/lit/ - Literature

>>21963419
Can't tell if you're being disingenuous or if you're just so ignorant of how Royal Road works that you're drawing such poor conclusions from your statistics.

Royal Road readers only give a fuck about active serials, with the mindset that every fic that isn't active is abandoned or will never complete--i.e. so why would they get invested in a fic that will be forever unfinished.

Aside from an extreme minority of completed fics, or inactive fics with ratings high enough to linger in toplist placement, there's probably only 6k or so active ongoing fictions. Fics that haven't been updated in a month get automatically flagged "hiatus."

Competing with 6k active fics is NOT some herculean task, people. Many of these are ESL writers in India or Indonesia hoping to just do well enough with Patreon to bring in $200 - $300 USD, which they can live off of comfortably. Many others are amateur enthusiasts or hobby writers. VERY FEW are approaching this with serious projects and the intent to succeed outside of "hey, maybe this'll go viral and get popular randomly."

Success on RR isn't rocket science and it isn't luck. If you understand the progression fantasy demographic, if you have the patience to set up a decent backlog, to schedule regular posts, and to maintain consistent output, and if you are capable of a BARE MINIMUM of networking with either authors or readers on the off chance you don't get your fic on front page Top Reviews (8 to 10 upthumbs on a review guarantees your fic will appear on front page for a week or so), you are 100% going to make the Rising Stars list and get anywhere between one thousand and six thousand followers.

Which is a start and usually translates to 100 to 300 patrons. That's a strong foothold on RR and means you can start snowballing to bigger numbers and attracting more and more readers.