Readers like self inserting themselves on a character that's popular with women, so writers take advantage of that to get attention for their stories.
...but where's the sastifaction of knowing your story become popular because of your writing style/grammer if authors use such umm tactics?
Satisfaction comes from the attention itself, it doesn't mater how you get it. It can also come from money, though I don't think many on SH are actually making money.
ic... I never looked at it that way, but for me its just me being the thridwheeler and getting fed dogfood whenever i read these kind of stories.
Some harems aren't even about MC dating multiple people, but rather multiple people interested in dating MC.
It's the opposite.
What stories are you reading? Almost all the female centric stories usually wind up with her emotionally jerking around multiple guys, then picking one.
Likes boost dopamine. Basically an addiction. It's the same case with why use the other popular tropes, not just harem? There are many threads here of authors who aren't writers of specific popular tropes but want to learn it to get readers, like litrpg.
I was wrong. What I wanted to say is, when it comes to Japanese novels and manga, even shojo has a lot more sex in it than seinen. Shojo is works for young girls, while seinen is works for 18+ boys. While majority of josei(works for older women) is smut. So, when it comes to Japanese novels and manga, your statement is wrong. Reverse harems have much more sex in them than usual harems. The same kinda applies for translated Chinese novels(I'm mostly talking about novels on NU). Although it's more of 50-50 in that case. Don't know about Korean much. As for novels that were written in English, dunno. Maybe reverse harems have less sex in them. I have't read them. So, based on this, we both were wrong.
When it comes to web novels, if nothing has changed, LitRPG sells more than sex. Again, if nothing has changed, RR earns the most right not. And it's either LitRPG there, or get out. Moreover, their content guidelins are a lot stricter. You can't write tons of r-18 content.
my, albeit very limited experience, is that KR reverse harems in general tend towards much more sex (and smut) than KR male protag stories (which seem to trend more towards JP-style ecchi but little sex).
THIS!
I think it's more about choosing the right audience. A lot of SH readers like smut the same way a lot of RR readers like LitRPG. So if you want to get readers then its best to know what's trending on that platform, use that trope, hook the readers and then throw life lessons, philosophy and stuff
