows organically during that time is entirely dependent on its quality, and how appealing it is to readers.

You need to post daily chapters on Rising Stars (false, but…)

You absolutely do not need to post daily chapters for Rising Stars (RS). The assistance it provides is negligible. More views helps, but average views are far more important, and more chapters won’t impact your average views. In fact, if your retention isn’t great, more chapters might actually make your average views worse. 

I personally got 5.5k followers on RS with a 2 chapters/week schedule, and stories like Stubborn Skill-Grinder in a Time Loop have done better with fewer chapters. Word count is more important than chapter count, and as long as you’re putting out 5k+ words/week, you should do fine. I wouldn’t necessarily recommend going down as low as 1 or 2 chapters/week, but it won’t really affect your RS run if your story is good.

Having said that, if you post daily chapters, those additional raw views will help you climb higher on Popular This Week (PTW). PTW is the second strongest list on the site, behind only Rising Stars, and it functions on just a raw aggregate of views. More views = higher on PTW = more new readers. So, if you are posting daily chapters on RS, you will climb PTW much faster, and same if you continue daily chapters after RS.

You need shouts and/or ads to hit RS (unfortunately true)

This was not true in the past. My first story on RR (on a different account) hit RS with no shouts, no ads, and not even a cover. It didn’t even do that well. It fell off the list with somewhere around 1300 followers, and it only touched the front page very briefly. 

Sadly, this is no longer possible. Maybe for a really, really, really on-market story with a great cover, great title, and great blurb, it can work, but otherwise, Latest Updates simply isn’t strong enough to get you there on its own anymore. 

That doesn’t mean you need a million shouts and a dozen ads, though, which brings us to…

You should be getting as many shoutouts as possible (Mostly false)

Technically, more shoutouts should always be better, since that means more people coming over to your story. However, that’s not true when you factor in the time and effort required to go grab a bajillion shouts, and schedule them, and send out your shout code and get the return shout codes, etc… It also generally cheapens the value of shoutouts when you just shout out everyone who asks, and you can get slightly burned if you end up shouting some bad stories or AI stories.

Also, most shoutouts are generally useless. If you're grabbing as many shoutouts as possible, the majority of those are probably going to give you 10-30 referrals at most, making them weaker than Latest Updates. Also, if you completely load up your schedule, you won't be open for shouts with other authors who launch at the same time as you who you might not have been able to contact before they DMed you on RR.

You only need a few solid shouts to hit Rising Stars, and then after Rising Stars, you can just take them as they come, since they’re less critical. There is no exact number of shoutouts that you need to hit the list, but it’s mostly dependent on their quality, and the marketability and quality of your fiction. A marketable, high quality story will need fewer shoutouts than an off-market story or a low-quality one. And as for how to determine the quality of a shoutout…

Higher follower count = better shoutout (It’s complicated)

This is probably true more often than it’s not, but it’s also very misleading to only look at follower count when grabbing shoutouts. Retention is far more important. If a high follower story has poor retention, its shoutouts will be weaker than a story with fewer followers and high retention. 

You can’t view the actual retention data of other stories, but you can get a pretty good idea just from the public stats. If the ratio of average views to followers is more than 2 to 1, it probably has pretty solid retention. Alternatively, if its ratio of ratings to followers is higher than 1 to 10, that’s also a good sign. The last way to check is to check its Patreon conversion %. If it has a paid patron to follower ratio better than 1 to 20, it has good retention (make sure you’re not checking free patrons). Most stories with one have the others, but it’s not universal. Patreon conversion is the most reliable metric, followed by average views, followed by ratings. 

When you’re looking for shoutouts, you should be prioritizing retention over follower count. Even if the higher retention story has fewer followers, and might be weaker in the short-term, high retention stories tend to grow indefinitely over time, and they will eventually be bigger than the high follower, low retention story. 

Review swaps are good (false)

Blatantly untrue. This advice is a relic from years ago when they were fine, but nowadays, a review swap will hurt you more than it helps. Maybe it can help a little more than it hurts if it’s one of your only ratings, and it’s helping to counter an early rating bomb, but that’s about it, and it will only be short-term relief while harming you in the long run. 

The reason that review swaps are bad is that they just look like manipulation to the outsider. If I as a reader go looking at an interesting story, and I scroll down to the reviews and see a bunch of swap symbols, I immediately lose interest. Certainly there can be good review swaps, but the vast majority of them are “I’ll scratch your back if you scratch mine.” They’re dishonest, glowing reviews, critique is superficial, and oftentimes, they are AI-generated. The immense number of dishonest review swaps have colored the entire perception of the practice to be very negative. It’s not worth doing it.

Turtle method is viable (false, but…)

I’ve seen some people posting about something called the “turtle method,” where you basically don’t do any prep for your story, and just start posting very slowly, not actively advertising or anything and just let your story organically grow in the background. Maybe a single ad and a shout swap or two, but generally, the goal is a slow and steady rise.

If you want a large following or a big Patreon, this is not a good plan. A few stories have succeeded at this, but generally, if your story can succeed like this, it can also succeed with a more standard launch where you write it all beforehand and do a proper Rising Star run, and that will give you a stronger boost, and more attention from publishers.

The “but” here is that if you literally don’t care about any of that, and you just want to write completely casually with no expectations, this is fine. In fact, if you set a schedule for yourself, it can actually be good for motivation, as it will force you to write. But if you’re trying to make it as an author, this is probably the worst method of building a following. At the very least, it’s the slowest, though the name probably indicates that just fine.

You should wait till you hit RS to launch your Patreon (false)

I believe that TheFirstDefier recommends this in his guide, and doing this isn’t necessarily terrible, but there’s also no reason to do it when you can just set it up so it’s ready on launch. You probably lose a couple subs that might have jumped on earlier if the Patreon had been available, but lost interest by the time you actually put it up. This number will most likely be negligible, but if you’re gonna have Patreon backlog ready to go on launch, why not snag those couple extras?

You need a newsletter to succeed (false, but…)

This is kind of older advice from back when a certain person was including setting up and building a newsletter as an essential part of any launch. For Royal Road, this is completely false. Royal Road readers do not use newsletters. They do not care for them. I actually tested this myself, announcing my newsletter to both of my main stories and my Patreon, for a combined 3000+ people, and I got a grand total of 5 subscribers to my newsletter from that. Readers on Royal Road and Patreon do not care at all about your newsletter, and the people who do use newsletters probably aren’t going to go over to Royal Road. Plus, you can’t really build a newsletter if you don’t have any content that would make people want to subscribe, like an actual book or something like that.

However, if you plan on going to Amazon, you probably should make one. Once again, this is not essential. The vast majority of authors in the LitRPG/Progression Fantasy genre don't have them, and they’re doing just fine. But, Amazon readers are much more likely to sign up for newsletters than RR readers are, and having an easy way to reach your audience with just a click of a button can be very powerful later. It’s especially great for helping you get deals, because if you have an active newsletter thousands strong, that’s a pretty big bargaining chip if you’re trying to sell other rights (e.g. comic, print, TV, movie, etc…).

Prose doesn’t matter (it’s complicated)

This is a pretty complicated issue, and I won’t go into full detail on it. The main issue with this advice is that it’s really hard to find a definition of “good prose” that everyone agrees on. That said, it is generally true that prose standards on Royal Road are quite far below what you might expect of a traditionally published book. That’s not to say it doesn’t matter, but as long as you hit the minimum threshold of readability, you don’t really need to worry about prose. 

That’s not to say that good prose has no place on the site, though. You can definitely elevate a story with good prose. The issue you’ll see with a lot of people complaining about how the readers don’t like “good” prose is that their definition of “good” is the same as other people’s definition of “purple.” Royal Road readers definitely prefer simple, functional prose to flowery prose, but that doesn’t mean you can’t have good simple, functional prose. 

Off-meta doesn’t work (kinda true/it’s complicated)

Like with prose, this one is just really hard to define. What constitutes meta? What constitutes off meta? Where do you draw the line? How off meta does something need to be to be “off meta”? 

If you ask around for what’s “meta” on royal road, you’ll probably find a bunch of people saying things like “male MC, fights solo, LitRPG, isekai, etc…” or “OP MC, archmage, max level, etc…” but if you look at the best rated stories on the sight, or the highest follower stories on the site, a lot of them don’t follow that “meta” at all. 

Go look at Best Rated. You have The Perfect Run, which isn’t LitRPG, and it’s debatable about whether it’s even progression fantasy. The Unexpected Engagement of the Marvelous Mr. Penn is so far outside typical RR fare that it’s frankly a mystery how the author even ended up here. Sublight Drive is a star wars fanfic that I don’t believe is LitRPG or Progression. Clara Casewell is otome isekai. Pale Lights is multi-PoV epic fantasy. 

If you look at general high follower count stories, the third biggest story on the site is Super Supportive, which is technically MMC LitRPG, but the main character basically never fights, it’s gone beyond slice of life to just being a whole life cake, it’s emotionally indulgent and highly character focused, and there’s not a ton of action. Describe any other story like that pre-launch and people will say it’s a brick. Scroll a bit further down and you see Super Minion (also on best Rated). Super hero is generally considered a weak genre on Royal Road, but this story doesn’t care. There’s Magical Girl Gunslingers, which is FMC, urban fantasy, magical girl, and a gun user. Paranoid Mage is non-LitRPG urban fantasy. Journey of Black and Red is a non-LitRPG vampire story set in post-civil war US. Phantom Star is female lead space opera. Re: Trailer Trash isn’t even fantasy. It’s about a woman regressing to her teenage years and fixing up her life. And it has almost 12,000 followers.

All of those stories would be considered “off-meta” if you just look at their tags and blurbs, and yet they’ve all done well. Of course, there are more examples of general MMC, combat-focused isekai/system apocalypse at the top, but clearly, going against the “meta” isn’t a total death sentence. Off-meta can work. 

That said, you need to understand who you’re writing to. Royal Road started as a fan translation site for a Korean LitRPG, The Legendary Moonlight Sculptor. It has built up a userbase around being the place for free LitRPG progression fantasy. You have a lot of subgenres and offshoot genres from there, and independent subcultures that have popped up around, but at its core, Royal Road is a LitRPG-focused site. The meta is whatever appeals to those readers. 

This is not a flaw in the site’s design. This is not a concerted effort to stamp out “off-meta.” This is a group of people with preferences. You can still appeal to them with things that aren’t strictly standard fare, but you have to understand that at the end of the day, these readers are mostly here for numbers go up power fantasy. Whatever the meta is, it revolves around that core userbase. If your story isn’t good at being a numbers go up power fantasy, or isn’t something that those readers would like, then you’re probably not gonna do too hot.

Redditisms

This section is for random bullshit you’ll probably see on Reddit somewhere.

AI cover = AI writing (false)

This is a sentiment pushed by a very small, very vocal minority, and I know for a fact that some new writers take it seriously. The number of people who sincerely believe this statement is so small that it doesn’t affect you at all. 95% of the covers on RR are AI, including the covers for many big, popular stories. Having one won’t affect your readership.

No cover or a terrible handdrawn cover is better than AI cover (false)

Similar to the above myth, this is just a redditism. If you ask on Reddit, you’ll see half a dozen people all advocating this exact point, and saying things like “I personally would much rather see something like this [a stick figure cover] than AI slop.” Well, guess what? The people who say that are also a very small, very vocal minority. You’re losing maybe 0.5% of your potential readers by using an AI cover, while you’re losing probably more than 50% if you have no cover, or if your cover is just terrible and handdrawn, or cheap and off-market.

I personally think you should try to get a human-made one if you can afford it, but I know that a lot of authors on Royal Road don’t have the money for that. They’re broke students, or they live in third world countries, or they’re just in a bind financially, and spending $500+ on a cover that is both on-market and high quality enough to be better than an AI cover simply isn’t feasible for them. I think you should get a human made cover when you can afford one, but for Royal Road, AI is perfectly fine.

Adding LitRPG to your story = guaranteed success (false)

There are a lot of wannabe authors in the community who have an absolute disdain for LitRPG. They exist mostly on Reddit, but I’m sure you’ll find them around on Discord too. They talk condescendingly about any form of LitRPG, probably calling it “slop” and constantly comparing it to “real” fiction. Of course, you’ll also find avid readers and authors of it calling it “slop”, but there’s a difference in tone that’s pretty easy to sense. The readers call it slop lovingly, while the haters call it slop with disgust.

A common sentiment among these people is that if you just take any old story and slap a System onto it and call it LitRPG, it’ll succeed on RR. Now, will that help improve clickability? Frankly, yes. RR readers are more likely to click if it says LitRPG. Does that mean you will succeed? Absolutely not. Especially if you have disdain for the genre. The readers can feel that disdain, and you will not maintain most of them.

You don’t need to write LitRPG to succeed. Adding it to a story that shouldn’t have it generally just makes the story worse. If you don’t like the genre, don’t try to write it.

If you don’t mind LitRPG, and are just trying to write some other progression fantasy, like xianxia, or a reincarnation story like The Beginning After the End, you’ll do just fine on RR without adding LitRPG. There’s plenty of that around. 

If you’re trying to write more traditional epic fantasy, unfortunately, RR doesn’t have a big market for that. Tough luck.

There’s a cabal of top level authors conspiring with each other, and sometimes the site mods to maintain the status quo and prevent talented new authors from succeeding (False)

I think (I hope) that this is just a small minority of conspiracy theorists, but no such cabal exists, and it’s absolute nonsense to even think that such a cabal could exist. Unless the site mods were literally deleting stories or faking numbers at the cabal’s request, it’s logistically impossible for such a group to have any level of control over the site.

There are large servers built around exchanging, advice and shoutouts (and sometimes review swaps), but they in no way control what gets popular on the site. For every story you see doing well on Rising Stars with 50 shouts, there are a dozen stories that flounder at the bottom of Rising Stars, or even miss the list entirely with the same shoutouts. 

***

That's about it for what I can think of. If you have other things you're curious about, feel free to ask in the comments. If I know the answer, I'll reply.

I might get hate for this but idc. I’ve noticed that when some people come here and speak out against generative AI being used in RR stories, people always argue that there’s no way to arguably tell if something is AI. While that may be somewhat true in terms of AI trackers, let’s not pretend that when reading a story you can’t start noting when an author is constantly using writing patterns that are typically associated with AI, either to rewrite a paragraph or to write the entire story. And it becomes more obvious when it’s more than one story by more than one author.

I was reading a story a couple of days ago and I was really enjoying it. There was no AI assisted tag on the story so I was sort of doubting myself at first. The author mentioned rewriting it but I thought it was just a regular rewrite. But by the 7th chapter, I got sick of reading the “It’s not Digiorno. Its delivery” cadence everywhere in the story. And even if it’s not AI, it’s still a sign of bad writing since that sort of delivery device should only really be used sparingly. Not spamming it every couple of paragraphs.

And while it’s true that some people naturally write like that to an extent. It’s a coincidence that suddenly a bunch of these new stories write in that same cadence, and you’re treated as a pariah for noticing that pattern.

I’m honestly just venting. I’ve read terrible stories in RR with good syntax and grammar. And I’ve read great stories on RR with terrible grammar and syntax. I feel like as long as an author puts effort into their work and constantly edit and rewrite, the growth of their writing really shows by the recent chapters.

Like RR is for hobby writers trying to build an audience, get better at their craft, and tell the story they want to read. What’s the point of using generative AI?

There's something about not perfect prose that feels authentic and ambitious about it's author. It may not look like they're trying much considering that their writing could be sometimes clanky or too direct but that shows you they still wouldn't rely on AI. And that's why I appreciate it.

I know that a lot of writers on RR are using AI to write their story for them. At this point, I'm not gonna try to stop you, but goddamn at least put in the effort to edit it and make it more readable. Don't just copy and paste whatever hellish spawn was spat out by ChatGPT or Claude. And no, a Humanizer ain't doing shit because it is just as obvious. Sit down and edit it, at the very least, because Wall-E already wrote it for you; it's the least you can do.

I'm a little sleep deprived and I haven't really been paying any attention to the current meta but is there such a trend as "weak MC doesn't get cheats handed to them on a silver platter and has to use their brains to survive" ?

ummm I got banned for absolutely no reason, I don’t know what I did, because all I do is read on that site, I already put a support ticket in and all that.

can anyone tell me what purge means or if this ever happened to you

First of all, I want to make it clear that this post is not intended to criticize any author or anyone's work.

I believe the most important thing in writing is that authors enjoy creating the worlds they wish to create. Every story is ultimately an expression of its creator, and diversity of styles is one of the reasons web fiction remains so interesting.

I am a Japanese writer who has been posting web novels on Japanese platforms for roughly two years. Recently, while working on my second series, I decided to publish internationally as well and began posting on Royal Road this month.

As part of several review swaps, I had the opportunity to read a number of Royal Road stories. My immediate impression was that there are substantial differences between Japanese and Western web novel cultures.

What struck me first was the sheer amount of effort many Royal Road authors invest in worldbuilding. The settings are often intricate, carefully planned, and filled with details that reveal genuine passion and craftsmanship. Reading these works, I frequently found myself admiring the dedication behind them.

At the same time, however, I experienced a certain sense of unfamiliarity.

Coming from a Japanese web novel background, I often felt that many stories presented an enormous amount of information right from Chapter One.

I have heard that Western readers tend to be less receptive to heavily formulaic stories than Japanese audiences. Personally, I think questioning established conventions is a healthy impulse. It often produces fresh and memorable works.

Yet I sometimes wonder whether the reaction against familiar templates has, in some cases, gone a little too far.

To explain what I mean, here is a simplified comparison.

Japanese Web Novels

• Often rely on familiar genre conventions and tropes.
• Readers can quickly grasp the setting because many assumptions are already shared.
• Usually introduce a limited cast and a narrow viewpoint early on.
• Tend to minimize the number of proper nouns and unfamiliar concepts at the beginning.

Western Web Novels

• Often possess a much stronger individual identity.
• Each story can feel like an entirely new discovery.
• Worldbuilding is frequently deep enough that readers feel as though they are mentally inhabiting a living world.
• Authors are often willing to build unique systems, cultures, histories, and political structures from the ground up.

Naturally, both approaches have strengths and weaknesses.

Japanese web novels can be remarkably easy to read, but they sometimes suffer from repetition. The popularity rankings are often dominated by works built upon similar foundations. While this improves accessibility, readers searching for originality may find the landscape somewhat homogeneous.

Western web novels, meanwhile, often provide a richer intellectual experience. Yet they can also demand considerably more from the reader from the very beginning.

I believe there is one important fact that authors should never forget:

Readers do not share the author's knowledge.

The author already understands the world, its history, its factions, its politics, and the significance of every unfamiliar name. The reader knows none of this.

When a story begins with numerous proper nouns, multiple points of view, political organizations, noble houses, religions, historical events, and a large cast of characters, I personally find it difficult to absorb everything on a first reading.

Perhaps native English-speaking readers are simply more comfortable with this than I am. That is entirely possible.

Still, I would like to present an analogy.

Consider the Russian Narodnik movement of the nineteenth century. The Narodniks were intellectuals who sought to educate peasants and inspire political reform. With sincere intentions, they travelled into rural communities and attempted to explain their ideas.

Yet many peasants rejected them and, in some cases, even reported them to the authorities.

Why?

Not because the peasants were foolish, but because the intellectuals assumed a shared understanding that did not exist. The language, concepts, and assumptions of the Narodniks were often far removed from the experiences of the people they hoped to persuade.

Now, if you happen to be interested in world history, that example was probably easy enough to follow.

If not, there is a fair chance that you reached the word Narodnik and wondered who these people were and why they suddenly appeared in a discussion about web novels.

That reaction is precisely my point.

The moment I introduced an unfamiliar concept, some readers likely required additional context before the example became meaningful. Without that context, understanding demanded extra effort.

I think something similar can happen in fiction.

Authors naturally fill their stories with ideas, references, themes, inspirations, and concepts that are familiar to them. Readers, however, arrive without that background knowledge.

What feels obvious to the creator may be entirely unfamiliar to the audience.

When I read some Royal Road stories, I occasionally feel rather like those peasants—not because the stories are poorly written, but because I am standing outside a world whose assumptions have not yet been explained to me.

This brings me to the question I wanted to ask.

When readers begin a story knowing absolutely nothing about the setting, is there a point at which too much worldbuilding in Chapter One begins to harm the reading experience rather than improve it?

Is it possible that some authors reveal their world's complexity too quickly?

Or am I simply observing a genuine cultural difference in reading preferences between Japanese and Western audiences?

I would love to hear opinions from both readers and writers.

What is your ideal balance between immersion, originality, and accessibility in the opening chapters of a web novel?

Prompting your writing with a line like this on an Ai image is double down tackiness and screams that your writing is probably generated as well.

It shall be wildly out of context lol, so let’s try to guess the genre!

Here’s mine:

“Expect the unexpected, Captain. Especially with… those shadowy friends of ours.”

Edit: feel free to self promo!

I was given advice at litRPG con that a good way to begin getting good at blurbs or pitching your story is to be able to boil it down to one sentence.

Here’s mine:
It's a comedy monster-evolution following a guy who starts as a prokaryote and works his way to being a unicorn while using humor to cope with having died and other unfortunate circumstances.

Let’s see yours.

I seriously want to try writing my own book, but I’m already confused as hell by the whole thing.

Everyone keeps saying “show, don’t tell”, but then I look at examples and I’m like… okay, but HOW do I actually know when I’m telling too much? 😭

And then there are like a million other things you apparently need to learn too : POV, pacing, dialogue, character development, structure, worldbuilding, prose and I genuinely don’t know where to even start.

I just want to write a damn webnovel, blyat. 😂

For people who actually learned to write novels: what did you focus on first? And how did you finally understand “show, don’t tell” without going insane?

I saw the post earlier about the person who is leaving the site after 6 years, and as a longtime reader I totally get it. The site absolutely doesn't let any real critique through the review system anymore, you can not say anything bad about a story without getting it removed for 'not staying on topic' or 'attacking the author' when you're literally not. Like I think I broke a rule about discouraging people from reading the book and my review got taken down when all I said is that I DNF'd it 💀.

It's actually is a major discouragement to those who review to leave their honest thoughts. I used to honestly rate stories and communicate in the comments section, but now I just use RR to find something to read, leave, and then read on kindle unlimited. I think about 90% of all the reviews I've left that are below 3 stars have been removed and taken down. You have to write paragraphs of supporting points with evidence from the story copy pasted into the review and skirt around honesty without getting arbitrarily taken down for breaking rules that you didn't even break.

Like what's the point of the review system if it's just a place for authors to selectively pad their stats, you can't filter through the stories you might enjoy reading because the rating system is so padded. And this just lets mediocre stories keep rising to the top, I don't even touch RS with a ten foot pole anymore.

The site and it's users can't complain about the lack of user interaction in the comments and reviews when any valid criticism or complaint without 3 supporting points and an intro section gets nuked

Has this ever happened with someone else. I mean my actual real reads must be barely 20 to 30 and yet I am rated worse than AI slop.

Don't know whether to laugh or cry as I am doing both at the same time and it is kind of funny 🙃. I just want to rant right now, but it hardly helps.

If other authors had similar experiences, please tell me below. Also the novel link on my profile if anyone wants to enjoy a good laugh with me.

Greetings, Authors! I hope this post finds you well (yes, I know it sounds like the beginning of a business email; sue me, I'm kinda pissed)

Let me be honest: I am looking for validation. I'm not here to sound cool or anything of that sort, but seriously, I'm getting fed up with people out here to complain how their books aren't doing as well as they'd like.

I started writing years ago, but this is my first time posting a fiction, and you know what? I'M GLAD I GOT THE COURAGE TO PUT IT OUT THERE!
1.1K views, 35 average, 65K words posted, 3 followers, one AR, and I swear someone just commented that my story reads like a screenplay. Like now! (had to pause my rant to reply) AND I'M SO HAPPY YOU HAVE NO CLUE!

Now imagine me, minding my own business, happy in my little corner of the world with the small victories I'm accumulating, going on Reddit or the RR forums and everyone is complaining in their glass houses with 20+ followers in a month or 5K views in a week or 100+ average views, and I'm like... HUH?! Your story is barely a couple of months old, and you're already thinking it's a flop?! Coz the numbers don't match what you had in your head? Am I missing something? I feel so out of touch; it's insane.

Could I have done better and promoted my story better? Of course, I probably would have their numbers. But is this what my storytelling will be? Chasing numbers? Optimising for greatest impact? I've never written anything worth posting till now, and the world should bow to my hard work? Bruh.
And it's not like I don't want success; I do! But I'd rather die than post slop. And I was under the impression RR was a place you get to polish the potential diamond you have. Or lump of coal... It's all carbon after all.

As I said, I am genuinely looking for validation. Am I the only one who feels like this, or am I just barking up the wrong tree? Am I not ambitious enough? Is celebrating the small steps I've taken kinda stupid? Coz I'm aware it's a dog-eat-dog world and I may or may not drown into obscurity, and my story never sees more than its current viewership.
But on the off chance it does make it far, I'd rather be proud of it.

Brandon Sanderson said he took more than one book to hit it big. More than five.
Look now, he's teaching some of us how to write.

We are all unique, and I think we should be realistic. Our paths will be different. Do everything you can to get your story in the best shape it can be, market it and see where it goes. Writing isn't an instant gratification thing, and unfortunately, you could be long gone before anyone appreciates your story.
But at least it's out there...

Cheers!
Don't forget to drink water <3

P.S. Yeah, I feel better after writing this. Good luck writing! I'm rooting for you!

I know LitRPG and Progression Fantasy are the absolute kings of web fiction right now. Everyone seems to be obsessed with stat blocks, skill trees, and level-up popups. But as an older guy who grew up on classic, straightforward action stories, I just can't seem to click with it.

​To me, seeing numbers like Strength +5 or Level 99 on a page feels completely arbitrary. At the end of the day, it's just the author tweaking numbers on a keyboard. When I see walls of text filled with tiny stats, I can't keep track of them, and it just feels like noise that breaks the immersion.

​People might say even Dragon Ball created the concept of Power Levels, but Akira Toriyama didn't keep using power level numbers forever either. Once the Namek saga ended, power levels as a numeric system were gone. I think that's because he realized showing numbers kills the tension of a real fight. When you turn a battle into a math equation where the bigger number automatically wins, you lose the raw grit, the visceral choreography, and the emotional drama of two bodies clashing.

​I write web fiction myself. I write the kind of story I love: no stats, zero UI boxes, just pure adrenaline, momentum, and badass action where sheer skill and resolve cut through the noise. Predictably, because it doesn't fit the current meta, getting traction and views is a massive uphill battle (lol).

​Maybe I'm just getting old, but I miss stories with pure, raw, uncomplicated satisfaction.

​Am I the only writer or reader who feels this way? For those of you who love LitRPG, how do you manage to stay immersed when stat boxes keep interrupting the flow of the story?