Royal Road is designed to make it easy for writers to quickly and easily get their work up for readers to see. Here are step-by-step instructions to publish your first fiction (and all subsequent fiction).

1. Register for an account on Royal Road if you have not already. This can be easily done from our Welcome page or by clicking the “Login" button in the top right corner and selecting "Create an account" at the bottom of the login form.
2. Once you log in, click Write on the navigation bar, which will take you to the Author Dashboard.
3. Click [Add New] or jump to New Fiction Submission
4. Fill in the Title and Description. Select the genres and additional tags. Fill in your first chapter's title and the content of your first chapter.
5. Note: Please do not include links for donations, Patreon accounts, or shortened links to other sites such as Discord servers in your Description.
6. Note: if you do not select fanfiction for stories based on others' work or do not choose the Content Warnings appropriate for your story, the submission will be rejected.
7. Upload a cover image that is 400x600 pixels or larger (this is optional)
8. Click Submit
9. All new submissions are manually checked for appropriate tagging and plagiarism, so expect it to take between 12-24 hours for a submission to be approved. Please be patient.
10. Once your fiction has been approved, you can find it by clicking [Write] on the navigation bar
11. Then click your fiction Cover to get to the [Fiction Dashboard], [page], and [Add Chapter] button. 

Requiring proof of ownership is Royal Road's method of preventing cases of plagiarism.

If your story is available somewhere else, you can prove ownership in multiple ways.

Example:
You can edit the Fiction or Author description on the other site(s) to say you're posting on RoyalRoad.com (or something to the same effect), and then open a support ticket with the link to where you edited that in.
Or, if your email address is public on the other site(s), you can link where it is and we'll confirm if it is the same as the email address you've verified here.

Whatever method you use, once you have proof, link or attach it to a support ticket after you submit the story. 

Note that due to cases of people editing images to plagiarize stories under the guise of being the original author, image proof is no longer accepted.

Premium Service

We have both a monthly and yearly subscription-based premium service available. This service's primary aim is simple: to provide an alternate way to support the site's development and get an advertisement-free experience.

Reader Premium

This is the basic subscription for Royal Road users who want an ad-free browsing experience and push notifications (for convenience), as well as some vanity features:

Author Premium

Our Author Premium subscription has been created with one goal in mind: to provide our authors with high-level tools and data at a low price, which could amount to a much larger expense without our subscription support. For example, analytics requires dedicated machines to gather, store, analyze, and serve the data. 

• Everything From Reader Premium
• Detailed Analytics
• Review Push Notifications
• Customizable Fiction Header
• Epub Export
• Find & Replace
• Automatic Draft Saving
• Chapter Import 

Other services in the works for this tier will only be listed after they stop being in the testing stage.

How?

The Premium service can be accessed using the following link: http://royalroad.com/premium.

The subscription can be monthly or yearly, which you can decide by choosing the relevant tab in the top right corner of the pricing. The yearly price on both tiers of the premium is the equivalent of 10 months, giving you 2 months for free.

The payments and the subscription itself is handled through PayPal. This means that you can easily subscribe or unsubscribe anytime directly through your PayPal account.

Unsubscribing

To Unsubscribe from the Premium service, go directly to http://paypal.com and log in to your account. You can find the recurring payment under More > Sitemap > Manage subscription Payments > My pre-approved payments.

If you can't find the page or are unable to unsubscribe for some reason, don't hesitate to make a new support ticket at http://royalroad.com/support with the category "Payments," and we will help you as soon as possible.

Major Rules of Royal Road

If you read nothing else in the help pages, read this and avoid getting in trouble on Royal Road. Some of these rules are repeated in other sections of the help pages they pertain to, but we've gathered all of the rules in one place for you to keep in mind.

1. Hate speech and pedophilia of any kind are prohibited in all areas of the site, including within fictions that have mature tags.
2. Manipulating fiction scores and rankings is strictly prohibited. This includes but is not limited to, creating alternate accounts to rate multiple times and trading high ratings with other users.
3. Insulting and attacking other users is not allowed. You can disagree, but be polite and civil.
4. Plagiarism is not allowed. If you are writing a fanfiction, make sure it is appropriately tagged and give credit to whoever created the original story. If you have already published your fiction elsewhere and are moving to Royal Road, please follow the instructions on our Migrating From Another Site page.
5. No spam. This includes links to other sites for no reason, nonsense posts, and repeat posts in multiple forums.
6. Political and religious discussions are not allowed anywhere on the site. It just creates too many ill feelings, and our site is not the place to argue about these topics.
7. Profanity and sexual content. Avoid using profanity and sexually explicit language unless your Fiction is tagged with the warning. Even then, the content must be within appropriate limits. Read up on the rules regarding Mature Content.
8. No derogatory English. This is a website dedicated to writing, and as such we want to uphold our users to a certain quality and allow them to improve. However, when someone uses derogatory English [writ lik dis] they are purposely trying to worsen the quality which is the opposite of what we wish (which is for our users to improve). Therefore if anyone uses derogatory English, their posts will be considered as spam/trolling and will be addressed accordingly.

If you see any content that violates these rules, please report it by clicking the appropriate [Report] button beside the post, comment, or fiction.

There are several problems with making the review content compulsory. It would significantly reduce the number of ratings on the site. This would pose several problems, including:

• We'd need to remove existing anonymous ratings, as the reduced number of reviews would mean that top list entries would be very, very hard to overcome, if not virtually impossible unless the site's viewership suddenly increased tenfold.
• At the same time, removing existing ratings would mean that we'd make a gigantic mess of the site. The top list would get completely scrambled, and manipulating the top list would become much easier due to the significantly reduced number of reviews to judge rankings by.
• Removing reviews, actually, does not stop drive-bys. An excellent example of this is Amazon. We recommend doing quick research on the topic, as "spam reviews" are a significant problem with the system either way.

Additionally, most users that do not review, according to statistics, would not rate if they had to write a review to do so. Another problem with forcing reviews is that drive-by 0.5-star ratings would amount to a significant level of written hate reviews, which looks really bad and isn’t fair to the author. This would both make moderation increasingly hard and authors more likely to quit due to the negative feedback.

November 2020: We are beta-testing this with a few stories.  

Apart from every single point on the question above being true for this question, making only 0.5-star ratings require reviews would not only incite more hate reviews, but it would also simply shift the most common negative rating from 0.5 stars to 1 star, essentially doing nothing to change the situation.

If you are browsing Royal Road and you find an ad that redirects you to another page or contains mature or otherwise inappropriate content, or even an ad that feels malicious for any reason, then please report it by pressing the Report Ad button on any visible ad, even if it is not the one that causes issues for you. If you're redirected by an ad, please navigate back to Royal Road without closing the browser and report the ad as aforementioned. 

We do not tolerate these ads, and we try our best to block them. The most efficient way to blacklist them is with your help, so please keep us updated.

Reviews aim to inform prospective readers if the story is something they will want to read. This can be done by communicating how well a story delivers what was promised in the premise (as outlined in the synopsis and opening chapters), by judging how well the story is written (both in terms of grammar and prose) and by highlighting the highs and lows of a reader’s experience with a story.

You can verify the validity of a review by checking the reading history of the reviewer. You can also check the upvotes and downvotes given by other readers to show how accurate or good they think the review is to the story

If you read the story, there are three levels of feedback you can leave:

Ratings are plain 0.5-5 star scores. No written feedback or justification for the score is required.

Basic Reviews provide an overall 0.5-5 star score along with a brief overview of your opinion of the story, providing some justification for the score.

Advanced Reviews provide a score for the overall fiction in addition to the following subcategories: Style, Story, Grammar, and Characters.

• Style: The general feeling of the piece as created by the author's word choice, literary devices, and unique way of writing.
• Story: Plot development and pacing (i.e. how well a story is put together).
• Grammar: The technical aspects of the writing, including spelling, grammar, and punctuation.
• Character: The characters in the story, how well they are depicted, how realistic and three-dimensional they are. This applies to both main and side characters.

  ___

Rules:

1. Justify the Rating 
1. The Review needs to justify the rating, regardless of how high or low the score is.
2. In an advanced review, you must write a detailed review that covers the subcategories being rated (Style, Story, Grammar, and Characters) and to justify the overall score.
2. Stay on Topic 
1. Your review should address the story itself, and only the story. 
2. Do not write about unrelated content, including comments about the author's activities, other people, other reviews, etc.
3. Reviews and ratings may not be based solely on superficial information such as cover, synopsis, tags, title, story’s popularity, its position on the ranking lists, or similar things that have little to do with actual story content. If you wish to review this regardless, especially the genre and tags, it cannot be the main focus. You may say how certain elements of the genre were poorly done or how they take away from the story, but that cannot be the central topic of a review.  
4. Reviews comparing the story to another according to the following rules will be removed:
1. Accusing an author of plagiarism in reviews is forbidden. Any story violating Royal Road terms of use(such as plagiarism) should be reported directly using the report system via the report button on the violating fiction or chapter.
2. Don’t discourage readers from reading a story by comparing it to another similar story.
3. Be Fair and Respectful 
1. Directly insulting the author or the readers is strictly forbidden. You may criticize the writing in constructive ways if you have a genuine desire to help, but do not direct your feedback at any author specifically, especially if it is a personal attack on their character.
2. Discouraging an author from writing is viewed as taboo on Royal Road.
3. Note that while the review could generalize the story as a whole, it can’t intentionally depict a story as something entirely different from what it is. Such as stating that a story includes instances of horrific actions when it does not. Examples such as pedophilia, incest, necrophilia, racism, etc.
4. Do not instigate or incite any harmful acts in the review.  
4. Use Appropriate Language
1. Reviews can’t contain profanity, vulgarity, sexual content, or descriptions of gore. This includes, but is not limited to; vivid descriptions of sexual acts, torture, violence, and other acts or situations that may be considered “gore”.
2. Slander and discrimination is completely forbidden, and violations are viable to get the user banned. This includes but is not limited to attacks on ethnic, religious, political, sexual orientation, gender or racially discriminatory reviews.
5. Spoilers: 
1. A review may contain spoilers under the appropriate spoiler tag(from the toolbar).  
2. Spoiler content may not exceed a third of the overall word count. 
3. Discussing spoilers can’t be the focus of a review.
4. Spoilers can’t be the majority of the plotline summarised into points, nor can they mention any major revelations in the story.
   Examples: a character's death, success or failure in achieving a main goal. Among others.
5. Quoted content can’t break any of the review rules.
6. General
1. Reviews must not contain meaningless characters and words used with the purpose of inflating the character count and review length.
2. Reviews must not contain any spam. 
3. Reviews must be written in English or in the language the fiction is written in.
4. Offering to release chapters based on the scores of reviews and ratings is considered ranking manipulation and is prohibited.
5. Campaigns encouraging others to upvote or downvote reviews, whether positive or negative are forbidden.
6. Rating and reviewing from multiple accounts is prohibited. We have software to catch people who try to manipulate the ratings by doing this. 
7. Members of the same household or friends may review the story as long as they clearly state their relation to the author. 

Review Swap Rules

• Review swaps are allowed on Royal Road. In fact, you can request them in our Reviews forum. However, rating and review swaps promising high scores is prohibited. If you agree to a review swap, we expect you to actually read the other person's fiction and to write a thoughtful review with a rating that matches your opinion of the story
• The review swap must be an advanced review.
• Both users must read at least 10,000 words (approximately 36 pages) of the other person's fiction before writing the review, unless the story in question is a completed short story. 
• The review must justify the rating. Agreeing to give high ratings beforehand is considered vote manipulation and is against the rules.
• If an author abuses the review swap system for a rating manipulation attempt, all reviews received by the author, and written by the author will be removed, and the reviews by the other participating users will be subjected to scrutiny as well. 

Reporting Reviews

If you see any reviews that violate the rules above, please report them by clicking the [Report] button at the bottom of the review you wish to report. Clearly state the reason(s) for reporting the review on the page it takes you to and click [Confirm]. Our staff will review the report and decide what action needs to be taken.

Reporting Fictions

If you find that a fiction violates any of our rules, do not leave a review stating as such. Report the fiction in question by clicking the [Report] button on the top right side of the story’s main page. Clearly state the reason(s) for reporting on the page it takes you to and click [Confirm]. Our staff will review the report and decide what action needs to be taken.

In order to add a [Donation] request using Paypal or Patreon to your fiction page.

1. You need to go to your Donation Settings in the author dashboard
2. Add URLs of your donation button for PayPal or the link to your Patreon Page in the required fields.  

Royal Road does not take any percentage of these donations, they are held externally via PayPal and Royal Road doesn't hold any responsibility for them.

The [Donation] bar will appear at the bottom of all chapters on approved fiction as well as on the Fiction page.

• Royal Road may revoke donation privileges at its own discretion.

Q&A

Q: Are there any requirements for requesting donations?

A: We have currently disabled Donations for any and all Fanfiction.

Q: My fiction is complete. Can I still request donations?

A: As long as it fits all requirements, yes.

Q: I’m underage, can I still request donations?

A: Unfortunately, PayPal’s current policy is that only members that are 18 years of age and older are allowed to receive donations. This is something we can’t influence.

No. All donations made to an author on Royal Road go directly to the author through whatever service they choose. Royal Road does not receive a share from your donors or from your Patrons, however, if you would like to support us, please subscribe to the Reader or Author Premium. 

You can support the author in multiple ways.

1. You can comment on their chapters and give encouraging words.
2. You can give feedback or provide your services (proofreading, artwork) etc.
3. You can promote and recommend their fiction.
4. You can support them financially. If an author desires financial support, they are able to attach a PayPal and Patreon link which appears at the end of their chapters.

Or once an author completes their fiction, they might self-publish, and at that time you can also show your support by buying the book. Alternatively, you could send the author a private message.

If you would like to support Royal Road, whitelist royalroad.com from your Adblocker or consider buying a premium membership.

You can also advertise or promote the platform to let more people know about it.

If you are a Royal Road author, you get to enjoy our discounted prices for the paid advertisement. There are Banner, Leaderboard, and rectangular advertisement campaigns available at the moment, if you have further ideas you may also contact us directly.
All the information are available here https://www.royalroad.com/pages/advertising-faq

If you are not a Royal Road author and would like to use the same type of advertisement please open a Support Ticket

On Royal Road we have several fiction rankings to help readers find stories to read and give authors the opportunity of exposure to wider audiences. The explanation of each list is below, along with some tips for any authors looking to maximize their readership.

New Releases

This list is pretty straightforward. Newly approved fictions are added to the top of the list and older pieces pushed off.

Please note that all of our new submissions are manually checked before being approved. This is usually done twice a day, but if our admins are busy, it can take longer. There is no guarantee when exactly your fiction will show up here, so please be patient.

Latest Updates

Fictions are added to this list when new chapters are released and are pushed down in their rankings by subsequent releases by other authors.

For new fictions, this list is a great way to gain exposure to new readers.

Note that if a fiction is updated with a new chapter while still on the list, those updates will be grouped together as one entry.

Some tips to maximize your exposure on the list:

• Update regularly, especially early on when submitting new fiction. A successful technique that people have used to quickly gain a reader base is to save up enough chapters for a daily release for at least a week, even if their normal writing pace is slower than that.
• Space out your updates. Let's say that you have 100 chapters saved up from when you were publishing on another site. Don't post them all at once. If you do, you'll only get one listing and very few readers will see it compared to if you spaced out your updates. We recommend waiting until your fiction has been pushed off the list before the next update. This can be under an hour during our peak traffic times, and 2-3 hours when traffic is slower.
• Update at different times of the day. Royal Road has a global user base, so if you update at different times, you will get exposure to users from different time zones.
• Related to the above point, we do not recommend trying to maximize exposure by posting only during peak traffic hours. Yes, there are more readers at that time, but that’s also when more authors naturally update. You will be pushed off the Latest Updates list faster, and it works out to about the same amount of exposure as if you updated during non-peak hours

Best Rated

These are some of the most highly-rated stories ever written on Royal Road. The formula for this weighs average rating the most, with a correction factor for the total number of ratings. Basically, for two fictions with the same average rating, the one with more ratings is ranked higher, and the more ratings a piece has, the more the formula allows for the inevitable one or two low ratings that will occur.

Tips for getting onto this illustrious list:

• Keep writing. If you look at the current fiction on the list, most of them have over 30 chapters up, some over 100. It's a marathon to get on this list, not a sprint.
• Keep an eye on quality. It may be tempting to write as quickly as possible and immediately post the results, but readers will take points off of their ratings for things like grammatical errors and improper plot development. You don't have to hire a professional editor to look over everything before you post but do your best.
• Encourage your readers to review your work. You can't get onto this list, or many of the others, without ratings. Occasionally remind your readers that you appreciate receiving reviews. Remember, advanced reviews carry more weight in the rankings than regular reviews, which are weighed more than non-review ratings when it comes to calculating your ranking score.

Active-Only Ranking

This list uses the same formula as the Best Rated list, but only includes fiction updated within the last 35 days. Many readers prefer looking at this list so they can avoid fiction that’s been dropped.

Complete

This list uses the same formula as the Best Rated list, but only includes fiction marked as Complete. Readers may prefer looking at this list if they want to find stories they’re certain have an ending and won't be dropped midway.

Popular This Week

The Popular This Week list grabs the fiction with the most views in the past week and displays them on a slider below the latest updates on the front page. This list is often dominated by fiction on other lists, such as Best Rated, due to the amount of exposure those lists give stories.

Trending

The Trending list is aimed towards providing more awareness to the fictions that have shown rapid growth.

Any story that makes it onto the Trending list tends to get a large number of new views, follows, and ratings since this list is constantly shown on the front page.

If you have an existing reader base, we highly recommend batch releasing 5-10 chapters on the first day as Trending penalizes the ranking of very short fictions in order to avoid ranking fictions high with almost no content. This is a non-issue for new authors as their build-up is more gradual.

Fanfiction means a story written based on an already existing original work. As such, the copyright laws for fanfiction are only applicable as far as Fair Use comes into play.

On the other hand, Original means that you are the first and sole creator of the universe your story is set in, as well as the characters and plot line. Note: Make sure to properly tag your fiction as either Fanfiction or Original.

1. Click [Write] on the navigation bar or [My Fiction] in the Username drop-down menu at the top right corner. This will take you to the Author Dashboard.

2. Go to the [Fiction Dashboard] by hovering over your Fiction.

3. Click the Edit tab next to the fiction title, and select your new cover there.

A cover image is required to be 400x600 pixels or larger. If you upload something larger, you can crop it via our tool.

Fictions are usually approved within a few hours, but it can take up to 48.

Note that all submissions are read through and carefully checked before being accepted or rejected. A moderator checks that a fiction does not break any of our rules, that the submitter is the author and that the piece is correctly tagged. Once that’s done, you will be able to post the remaining chapters without moderation.

Make sure you follow all of the rules so that a moderator is not required to reject your submission.

If your fiction is available elsewhere, note that we require verification to make sure that the person posting the piece on Royal Road is in fact, the author, or someone who has permission from the author. So providing said verification before we even get to reviewing your submission would speed up the process. To do that, you can edit the description on the other site/platform with the words “I will be posting this story on RoyalRoad.com” or some other message with the same concept that will help us in our verification process. Once you do this, open a support ticket at http://royalroad.com/support and post a link to where this verification takes place.

Note that we do not allow screenshot or image-based proofs. Also, you can delete the proof of ownership stated above after we verify and approve your fiction.

• Verified content: The content must be submitted by the author or someone with permission from the author. Any content that is available on other sites will be verified upon submission. Note the QA regarding how to speed up the submission approval process.

In case of a translation, you must have the original author’s permission, the copyright holder’s permission, and the translator’s permission to publish it here.

• Original or Fanfiction: If your content is based on another author’s setting, characters, or terminology, it must be tagged as fanfiction with the appropriate credit added in the description. Unless the terminology is not specific to a certain fiction and is actually widely used, and/or the characters are mythical or historical creatures (i.e., out of copyright), in which case you can avoid using the fanfiction tag.

• Mature content: Only if a chapter is tagged appropriately [Gore, Profanity, Sexual Content, Traumatising] can it include mature content.
  

Note that descriptions (fiction and chapter titles) cannot have mature content, even if the piece is tagged correctly. While mature content may be included, fiction that mainly focuses on said content will be deleted, as we view such as being in poor taste.

• Quality and language: There is no quality control over fiction. However, if it has derogatory English [writ like dis], or if it is unreadable, it will be rejected or possibly deleted right away.

Submissions in languages other than English are okay.

• Real-world content: Avoid including real-world religions and politics. If a fiction is discovered to include insults toward real-world religion, the author will be warned or even banned. If you wish to include religion, either create your own or do it in the most respectful way possible.

Don’t include anything that depicts different “real world groups” in an offensive way.

Submit actual chapter content, not intros or author notes: Royal Road reserves the right to reject anything and everything regardless of the rules stated here. However, you are more likely to have your fiction approved if you followed all of the listed rules.

In order to delete your fiction you need to:
1. Go to the New Author Dashboard.
2. Pick the fiction you want to delete.
3. Click [Delete] In the left side menu, under [Settings].

Fictions on the site have 5 possible statuses: Ongoing, Completed, Hiatus, Inactive, and Dropped[new].

After 35 days of inactivity (when new chapters are not posted), the state of the fiction in question will automatically turn to “hiatus.” If a fiction on hiatus is updated, the status will get updated accordingly after the next midnight GMT.

You can manually change your fiction status:

In order to do so, you need to:
1. Go to the New Author Dashboard
2. Pick the fiction you want to use.
3. In the left side menu, under [Settings] click [Change Status].

But note that you cannot change the fiction's status to ONGOING from HIATUS manually if your last chapter release was more than 35 days ago; releasing a chapter will automatically update the status. 

If your story has less than 20,000 words, it will be tagged as a short story, along with the complete status. 

These comments indicate how much the readers enjoy the story, and how they feel pride in being the first to comment. It is a great compliment to the author, and while they might seem like spam, these comments are not against the rules as long as they aren't posted multiple times in the same chapter by the same user.

However, If you are the author of a fiction with these comments, you can freely delete them.

Authors have moderator status on all of their fictions — that is, the right to remove any comment they deem unnecessary or inappropriate without informing the staff about such actions.

Authors can also lock comments on their fiction, block specific users from commenting, and disable comments entirely,

If interactions with readers through comments on your fiction develop into a lengthier, less healthy debate, either side is free to contact the staff, preferably via the report button or via a support ticket, in which case the matter will be settled privately and discreetly.

A page is equal to 275 written words, an amount comparable to published paperback books (where it varies between 250 and 300 words per page).  A page is equal to approximately 250 words when standard industry formatting is applied with 1" margins double spaced at 12 point Times New Roman or Courier fonts.

In order to gain as many readers as possible, we recommend publishing chapters at different hours, which will allow you to gain readers from different time zones. Also, do not publish more than two chapters a day. Instead, do so on consecutive days, which will allow you to maximize the exposure your fiction receives from the Latest Update list.

It’s better this way, rather than pushing out a bunch of chapters at the same time followed by a gap of several days without publishing. Consistency is key and will maximize your exposure.

The minimum word count on chapter length is currently 500 characters. There is no maximum limit, but we had a chapter with more than 90,000 words. So unless you want to break the record, we recommend keeping the chapter length at less than 10,000 words. 2,000 words tends to be a good stopping point as it’s not too long nor is it too short. Just try writing as much as you’re comfortable doing and try to keep to a consistent release schedule rather than having the same word count every time.

There is a small grid icon on the toolbar when you are writing a new chapter/draft. That icon will let you insert a table into your chapter.

We consider any single instance of mature content mentioned below enough of a requirement for the tag, no matter the occurrence rate throughout the fiction in question. Each tag has a description to help you gauge whether your content is severe enough to include it.

• Sexual Content tag: If your fiction contains explicit scenes of a sexual nature or strong innuendos and references to sexual acts, it should be tagged as such.
• Gore Content tag: Any explicit depiction of violence, blood, mutilation and any other imagery that is generally considered disturbing is to be considered gore.
• Profanity content tag: As soon as your fiction contains any curse/swear words in excess or particularly suggestive language.
• Traumatizing Content tag: If the fiction in question contains ideas, depictions or themes that are considered questionable by society at large, then the piece should contain the traumatizing content tag.

However, even with the warning, please make sure your novel DOES NOT centralize or use mature content as a core element.

Notice: Disturbing sexual content is not allowed. This includes written scenes or images that contain descriptions of pedophilia, bestiality, sexual intercourse between minors or anyone under the age of 18, etc.

And no mature images or artwork. The breaking of this rule could result in an immediate ban.

If you’re the author in question, then yes. We’ve even made the process easier via an epub exporter provided in the Author Premium subscription.

Regarding the same question, if you are not the author of the work in question, doing this with other people’s writing violates our Terms of Service and is a bannable offense. It would also be extremely disrespectful toward authors who share their writing with you. If you enjoy an author’s work, show your appreciation by following and rating his or her fiction and not by pirating it.

Fiction updates notifications: 
To unsubscribe from email notifications from Fiction updates go to https://www.royalroad.com/my/follows
There, pick the series you want to unsubscribe from, then click the three dots [...] to open a menu.
Once the menu opens, click [Email Subscription] and make sure that the email icon is crossed to indicate that you have unsubscribed.  

Other notification types
You can unsubscribe from Comment Replies, Private message email notification, Mentioning, New comments in chapters, and Reviews for authors here: https://www.royalroad.com/account/notifications

Anything you write is automatically copyrighted by you, but that does not mean it’s registered in your country’s copyright office. You may use [copyrighted.com] or other available resources for this.

Feel free to write a Support Ticket with proof of your claim. Our moderators will verify if it is indeed an Original story or a Fanfiction based on your story. If your claim is proven to be true, and you do not wish your story to be shared on Royal Road, then we will proceed in removing it.

Note: If a Donation button exists on the story, it will be temporarily removed until we have resolved the situation.

No. Unless you contact the artist and ask for permission, or use creative commons pictures instead. Creative Commons provides free artwork, under multiple conditions. You will have to verify for yourself if the artwork that you want to use is available (e.g. give credit to the artist) etc.

If we receive a report that an author has infringed on anyone's copyright, we will take down the work in question.

Depending on your type of inquiry, you have two options:

1. You can open a [Support Ticket].
2. If the report revolves around a post, thread, comment, or something on the fiction page, it’s better to click the Report icon at the bottom of the post or on the right top side of the fiction.

If you have encountered a bug, copy the returned information, and open a support ticket. There, paste the returned information, or a screenshot (“prtsc” on your keyboard), as well as a description of what the issue is. Describe how you encountered the issue or any other relevant information that could help us replicate the problem ourselves.

Note that our average response time is 4 hours. However, a staff member can take up to 1-2 days to respond to you. Alternatively, look in our Forums (Assistance Requests) to see if others have had the same issue and if there is an unofficial fix for it already. Or report a problem using our feedback platform. 

You can ask the community on the Forums

If you believe that only the staff can answer your question, you can open a Support Ticket 

You can also ask on the feedback platform Royal Road Feedback 

You can check status.royalroad.com to see if the issue is specific to you, or if it is general. If it is a general issue, then note that the staff is already aware of it and is already working on a solution.

Otherwise, you can:

• Open a support ticket. (recommended)
• Send an email to [email protected]
• Report a problem using our feedback platform. 

If you think someone is breaking the rules, click on the “report” button. It can be found at the top of any fiction or chapter page, as well as at the bottom of pages containing reviews, comments, or forum posts. If you can't find the report button, please contact our staff by opening a support ticket.

Each achievement has a different requirement. By completing the minimum requirement, you will receive the achievement. 

You can manage your achievements by going to your User Settings and then clicking the [Achievements] tab. 
There, you will only find the achievements that can unlock. If you become an author, even more achievements will be available. 

Currently, we don’t have a list of past achievements, but you can see which achievements you or others have by going to a User's Profile and then checking the Achievements tab.

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Yes, as long as you do not use them for vote manipulation or for breaking any of our rules and policies. Disrespecting this will result in disciplinary measures against all accounts.

You can change your username by going to the user settings (drop-down menu when you click your profile image at the top right corner).

There go to the [Profile Information] tab, and then [edit] your username.

Alternatively, you can skip right ahead and go to https://www.royalroad.com/account/changeusername 

Please be aware that:

You can change your username only once every six months.

You can't choose a username already in use by a user.

You can't select a username that was used in the past 12 months.

The official app is still in development. Currently, you can use the browser for mobile and tablets.