Hey there,

I enjoy reading books with monsters/animals/AI as the main character, so I tend to look for the Non_human MC tag a lot. One issue I've found looking for books like this is that the non_human tag also includes every humanoid race. Books about elves, dwarves, etc. tend to have settings, societies and conflicts almost identical to those about human main characters, whereas stories about non humanoids are wildly different. 

I think books like this should get their own tag, or that the non_human mc tag be updated to exclude humanoid species that are so similar to humans. Thank for your consideration

Unless I'm missing it, there's no way to sort reviews by date, so I can see the newest ones. Which seems like the third thing you'd put in when designing how reviews work.

I used the new edit suggestion. I like how it saves your reading place after making a suggestion, but the formatting of the proposed edits can make it hard to find what was changed. Particularly for small ones like saying correcting "its vs it's" typos. Possibly consider bolding the entire affected word, instead of just highlighting additions in green coloured font and deletions in red coloured font?

Basically, the idea is that the first 1-5 reviews a book ever receives would count as "Earlybird reviews" and would count toward a new Earlybird Achievement for the 5 members who reviewed. The Achievement badge levels would then increase based on the number of Earlybird reviews each user has given.

I think this would be a really quick and easy way to reward people who review others in a new way, but primarily, encourage users to review new and undiscovered books (which are likely to be those with less than 5 reviews)!

As the site grows, recognition for new and undiscovered stories is going to become more and more of an issue. I think this could be a quick-win to help get ahead of that and drive even more users to the New Releases and Latest Updates pages, as well as any other features added in the future to enhance search & discovery of those titles. Quick discovery of quality new books because of Earlybird reviews may also help shake up the rankings.

Unlike anonymous Ratings, reviews include your username along with your comment and rating, which should help alleviate concerns about review-bombing for the Achievement.

By making it possible to sort comments by reputation we can ignore the obnoxious "first" and mandatory "tftc" comments.

This way we can see the highest / most interesting comments on the first page after the chapter.

The feature can be extended by sorting or pinning the comments that are starred by the author.

I would like to request that the option to add links to Ko-Fi profiles are set up, as Patreon and PayPal are popular alternatives but some of us may have chosen other platforms

I suggest adding a way to view more than 10 notifications. As an author, I get a bunch of comment notifications and it makes it easy to miss things. If there is a way to find old ones, I haven't found it. I need to review the comments page on my fiction to find them. If there was a different notification in there, such as one for a review, it gets lost. Would also be nice to sort by category. Basically I want a full-featured inbox for notifications, perhaps PMs as well.

Regarding comments, it would be good to have a "new" flag or something shown next to comments that you haven't read yet. Not just for authors, but for everyone reading a chapter. In the author's comments page on a fiction, it would be nice to show what the comments were in reply to, perhaps as an option.

It would also be nice to be able to search comments, both for authors and readers. As a reader, I want to know if the typo I found has already been reported. As an author, I want to be able to quickly find where someone said something across all my chapters.

Sorry if any of this exists and I just haven't found it. Please let me know if that is the case.

I have been using OpenDyslexic font on my Kindle for a while now and it has made reading for me much easier and more comfortable. I only have relatively minor dyslexia and I can read mostly without major problems, but this font has made reading for me more enjoyable and less straining.

I like to read on my tablet so I and certainly many other dyslexics would appreciate adding OpenDyslexic for font selection because forcibly changing typeface is not as simple on tablets as it is on PC.

Referrals on author premium analytics should include where readers find the story on Royal Road. Such as from Latest releases/best rated/Popular/Trending etc. It would give a way for an author to focus on the best channels to gain traction.

Most come from new chapter uploads? -> Release more often

People start streaming in from Best Rated? -> Do ratings drive

Popular this week? -> Keep/increase release schedule

Also, the data is simply interesting. 

I would love for RR to add a tag for Flawed MC. I struggle finding stories with characters that are believable and not the posterboy for Hollywood. The stories I find are few and far between, and I don't think I'm the only one who like these type of stories.

I think it might be useful if there was a most-active ranking list along with the active only list that sorted any Ongoing best rated fictions by how active they are instead of merely whether they are active.

Perhaps like a best rated this week, or something which sorts the most active fictions by how highly rated they are, which might also encourage authors to update more if they are prone to hiatus

Please give us site notifications when the novel we are or were reading gets deleted off the site. It's annoying having to search for it and find out it's not there. Especially when you've forgotten the name.

I think being able to filter out certain authors, tags, genres etc so you do not see them in Latest Updates at least would be a good idea. Some users of the site spam content out that makes it more difficult for people to find what they are actually looking for. Mason for example, has 20 ongoing fictions and updates at least 3 or 4 of them on a daily basis it seems like. This is very annoying, I dont want to see what are probably translated chinese romance novels when im looking for original fiction updates. I doubt he is the only one that spams Latest Updates in this way either.

When I submit request for new fiction, I'm fine with including the first chap, but it then immediately releases it whenever it gets approved. The notice on the new fiction submission says that it can take anywhere from 0 to 48 hours, that is a huge and uncertain time frame.

As an author, I imagine people would like to be able to control that first chap release so you could just let the 1st chap sit as a draft instead.

So you would select Sci-Fi for example and then all stories with that tag would be filtered from the front page. The site https://mangadex.org/ has this, it asked me when I made my account if I would like to filter stories based on certain tags. You can also update this list in you profile settings. Your preferences are also exported to the advanced search page.

This really increased the visibility of all the mangas that I might want to read and I think it would do the same for the stories on royalroad. I also think it would help with negative reviews based on content that was already tagged by the author. I mean those reviews that complain about sex or something else, while the tags clearly warn that it will be present in the story. 

Just to make it clear I do not believe any stories should be filtered by default and I like a good sexual story just as much as the next person but I have grown quite tired of all those Harem stories where the girls are somehow impressed by the main character even though he is an idiot.

I know that this is a lot to ask and would probably involve a lot of backend changes to make it work, but I also think that this will have a lot of added value and you might be able to use the same code for other features.

It's ridiculous that if you're not "male" or "female" your only option is to leave that section of your profile blank. Let people type in their gender or pronouns instead.

The humbling experience of losing followers aside, it would be helpful to know why.

It can - and should - be anonymous. But I wholeheartedly believe it will make me a better writer to know why someone chose to not read on.

That's all. Thanks for coming to my Ted talk. 

User Story: As a user, I want to be able to change my gem on wardrobe just like the level border, so I can pick the prettiest one I have unlocked up to that point

Now that we can change the level border on wardrobe setting, I hope that we can also change the gem on wardrobe. There are prettier gem that I like that I want to use than my current one. 

I quickly searched the site but could not find anything related to it:

It would be cool to be able to gift premium to users, it would be a nice gesture to an unknown reader that was nice to the person making it or let's say I want to support RoyalRoad some more than with just one premium, I could gift it to a friend.

Currently, the All Notifications page does not show users which notifications are not checked/viewed yet, meaning that if you have plenty of them beyond what shows up in the dropbox, you'd have to rely on memory and guesswork to know which one is the newest read notification or oldest unread notification. This becomes a hassle, and it would be much easier to just delete read ones from the dropdown box to see if the older ones are unread or not.

Also, according to someone else, it doesn't properly remove notifications from the All Notifications Page that you delete until after you refresh the page.

I am proposing that this page be put through correctional behavior therapy to fix these issues with it for ease of access. Otherwise, there is no true point to this page.

Its older brother, the Notifications Dropdown box, seems to be behaving as it always have, and I know there's an issue with Reviews/Achievement notifications not dimming after being checked due to the way the notification system works that can't be fixed without completely clearing all notifications from the site.

Rather than always being sorted by last updated, give the ability to sort in other ways, such as prioritzing stories with chapters you haven't read yet. After all, when I go to my follow list, it's to look for something to read, and if I'm caught up on a bunch of the stories that were last updated, but am not caught up on older ones, I end up having to scroll a fair bit and/or change pages.

Similarly, having the option to switch the sorting from decending to acending would be nice, as I consistently forget about stories that I have on my follow list and are completed, but I haven't finished reading yet, so they are constantly at the very bottom of the last page of my follow list.

Since I don't always finish the chapter I'm reading and have to stop mid way... I find it annoying that if I come back to the "History" page, the link for the story takes me to the NEXT chapter rather than the one I was actually reading last. Since when is a chapter I haven't gotten to yet an appropriate link for my History page?

I would really rather not have to click on the link to the next chapter (which, incidentally, then changes my History link to the NEXT chapter after that... *sigh*) just to click on the Previous Chapter button in order to get back to where I was going.

But maybe it's just me.

I don't know if desktop has the same problem, but on mobile if you quote some ten times, you quickly end up having to scroll through several seconds of conversation to get to the next post. Given that qouted posts often qoute the post directly above them, you can quickly get to the point where you have to scroll for several minutes. This isn't people just trying to troll either, it just happens naturally.

How do we fix this? I've seen people talking about a hard limit on the number of quotes, but that would inconvienence anyone trying to quote a long conversation from a different page.

I say after a certain amount of quotes, it collaspes automatically, and you have to click to uncollaspe it. You could also probably code it in a way that could fix the problem of multi-quoted posts eventually only showing one letter at a time!

I think it would help improve quality if you would have the option to allow specific members read-only access to the draft section of a story.

This would be used for beta-readers or spellcheckers and similiar cases and would help the author to improve quality by having someone else go over the chapters before they are published.

Read-only (or preview only) to prevent someone else messing up the story by accident, perhaps with an option to place comments about errors found (although that could easily be handed by private messages and is not really needed).

The author would have to add the member name to the story in order to give that access (how the author finds someone would be his own problem, as well as deciding who to give that access to)

an achievement for reading (x) books(or pages since most books differ in size) within a year.

It would be a nice little achievement for us who don't do much else other than reading

it can be relatively easily achieved since the site already keeps track of what chapter you are on, and even gives you your reading history. While it can't be accurate if  people aren't honest, it would be a great one in my eyes as someone reads a lot.

I had a look at the completed fictions page the other day and noticed that despite the amount of fictions on the site and how long it's been around there have only been 34 pages worth of them. This felt rather low to me so I decided to have a think about ways to incentivize more authors to complete their fiction instead of entering hiatus. With the suggestion to make completing fiction easier has recently been planned I felt like this is probably a good time to make this suggestion too.

My suggestion is rather simple. Create a section which displays the recently completed fictions to incentivise authors to finish their stories for an increase in viewers. I understand that this is possible to find using specific settings on advanced search but a space for the section on the home page or as it's own tab would drastically increase people checking them out.

That said, this feature would definitely be prone to abuse and certain types of fiction will benefit more. Splitting your arcs into seperate books or intentionally writing shorter fictions so you can get that time on the front page would both be issues which aren't strictly wrong but ways to game the system.

There's also the potential community mindset shift which will occur after a while. Whilst there will be more authors aiming to finish, readers may switch to a style of reading where they mostly check out the completed fiction reducing the amount elsewhere. I'm not certain if that trade off is worth it as it might further lower the number of people reading new fictions. Contrary to this though, it is a method that will always reward an author for completing their work which I think is great for authors who never got views through trending and have continued writing all the same.

TL;DR: Section on hompage for new fictions would be good. Could be abused. Might change community mindset. Great reward for authors who didn't get on trending.

pretty sure i accidentally clicked not interested on mobile layout more than once and now i do not remember what story i cant see anymore...

way to access not interested list with chance to remove the tag would be awesome.

Amazon does this if you want an example. 

This could appear on the fiction page. 

The benefit is that different distributions are far more telling than the average. 

Plus, it would be cool.

I had this problem, and a friend of mine also just complained about it. When clicking the stars to give ratings, it's almost impossible to tell whether you clicked 4.5 or 5 stars. It's hard to tell just by looking and there's not enough other feedback. I believe this should be changed.

Possible solutions include making the star icons 2-3x bigger or showing a box with the number right next to the stars.

There are a couple similar ideas, but I'd specifically like to be able to see what chapter someone was reading when they gave me a particular rating. No reason to de-anonymize it. I'm thinking maybe something like when you mouse over the dot and it says "5 Star Ratings on <date>: 2" it would also say "Chapters: 11 and 55"

We would be able to make lists just like read later or favorites, but with our own titles like: Read later 2, Sci-fi books, Books I dropped due to Grammar, Books to read on Hiatus, Books I probably won't like but need to have listed in case there's absolutely nothing else to read, etc.

I think there should be something in place that editors can use. For instance, it is likely editors may work with the authors off platform. However, due to the fact that they can only edit off platform, if a small mistake slips through the seams, or another issue pops up which might cause similar problems, they have to bug the author each and every single time. Sometimes editors can't work off platform, and they have to communicate via comments or messages. 

As an editor for multiple stories myself, this could come in extremely useful. If I'm reviewing previous chapters I don't have to go through to them and say what they might have messed up on chapter by chapter. 

It doesn't really matter the format it is done in, whether the edits need to be accepted in a manner similar to google docs' comment option or if it automatically goes through and a message is sent to the author about the changes, it will help. Though, I suggest doing something with the author having to check it or saving a previous version of the chapter, because there WILL BE that ONE PERSON who messes it up for everyone.

Thanks!

Basic idea is to have a certain amount of the newest reviews be displayed first so that newer reviews will actually have a chance at getting seen especially for older series where the top review is often made when there weren't as many chapters.

Example: The first displayed review is the newest review, and will be displayed at the top for a week before it is unpinned from the top.

Probably already posted, but I couldn´t find it.

It would be great to be able to see novels that readers who liked this novel also like/read in the novel page. That way it would be easier to look for similar novels instead of trying by tags

I'd like to be able to see the trending stories that are limited to having been updated in the last week and are over a certain page count.  It sucks to browse trending and have the page get filled with entries that are under 100 pages and haven't been updated in several weeks. 

This would help you find the more active stories (while avoiding the completely unfiltered results of "latest updates") yet give you access to stories that have a bit more substance to them.

An author I follow who is not equipped due to mental condition to survive the occasionally brutal (and, alas, toxic) place that is any comment system on the internet consistently avoids using royalroad due to the inability to disable comments.

I understand that comments are a big part of community generation and, along with the review process, a big way that people find new content.

I'd like to, out of respect for creative individuals who are less equipped to deal with commentary (but still have a voice worth hearing), propose the ability to disable on a per-story basis either comments, rating, or both entirely, or blackhole it in such a fashion that comments/rates left do not generate emails, show up on the site, or are visible in any form.

Obviously, disabling may (or may not, depending on architecture) be easier to do, but allowing for users to perform rating and leave comments - as a proxy for activity - but not inflict them on either other readers or on the author would still allow for your promotion systems to work effectively.

I hope a change like this can be made to protect and encourage authors who wish to embrace the platform, but are not willing to subject themselves to the great unwashed masses.

Hello there, I write this cus I think there are some tags that need to be added as extra. 

I think mystery tag needs to have a separated puzzle tag which doesn't seem "detective" style crime solving. Like having the conspiracy or simple things that make readers to think. Like riddles in the story and the like. 

Also adding a military and a political warfare tag would be good. Some stories have a political tactics approach. Maybe using a Tactical or Logical warfare tag.

Finally, I think instead of xianxia, using an evolution tag for scientifical "god-power achievement" which isn't necessarily sci-fi.  

I mean cultivating and mutating can be used for evolution or longetivity.

Finally a food tag! or Cooking Tag!

Thanks. 

I posted this on the forum yesterday and was given advice to post it here.

Maybe it's something that a thumbs-up or thumbs-down system, it would be extremely helpful as both a reader and a writer on the site.
As a writer, it would help me know when a chapter isn't well-liked even without readers having to put in the effort to write comments, all they would have to do is simply click the button it also would help me know when I'm improving. As not all readers will comment, but many would press a like or dislike button if they saw it.
As a reader it would be nice to express that I really like or dislike a chapter without having to review the whole fiction or write a comment, I may just dislike a chapter but not enough to leave a comment about it.
It gives authors even more information about what their doing wrong or right with something to watch other than views and follows, something specific to the new chapter.
(and also a feeling of validation)
A like could also replace the normal thanks for the chapter comment. I don't know it's just an idea

They definitely shouldn't affect ratings or visibility at all and just be a tool for feedback, so people like honestly and not just to support new writers and authors don't end up begging for likes

ArchiveOfOurOwn has a feature that allows readers to click a button to show all chapters of a story in a single page, which is really useful for ctrl+f-ing names, for both readers and authors.

https://archiveofourown.org/works/11478249/chapters/25740126 (See first button above the chapters)

I think this would be an incredibly useful addition not just for the aforementioned reason, but also accessibility, and a way to save data for people in places with poor Internet connections.

It doesn't seem hard to implement from an engineering standpoint, either. I hope you guys go for it.

Find the average story on the site.  Adjust the rating so that the average story has a 3.0 score, scaling all of the other ratings accordingly.

At the same time, change the voting system.  Instead of giving a 0.5 to 5 (or 1 to 10) score, have a voter choose from a ranked list of options:

Excellent > Great > Very Good > Good > Fair > Below Average > Not Good > Pretty Bad > Horrible > Unreadable

The selections are easily converted into the standard numeric score currently used, but the use of descriptors would cause the less-than-5 marks to seem more like palatable options.

The goal here is to end up with a rating system in which a 3.5 story is actually a decent one, and where voting 4 on a 5-point signifies that you like a story.

The problem attempting to be solved is that we currently have a rating system in which most of the range is dedicated to parsing out the exact level that people dislike something, which isn't that helpful.