After hitting genre Rising Stars, I honestly wasn’t expecting much from it. But over the last 20 days, the story has gained around 140 followers, and now my Patreon has started growing too. I just got another subscriber and made €54 this month.

I know that is still small compared to bigger authors, but considering where the story was less than a month ago, it feels kind of unreal. It also makes me wonder how much of a difference reaching the main Rising Stars list could make.

Edit - Good News - Looks like one publisher account has been nuked. 400 plus books gone.

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While we have been working in the background, we also know we needed to make a post on this.

Please read the full blog post so you can understand everything.

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A few days ago, it came to our attention that there was a wave of content being pirated from Royal Road and uploaded to Google Play Books.

We updated our guidelines on how you can submit a DMCA request in those cases:
https://www.royalroad.com/support/knowledgebase/106#if-your-content-made-it-to-google-play-books

However, it seems that this was not enough. Some authors are receiving responses from Google requiring further verification, specifically, verification that connects their Royal Road username to their legal name, as well as general verification. 

In order to help with this process, we have added a new feature that can be found here:

Author Dashboard > Advanced > Publication Verification 

This feature will allow you to download a PDF verification letter with a message that reads as follows:

To Whom It May Concern,

Royal Road confirms that the work titled "[Title]" was originally published on the Royal Road platform on [date] by the account [Username], the author also goes by the name [legal name]. 

Based on our platform records, this account is the original publisher of the work on Royal Road.

This letter is provided to verify the publication history of the work and the identity of the original Royal Road publisher.

Sincerely,
Royal Road

You can send this alongside your own message when following Google's instructions.

If there are any developments or issues during this process, you can directly reach out to us.

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This is an ongoing issue and we will keep you updated as things develop as soon as we possibly can.

Hey everyone,

I am finally done with Volume 1 of my story and have just started getting into Volume 2.

Since I am not very deep into Volume 2 yet, I am obviously not stubbing it right now. But I was wondering when the best time to do that would be. Should I wait until the end of Volume 2 (which will be roughly 200k to 250k words), or is it better to stub it after I am about 20k to 30k words into Volume 3?

Also, once I am ready to publish, how do I actually go about contacting publishers like Aethon Books or Mango Media? The story currently has a little over 2,000 followers.

Any advice from authors who have been through this process would be hugely appreciated!

By character building I mean in the traditional, non-system sense of just showing who they are as people, their personalities, state of mind etc.

I ask this because I only started writing LitRPGs a few months ago. I have a pretty sizeable backlog built up as well. But most of my experience and storytelling habits come from writing character-driven literary fiction and traditional fantasy where often the focus is just on the development of the characters. Since RR has somewhat different expectations I want to make sure I’m not trying to fit a square peg into a round hole so to speak.

For example, if the first chapter in an isekai story is around 2500 words, ending with the MC going over to the other world to kickstart the plot, how much of that first chapter is “too much” if we’re talking character development? Like if 90% of it is showing the character-based reason behind why the MC would be willing to stay in an isekai world (since in this story, part of the reason for him ending up there is due to a choice he makes) would it be considered fluff/slow?

Earlier this year, I started writing The King’s Lantern in earnest. Really pleased with the initial chapters. I did a lot of research on launch plans for RR.

But there was just one problem.

Last year, I decided I was no longer going to be a keyboard monkey. I wanted to take my time and give my writing time to breathe. And my stories are SO much better for it.

So, I decided to post chapters on my website and Patreon. And maybe launch on RR in 2027 when I have 200 chapters in my back pocket.

Could that cause any issues though?

Rough sketch of a goddess and her mount from The King’s Lantern for attention. FTR, Bargraw is a friendly boi! Don’t be scared.

Hi guys, me again being a whiny baby. I started posting about 2 weeks ago, I hit 170 followers today but everyday my rating keeps lowering so I’m starting to wonder if there is something wrong with my story. I am open to criticism and would to improve as a writer. Other than some comments correcting some typos all of my comments have been very positive.

To be honest, my concern is not even rankings or not hitting RS, but more so that if there is something I can do to improve my story, I would like to know. I did not keno turning off my ratings just for my sanity, but I hate that bothers me. I know this is just part of putting yourself out there, but I can’t help but feel like my writing sucks lol. I know, woe is me etc. I’m not trying to throw a pity party, I think it’s just a sense of imposter syndrome. It’s so silly but it even makes me second guess the positive comments, which is so ridiculous. My goal is to finish this story no matter what, but then the writing goblins start negatively contributing to the conversation lol.

Does anybody think that to become a successful writer you need a unique or novel story.

From what I have observed that many web novel writers don't have any unique premise for their stories but the same repeat of the stories whether it is Litrpg, Kingdom-building or any other genre.

The thing which can earn both recognition and money from the readers is always the writing.

Let's talk about myself, I am writing a good novel whose premise is that a protagonist who has a portal, he can travel between a primitive world as well as the apocalypse world. His goal is to reach the ultimate pinnacle of power, why? Because he can't bear to see the people of the apocalypse die of scarce resources.

The premises are good and the story is even better but the problem is that, since I am a new writer I have made many mistakes in writing which has impacted my reader counts and made the story below par.

But if the same thing was written by some experienced writer he could have done very well or much better than me.

What do you think?

Roughly removing your own replies, if applicable.

I am absolutely guessing appropriate voting categories here, so hopefully this doesn't need a re-run 🤣.

Part of a series to put real numbers to answer 'how do my stats compare?' and 'is this normal?'. Previous polls for Interest (followers / view), Retention (chapter 10 / chapter 2), and Enthusiasm (favourites / followers).

Thanks!

I feel like only by accident is not really appropriate. It just feels something is amiss in that direction. And I don't want a god route either, as that does not sit right with me.

What are some good ways you saw author resolve this?

I started releasing this bad boy like three years ago on Royal Road. It's been a long road, but it feels amazing to finally have the Non-Player Character: Part One officially released on Kindle and Audible.

I've had a great experience working with my publishers, and I wouldn't have been able to get a deal if not for the readers of Royal Road! Just so you know, I had 900 followers at the time of the deal, so while it helps to have 3000, it's not always necessary.

Anyway, thanks for the support from this subreddit throughout the early days. Ya'll rock.

https://www.royalroad.com/fiction/93391/non-player-character

Well, thanks to you, I've realized that my book had been stolen too. I opened a removal request, but Google won't reply, and I don't know why. A week has already passed, and my book is still there, with my pen name on the cover image and in the chapters, selling for 0,46€.

What should I do in this case? Is there another way to contact them? Because I'm getting really anxious here.

What I remember:

1. Female Lead

2. Triple class in a world where everyone gets one class (literally written in the AD)

3. MC in all three class attires.

4. The rightmost class is Mana huntress, she holds a bow.

The AD loaded after I pressed next chapter button, so details are a bit spotty but I hope either the author or readers can help me find it.

Sigh.

If you've ever been published in any of the Royal Road community magazines, you should know they have been scraped and illegally published on the Google Play Book catalogue.

I know Royal Road has a very small team, and it's unlikely they will search and submit copyright infringements. If you don't want your work sold on the store or trained on by Google's LLMs, then I suggest you go and submit your own copyright infringement tickets to have you work removed.

Here are a few that showed up when I searched for Royal Road.

https://play.google.com/store/books/details/Nolan_Fairbanks_RRCMJ2E_Royal_Road_Community_Magaz?id=DPr0EQAAQBAJ

https://play.google.com/store/books/details/P_R_Northcote_RRCMJ2E_Royal_Road_Community_Magazin?id=KdT0EQAAQBAJ

Who knows what else they've tried to put together and sell on the Google Play Books store.

The lack of oversight and ownership verification on Google's behalf is staggering. The fact they only remove the book from being purchased and previewed when you submit the copyright infringement ticket also shows Google's lack of understanding.

They keep the titles, blurbs, and covers, which helps legitimatize the thieves as owners of the content just because they submitting it to Google. I'm not even sure they are removing the actual chapter content from these requests. Another unproven, but scary thought is they might be keeping the meta data to train their LLM models. Again, I have no proof of that, as I haven't read what's in the terms of service when you publish a book through them, but the company has a public track record when it comes to that kind of thing.

I wanted to spend my day writing, not scan the google play book store for cheap, stolen books to report.

edit: missed a word.

I saw a recent BookTok post where a Royal Road author was in discussions with publishers, and they were asking about his social media followers (TikTok, Discord, etc.) Making it sound like being popular on Royal Road wasn't enough to get a contract. Has anyone else had this experience?

Hey there, I saw posts that many authors are struggling as their books were getting copied and sold to Google books and they have to file dmca takedown request, prove ownership and etc. I do genuinely hate people who copy creative content made with hardwork.

Currently there is no way to prevent a text from getting copied, and I am a new writer in the initial phase of writing my book and don't want to possibly struggle later on proving ownership, so why not I publish it beforehand wherever possible before the filth get their hands on my work.

So my question is does Google books only takes full completed books?

Those creators whose work was copied were you all had completed books.

I currently only upload to Royal & Patreon. What all more platforms should I upload on and possibly reserve the right by uploading chapters as I write them so that, that specific platform can prevent the stealers form reposting the same content.

Hello Everyone, I hope you are all having a good day/night.
I've come up with an idea for my first LitRPG but when I think of the stats and skills of the character I get stuck, so I like some advice, please.

Should the stats start at 1 or do I take the character's background/life style into account. Here is the current idea for the type of stats (I know it's very basic)

• Strength: Increases strength, speed, and attack power.
• Agility: Increases dynamic vision, physical reaction speed, and evasion rate.
• Stamina: Increases maximum HP and recovery speed.
• Intelligence: Increases maximum MP and MP recovery speed and increases the comprehension abilities.
• Sense: Sharpens the five senses and increases danger perception ability

As for the skill, I'm thinking they'll have some from the start, for example they knew how to cook before the player system, so they get the cooking skill when they get the player system, but should the skills have levels and if so what level should the skill be to start, again, start at 1 or do I take the character's background/life style into account, I'm thinking the max level would be 20 or something:
Level 1-4: Beginner
Level 5-8: Fledgling/Apprentice
Level 9-12: Adept
Level 13-16: Expert
Level 17-20: Master

Any help is much appreciated.

When the gods gamble with your soul, the result is preordained. But what if you fight back?

Thrust into an IRL version of his own game, a young table top RPG designer, Marco Canaveri, must put all of his knowledge of the gladiatorial arenas of Ancient Rome to work to win a second chance at life. All he has to do is outwit the gods and survive almost certain death. 

⚔️ Detailed, historically accurate combat

🧮 Light on the crunchy stuff

🙏 Roman mythos

💓 Light romantic subplot 

New chapters are posted M, W, F at 11:07 a.m. (UTC -5)

Note: This is a relaunch of a work previously titled At the Altar of Pluto. 

https://www.royalroad.com/fiction/181869/the-death-gods-plaything-litrpgisekai

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This is a rather short one-off if you need a little break.

In my current story I'm at a point where it requires writing two concurrent POVs. I had been writing the chapters in chronological order; writing a chapter or two from person A's POV and then writing a couple chapters from person B's POV. And swapping back and forth.

I found it to be a bit of a challenge switching POVs and trying to be in the correct character's mindset. So I just started writing out person A's full current arc and once that's completed, I plan to switch back to person B's POV until I complete their POV.

I'm a discovery writer/gardener which may make this more difficult. So I'm wondering how others are approaching writing multi-POV stories? Especially where the party/group is split up.

As the title says, looking for some advice.

I'm not sure what's causing it, but I'm almost halfway through my book and it's becoming more challenging to write. That's perfect, as it addresses the reason I started writing this story in the first place (getting past the intro and actually getting to the meat of the story), but I'm asking the writing community if they have any tips. These past few chapters have been exceptionally excruciating to write. I'm not stopping, but writing has become more and more challenging as my story gets longer. Is this just a mid-story hump that I'm pushing through, or do you normally experience more momentum at this point in your story?

hi, as the title suggests, I’m looking for books with a focus on crafting, though I would prefer something similar to the ill starred knight, if possible. please and thank you.

edit: I would like to clarify that I am interested in stories where the mc crafts stuff using whatever is on hand and progresses from there.

Hi all,

Just finished my first month of publising on Royal Road. I've got 10 chapters up so far.

My average is 45 views per chapter and each new chapter is trending lower.

I have been told, that a lot of Royal Road readers won't start reading until there is a lot of chapters up because readers don't want to invest in something that is not going to continue. Is that true do you think?

I have two follows and two favourites, but no ratings, comments or reviews.

Does anyone have advice? Is it just a bad fit for Royal Road? I'm getting a lot more engagement on substack where I also share it.

Any expertise would be appreciated.

Thank you for your time. Here is the link: https://www.royalroad.com/fiction/175992/the-mandala

Recently, I've noticed that the view count on my story has been highly unusual. This trend actually started around the second or third week after release, but because I was solely focused on the number of followers, I only just realized it.

Right now, I have 148 followers and 6,250 total views. It's been 50 days since launch, with a total of 36 chapters and 75k words.

Chapter 1 currently sits at 1,100 views, making up nearly 1/6th of my total views.

Chapter 2 has 480 views (a 44% retention rate).

When I first launched, the retention rate was 75% (Ch 1 had 200 views, Ch 2 had 140 views). Traffic from cold ads really is something else.

Out of those 1,100 views on Chapter 1, roughly ~280 are logged-in account users.

148 followers out of 280? That's almost 50%? Man, if only all those views were actual real readers, that’d be great.

Alright, here’s where the main issue lies:

There are 134 account users who stopped at Chapter 1 (48.9%), 39 (12%) at Chapter 2, and 44 (16%) across Chapters 3–6. That’s just crazy ;))

The remaining logged-in readers are scattered across Chapters 2 through 36, fluctuating between 0 to 4 account readers per chapter. Chapter 15 only has 139 views in total (including guests/unregistered users), even though it was posted 42 days ago. The chapters after that have even lower views.

So as you can see, I have 148 followers...

Every day I gain anywhere from 1 to 8 followers. Over the past 7 days, the daily gains were 4-3-2-3-6-3-4. Out of these 148 followers, about 50 came from ad campaigns, while the rest came from organic growth through regular chapter updates, RS (Rising Stars), and self-promotion on Reddit and the RR forum.

On top of that, there are 170+ Read Laters from ads—and if unindexed Read Laters are included, the actual number might be even higher.

I’ve lost a total of 7 followers since the beginning. It's about 1 lost follower every 3 to 5 days—not dropping all at once or right after releasing a new chapter.

It seems like my readers are stockpiling chapters (at least, I hope so).

Has anyone experienced anything similar?