I write for a living, and spend most of my time on novels pitched for traditional publication. So I'm loving writing a Royal Road story without worrying about my agent and potential editors. If I'm just writing for myself, there's no pressure. Such a relief. 

Yet at some point I'm gonna have to actually share this stuff. And I definitely want readers. Preferably ravening hordes of them. Which bring me to my question. 

I've written about 25,000 words so far, barely scratching the surface of the plot: I have Big Plans! I could post some or all of it now, or I could write another 25,000 or even another 50,000, before uploading. Because of my day job, I'm used to writing the entire book before I share a single chapter. 

I know the standard here is to update at least weekly, so once I post my first chunk of chapters, I'll aim for that. 

But what're the pros and cons for posting 25k versus 50k (even more?) on Day One?

There's no pro to posting your story all at once. 

My question is how have you written 25k without touching on the plot?

My advice is create a backlog of around 40-50 chapters at around 1500-2000 words each. 

Upload the first 3 chapters so readers get into the hook of the story quicker than just 1 chapter at a time.

First two weeks upload every day then taper it off to 3/week or 5/week.

upload the chapters at 3-4 minutes past the hour to remain on latest updates for longer.

Never upload all your chapters at once, you'll garner very little views/attention that way as the only way for a new writer to get views is on the latest update page.

Use 20 chapters of the backlog as patreon bonuses to grow your patreon. 

Well, first off, while it is considered good to start with a few chapters on day one, having repeated and regular short interval uploads will get you a lot more attention. If you post 10 chapters on day 1, you'll get about 30min of uptime on the front page under the latest updates section. If you post 10 chapters over 10 days, you get 300 minutes. So yeah, you get the drift.

Having daily uploads for an extended period of time can really help you kick-start the interest in your novel. But there are other things that factor in as well. An interesting synopsis, an interesting first chapter, an attention gripping cover and most of all, knowing your audience and writing for them. LitRPG's especially are very well received on RR.

Hope this helps.

Every scrap of advice (and what little experience I have had so far) warns against dumping your entire backlog in one go.

You're better off posting sensible-sized chapters daily. That way you have more eyes on your work in 'latest updates' and on the home page for a prolonged period of time.


Edit:  YJarex beat me to the punch but with far greater detail 

You'll lose visibility if you post that much in one day. There really isn't much of a benefit at all, posting that much in a single day at all. This site rewards you the most if you can post one chapter per day. It's not a requirement. If you can do it, that's fine. If you can't, that is also fine. Just find a schedule that works for you and be consistent. Just go for consistency straight out the door.

Length wise, depends on how many days of the week you chose to post. If you post every day or every other day, it would be in your best interest to keep the word count low, say like 1500. If you post like 1-2 days a week, you can do longer post. Personally, I wouldn't go over 5,000 words, if you can help it, for a chapter.

I don't have much to add to what has already been said. There is a lot of good advice here. 

In my experience, I uploaded two chapters on day 1, and then 1 chapter every 3 days since then and have def seen some interest. Granted, I only have 9 chapters in total written so a new chapter daily or every 2 days would boost you more!

YJarex Wrote: ...knowing your audience and writing for them. LitRPG's especially are very well received on RR.

Thanks so much to everyone! I hadn't considered front-page visibility. And it's nice to hear such agreement in the responses: clearly my first instinct--I SHALL POST IT ALL!!!--was as dumb as most of my first instincts.

I, uh, haven't paid much attention to the Latest Update list. Mostly watching Rising Stars and Recommended. I'l have to fix that. I just refreshed the home page and I think every single story there got pushed off by new ones! Though granted, it just turned 1:00 here, and it sounds like most update on-the-hour.

As you said, YJarex, the big question for me is if I know the audience. I've read a bunch of LitRPGs here, and find them interesting--and sometimes addictive, for reasons I don't understand--but I'm not sure I have any levels in the skill Blue Box Wrangler yet. So I'm focusing on a more traditional fantasy with progression elements. Er, that is, just like much of traditional fantasy, the protagonist gets stronger. Not sure if that's enough to get any traction here, but we'll see. I'm certainly having a blast.

In terms of the 'Gore' and 'Traumatizing Content' tags ... I don't think my stuff is gory or traumatizing. There is zero sexual violence in the world (I don't like writing it), including threats. But the more garden-variety violence does mention blood and screams and such. I don't want to offend anyone! Should I check the gore and traumatizing tags just to be on the safe side?

Forwarning: This is an alt account. My fic is between BR page 1 to 3 and has been there for a long time. I can't use my main account because any rating hits directly affect my income lol, and authors talk to each other. We know there's a lot of smaller writers who get upset when they don't make it for whatever reason, and they'll lash out to authors posting advice. Zog's big enough to tank stuff like that, but I'm not.   

Anyhow, quick and dirty tips:

Most people won't read your story until you have 10 or so chapters to read, so first two weeks will be quiet. This is expected. Don't play any cards until you have a small backlog for people to read. 

Getting on RS is all about visibility. Base source of views will come from recently updated, so you're competing against everyone there. Cultivation, litRPG, and isekai stories will have the advantage but it's not all set in stone.
 
If you have an existing fanbase, you need to use it. Link them your story once you're past the chapter 10 mark. Go outside RR to draw in new readers. A lot of other reading communities out there share members, so plenty will have RR accounts to help boost your ratings. 

In terms of where to put your time and energy: 

Research on what readers on RR want to read > Plot outline > release schedule > Synopsis > Hook sentence > Book name > cover art > good writing > Community management

Good writing and community management come last because:

Writing needs to meet a minimum of "I understand what's going on in the story." but past that you're putting in a lot of effort for very little gain. People on this site will not care about typos so long as the story is good. Some machine translated light novels have more readers than some of the best stories on this site. People will tolorate a lot more than you think if the story's fun to read. There's a minority who will care and they'll be very vocal about it, but you can't ever satisfy those people, write them off. 

Grassroots movements are needed to get onto RS where about 60-200 people can push you above all the other newly released stories. Connect to wahtever community, you don't need much to get a leg over the competition. Once your on RS, you'll realize how tiny the reading communities are in comparison to the standard mobile reader. At that point, 200 people finding about your story via friends is not going to eclipse the 7-9K readers showing up by seeing your story at the top of RS. Even further into the BR list you still get 500-700 just by being there. Page one gives you a reliable 1K. Smaller, but still stupidly higher than grassroots.  

In this day and age, the kingmakers are the algorithms and visibility.

Finally: Cover art doesn't matter at all. Don't waste money on it. Best example is Jackal Among Snakes. Started with a cover straight from what you'd find on twilight. Black and white face of a generic twink, IIRC it was a generated photorealistic face by an AI too. Everything about the cover screamed romance and romance is also the single most unpopular story meta on the site. No one here reads romance, they like it as a sprinkle in the story, but that's it. There's other sites to read romance. The author was also new, had no previous fanbase, almost no community engagement. Shot up to the top of RS, and currently sits on page two of best rated. Why? Because it was a good story that hit all the points people wanted to read about. It was fun to read.

Release one chapter a day, and keep going at that pace if you can keep it. That's how you get on PtW, if you're aiming for that. 

Chapters should ideally be between 1K to 1.5K words, if you're releasing frequently. Infrequent posts, you'll need to make the chapters longer or people will complain. Shorter more frequent chapters offers a better reader experience, because everyone likes to press the "next chapter" button. A story call The Grand Game wrote up around 700 character chapters. Super bite sized, but released each day. Didn't talk at all to the community. Showed up, posted story, moved to KU and made bank. If you can keep that pace up, go for it. 

Nobody will be able to tell if you have longer chapters or the work that's needed for that. You will never get a pat on the back for posting a chapter that's double the length, people won't notice, so instead, break them into two chapters and post those. That gets you a lot farther.  

Good luck, have fun, set your highest patreon tier to 10$ and type away otherwise. 

Oh, and cliffhangers. Put cliffhangers everywhere you can if you're going for patreon money. More cliffhangers, all the cliffhangers, order up the entire store's stocks on cliffhangers. If people are not yelling at you about cliffhangers, write more cliffhangers and then slap angry readers with memes about you writing more cliffhangers and make fun of it yourself. Other people will tell you that cliffhangers are bad, and you will have readers saying they're dropping the story because of cliffhangers - and guess what, patreon numbers go up every time you put cliffhangers. Can't argue with facts, cliffhangers are S-tier writing tricks. 

Very clear and helpful, Bresandor. Thanks. 

But also terrifying! My only real skill is good writing. (Which isn't the most important factor in traditional publishing, either.) I'm crap with community, and this is literally the only web-novelly reading community I know! 

Those're much shorter chapters than I'd planned ... but I like hitting 'next chapter,' too. Okay. Once I start, I'll post every day ... and won't gnash my teeth about the lack of response until Day 20. 

Shirtaloon said to post 25k on the first day, and TheFirstDefier said to publish 5-7 weekly, and almost all good ones do 2.5k word chapters.

IanFlat Wrote: Very clear and helpful, Bresandor. Thanks. 

But also terrifying! My only real skill is good writing. (Which isn't the most important factor in traditional publishing, either.) I'm crap with community, and this is literally the only web-novelly reading community I know! 

Those're much shorter chapters than I'd planned ... but I like hitting 'next chapter,' too. Okay. Once I start, I'll post every day ... and won't gnash my teeth about the lack of response until Day 20.

Grand Game was written by an author that had zero community engagement iirc. Made it big anyhow. There's a lot of things that seem and feel important, but when you look at the actual numbers, they're not important.

In case anyone else is interested, it looks like the average chapter size for the top 10 Rising Stars is about 1,800 at the moment. 

IanFlat Wrote: I write for a living, and spend most of my time on novels pitched for traditional publication. So I'm loving writing a Royal Road story without worrying about my agent and potential editors. If I'm just writing for myself, there's no pressure. Such a relief. 

Yet at some point I'm gonna have to actually share this stuff. And I definitely want readers. Preferably ravening hordes of them. Which bring me to my question. 

I've written about 25,000 words so far, barely scratching the surface of the plot: I have Big Plans! I could post some or all of it now, or I could write another 25,000 or even another 50,000, before uploading. Because of my day job, I'm used to writing the entire book before I share a single chapter. 

I know the standard here is to update at least weekly, so once I post my first chunk of chapters, I'll aim for that. 

But what're the pros and cons for posting 25k versus 50k (even more?) on Day One?

Don't post a bazillion chapters on day one. Set a schedule and post once or twice a day, it lets the readers to know that you're releasing on a schedule.
Being ahead in chapters is good for patreon growth, the more head the better.

I actually just learned an Important Fact! You _can't_ plan to post too many at once, because it takes up to 48 hours for the staff to clear the first one! I was planning on dropping a handful today, then going to one or two a day, as you recommend, but I'm still waiting for approval!

But thanks for the help. I'm not used to sharing anything unfinished. It feels weird! So my currently plan is shortish chapters--I suspect I write a bit too 'dense' for RR--posted every day. No reason to rush. Much appreciated!

This is all great information! But are we talking about when we finally start uploading, or simply making an account? I thought I wanted to get a feel for the site and lurk a few months before I started posting but now I am wondering if I made a mistake because I'm not ready to post?!?!

ellofayne Wrote: This is all great information! But are we talking about when we finally start uploading, or simply making an account? I thought I wanted to get a feel for the site and lurk a few months before I started posting but now I am wondering if I made a mistake because I'm not ready to post?!?!

This is when you start uploading a story. This is not when you make an account. I didn't upload anything here for nearly a year after I made an account. I was uncertain if I wanted upload here or not. 

LJ Wrote: This is when you start uploading a story. This is not when you make an account. I didn't upload anything there for nearly a year after I made an account here. I was uncertain if I wanted upload here or not.

Ok, great! Thanks so much. I am probably going to spend a while too but I just had a heart attack thinking it was for new people instead of new fictions. 

I have chapters that range from a thousand words up to >16k. But now that I'm going through and editing the chapters for the Updated Edition, I've, lately, been sticking to >1,500 words each day. Near the end of the chapter, it may be <1,000 words.

I also upload daily content, which is not too difficult since I have >1,000,000 words I need to go through and edit for the series.

Bresandor Wrote: Chapters should ideally be between 1K to 1.5K words

I appreciate this since I wanted more uniform uploads and started out with >1,000 words, but now I am doing >1,500.