r/royalroad

You can filter for any genre, content warning, tag, even "fan fiction" can be filtered out.

The one thing missing is the most important one—"Stub"

If I'm looking at lists of the greatest, it's because I want to start reading something (from the beginning). If I wanted to go to Amazon/elsewhere, then I wouldn't be on RR...

And since these lists are the most successful books, a huge amount of them are indeed stubbed to be published on KU.

Can we get the ability to filter out stubbed books?

Hi everyone! I've got a dilemma about publishing on Royal Road. To start: I'd like to publish my finished second draft, and this is where it gets complicated. I've read up a bit on the RR algorithm, and from what I've gathered, the most important thing is publishing regularly over the long haul. The thing is, I have a completed Volume 1 – 34 chapters.

My dream was to publish it physically in my home country (a small dream of mine), but unfortunately I have no way to test what actually works in the story and what doesn't – what puts readers off, what bores them, and what lands.

So my question is: will releasing 34 chapters over the course of a month let me reach some group of readers and answer at least part of these questions? Or is that simply too little to fit into these mythical algorithms?

The story itself is a light novel isekai about Yan – your typical lower-class kid who spent his original life hustling and doing petty crime, but after waking up in a new world, it turns out he's the heir to the throne of one of its kingdoms. It's not a LitRPG – more of an adventure story with comedy and drama elements.

Thanks in advance for any advice!

PS: I'm attaching a screenshot of just the title (I'm a bit paranoid about someone stealing my cover – I spent a fair amount on it with an illustrator xD)

https://preview.redd.it/r18ww8fm9ekh1.jpg?width=439&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=15431015d50e87744de87c062d7d13742209fece

Basically the title, as you can guess by my tag my story is settled in a romance direction. Im currently rewriting book 1 and making plans for further books, so now Im wondering what tropes are especially popular along my potential audience.

I've been running 3 RR ads for my current story and the results are starting to make me question how useful CTR is by itself.

Current numbers*:

Ad	Impressions	Clicks	CTR	Followers	Read Later
A	65,036	445	0.68%	15 (12.5%)	24 (20%)
B	27,329	208	0.74%	1 (1.61%)	16 (25.81%)
C	11,371	64	0.56%	3 (12%)	6 (24%)

* from RR dashboard

Obviously the sample sizes aren't equal yet, especially for C, so I wouldn't draw any hard conclusions from this. But Ad B is very interesting am already in process of trying to change it.

It currently has the highest CTR at 0.73%, so if I were judging the creative purely on clicks, I'd call it the winner. Yet its follower conversion is dramatically worse than the other two. At the same time, its Read Later percentage is actually the highest.

That makes me wonder if we're really measuring two different things:

CTR = Did this image make me curious enough to click?

versus

Follower conversion = Did what I found after clicking match what the ad made me expect?

In other words, could a really strong curiosity based ad actually be worse than a slightly lower CTR ad if it's attracting the wrong readers?

I'd much rather have 0.6% CTR from people who are interested in the story than 1% CTR from people who click because the ad itself is funny/strange and then immediately leave.

The Read Later numbers muddy things further. Ad B might not necessarily be attracting the wrong audience they may just be less willing to follow immediately. I am not sure i like the Read Later option at all! if I like it I will follow or fav, RL is a weird option imo.

So I'm curious what people who've run a lot more RR ads have found:

And if you had to choose between:

A: 1.0% CTR + poor follower conversion ( even if strong RL)

or

B: 0.6–0.7% CTR + strong follower conversion

which one would you actually keep running? I would be more inclined to B

Also interested in whether anyone has found Read Later to be predictive of eventual followers/readers, or whether it mostly click and forget type of things.

Hey everyone,

I've been thinking about the character dynamics in male/female duos lately.

In the story I'm currently working on, the duo consists of a washed-up, out-of-touch old samurai and a young female livestreamer hero. In terms of pure combat power, the old samurai is overwhelmingly stronger, and she genuinely respects him as a master.

However, she's definitely not just a damsel to be protected. Since he is completely clueless about modern streaming culture and public relations, she manages him, supports his content, and frequently scolds him whenever he does something completely out of line.

So even though she's younger and much weaker in a fight, in their everyday power balance, she clearly wears the pants haha.

Whenever I try to write a male/female duo, it almost instinctively ends up in this kind of dynamic. Do you think this is a reflection of how modern audiences view female characters, or is it purely my own writing preference/trope obsession showing through?

For those who write male/female duos, how do you handle the balance between raw power, social competence, and overall dynamic? Do you have specific rules you follow?

Hi all, I am a newcomer on this sub, so I hope this post is fitting. I have a sci-fi setting I have been developing for the last six years, and I have about 150 pages of story written up for it as well (there will be more). It is not nearly perfect, but will it ever be? I finally decided it is ready enough to be shown to the world, even if it has its imperfections still. I got to the point now where I feel somewhat ready to put it "out there". First I thought about Wattpad, I made a very similar post in their sub, but they pointed me here, saying Royal Road may fit my story better.

The story is a reasonably hard sci-fi, with relatively little real action or fighting, if any. There are absolutely zero truly supernatural elements involved, but there are many characters claiming otherwise - to be gods or to wield supernatural might. The plot mainly focuses on the characters themselves, everyday life, the world, and their interactions and relationships, along with some philosophy here and there. It is mainly written as the MC's memoirs, as she remembers the events much later on. There are also some other chapters from other characters' PoV-s, and even surrealistic vision sequences and poems, featuring dream gods and supreme beings.

It is mainly set on the low-gravity moon of Demet, seat of the eponymous Realm. inhabited by the Demeti, highly advanced and somewhat evolved humans, different and foreign from those my MC, or we readers, know. They live in vast, three-dimensional underground cities, and their society is one founded on spiritualism, traditions and ceremony. (Space elves, yes, I know.) The MC is from the world of Pamar, a less advanced (near-future sci-fi) world Demet has been overseeing as a protectorate. She is one of the first people from her world allowed to go to Demet, and is tasked with documenting and understanding it as well as possible, as a sociologist. Being quite skeptical about the differences between their worlds, she does her best to prove to herself and the Demeti that her world, Pamar, is not to be overlooked, that its "primitive" values still hold up and are respectable. Demet, in turn, is trying to prove her, and through her, to Pamar, that it is their outlook on the world that is better.

Eventually she is sent to the court of the living god worshipped by Demet, An Neriur, as an attendant. Thereafter, the story focuses on the new perspectives she gains while there, along with the different ways her environment changes her, and she changes it in turn. Themes of what it means to be a god, what the optimal way for society to exist, and similar, are also explored.

I know it sounds quite dry, I promise it actually is more enjoyable than it seems, at least according to my beta readers I've had. Do you think this could go on Royal Road? Would there be anyone interested in this story? Feel free to ask any questions as well if you have them, I'll be glad to answer.

I want to essentially write my story as a semi-episodic show, with 7500-10000 word "episodes".

I also like to write by following four-act structure. It just makes sense to me and helps me write. The recommendation I always see is to release 5-7 chapters weekly.

But I much more like the idea of each chapter being an act, and having one " episode " come out each week. And I struggle to split them into 5 sections when I write them as 4 sections.

Is one less chapter gonna make a difference, if the weekly word count is the same? Are there newer successful stories that release 4 chapters weekly?

As the title says, I'm posting my first fiction on RR next week so I took the placeholder page live today. I do worry the description is more than needed and the What to Expect section may go overboard.

Then again, I may be wrong and overthinking things.

Objective input would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks in advance for anyone willing to take a peek!

I want something either super tropey and "meta sloppy" but well written or something not like any other story you've read on RR. Also explain your answer please, I don't wanna just look at the title, I wanna know why you like it.

Hello there everyone

I am curious: what do you think of a person that are overly ambitious

In his mind, he is so focused on what he wants to achieve that he has completely forgotten that some of the things he is trying to achieve could take decades, a lot of time, and intense focus to do

In this case, he is writing a novel with character had their own worldview and ambition.

Some characters in the novel are so confident in their power that they end up making a mistake that causes them to lose everything, and others are chosen but burdened with expectation and isolation due to their rank and power,

An antagonist who changes the way he speaks and acts so he can become unpredictable (a multi-faced type of character)

His ambition is to write this kind of novel, and then he practices Blender 3D, learning how to create things from scratch,

Character creation, environmental creation, animation. You get the idea: a guy that try to do the entire pipeline by himself.

Apologies for awkward grammar. Thanks for your times