am i the only one thinking RR ads are kinda flimsy

[abu_nur]

the right word is silly tho. like i kinda know you have to pay to make one of those, but i cannot stop laughing at how badly conducted it is ?. maybe that was thier goal IDK but having three stick man ads in a row is not ok. i wanna go ask the author if he is okay ngl. ?

now this just reminds me of phone game ads

see i am just laughing not because it is so funny (it is funny but not to the degree i am seeing bro)

the only way to get a fire gf is to press this ad (trusted 100%)

 

[JayMark]

The little pay box is the only way anyone is going to find your story if you not an established player because their search feature and rating system is intentionally broken. Doesn't matter what you put in it, just pay to not be in the hole.

Demz da rules. I didn't make em but we all gotta play by em.

 

[abu_nur]

The little pay box is the only way anyone is going to find your story if you not an established player because their search feature and rating system is intentionally broken. Doesn't matter what you put in it, just pay to not be in the hole.
View attachment 34745
Demz da rules. I didn't make em but we all gotta play by em.

i was born in the hole tho (third world noises) ??

 

[JayMark]

i was born in the hole tho (third world noises) ??

You know what else is in the third world? The Royal Road. *Actual Royal Road*

 

[abu_nur]

You know what else is in the third world? The Royal Road. *Actual Royal Road*

gotta google that

 

[beast_regards]

You know what else is in the third world? The Royal Road. *Actual Royal Road*

It both gives you a little taste of the oriental despotism.

 

[Tyranomaster]

The little pay box is the only way anyone is going to find your story if you not an established player because their search feature and rating system is intentionally broken. Doesn't matter what you put in it, just pay to not be in the hole.
View attachment 34745
Demz da rules. I didn't make em but we all gotta play by em.

I think it's not really broken. It's reader oriented. That does bias towards established authors. You know where else has a bias towards readers? Book stores and libraries. If you want your book to be in a library or bookstore, you're going to have to give some concession (usually monetary) unless people are already clamoring for your works.

I like scribblehub's community more, and spend more time here by far. That said, by being more new author friendly in it's algorithm, it biases away from readers to a small extent, but the margins are why it's more popular.

The ads are awful. I've done ad runs. Most of the ads are practically worthless, and I've seen reddit threads complaining about click through rates. My first two ads had pretty good rates, and my most recent one was pretty mediocre. My advice, don't do banner ads and look up good advertising practices. Banner ads get blocked by adblockers and only display on pc.

 

[JayMark]

I was thrilled and enthusiastic at first. Royal Road has left a bad taste in my mouth. But that's probably just the taste of my terrible writing. I should git gud, as they say.

 

[Tyranomaster]

I was thrilled and enthusiastic at first. Royal Road has left a bad taste in my mouth. But that's probably just the taste of my terrible writing. I should git gud, as they say.

There is an amount of toxicity there as well. I think it's maybe slightly more toxic than average, but the toxicity problem compounds with traffic volume.

Imagine in a group of 20 readers, there is one person who obsessively reads everything in a single genre and gives scathing critiques. If it's the only person acting that way, you can kind of ignore them. Scale it up to a total of 1000 people, and suddenly you have 50 people giving scathing critiques all at once. The density of people is the same, but it feels worse because our monkey brains don't get statistics. Like literally, statistics is a relatively modern mathematics branch.

 

[aToTeT]

View attachment 34742
the only way to get a fire gf is to press this ad (trusted 100%)

I’ll be her: she looks hot!

?__?

More seriously: I think I have clicked on maybe two ads on Royalroad ever, and neither had stick figures in them.

Can’t tell you the stories they were associated with, it’s been a while :-/

 

[beast_regards]

Imagine in a group of 20 readers, there is one person who obsessively reads everything in a single genre and gives scathing critiques. If it's the only person acting that way, you can kind of ignore them. Scale it up to a total of 1000 people, and suddenly you have 50 people giving scathing critiques all at once. The density of people is the same, but it feels worse because our monkey brains don't get statistics. Like literally, statistics is a relatively modern mathematics branch.

...but now, with the five star ratings, the critics could defeat your story with the basic math, even if there isn't any special algorithm attached to it reducing the visibility of the stories that hide or delete them as the Amazon Road does.

Having the lower star rating is enough. It's a simple psychological trick that suggests the higher values are better, and lower are worse.

It's a monkey brain trick, and you abuse it to the great extent.

"3 out of 5" simply reads much worse than "1 dislike, 1 like, i.e. balanced"

One 1*, two *5 is 3.6 which sounds considerably worse than "mostly positive"

 

[JayMark]

Readership is only matter of statistics for the big players. For the small players it is relational psychology. Statistics don't matter when all people see is the rating. Get hit with the early down votes and perish into obscurity because nobody will look at a trash voted fiction and if they do look they will now be statistically more likely to judge and not read. God forbid you approach the RS list as a small timer and incur the wrath of the royal shill army.

 

[abu_nur]

I think it's not really broken. It's reader oriented. That does bias towards established authors. You know where else has a bias towards readers? Book stores and libraries. If you want your book to be in a library or bookstore, you're going to have to give some concession (usually monetary) unless people are already clamoring for your works.

I like scribblehub's community more, and spend more time here by far. That said, by being more new author friendly in it's algorithm, it biases away from readers to a small extent, but the margins are why it's more popular.

The ads are awful. I've done ad runs. Most of the ads are practically worthless, and I've seen reddit threads complaining about click through rates. My first two ads had pretty good rates, and my most recent one was pretty mediocre. My advice, don't do banner ads and look up good advertising practices. Banner ads get blocked by adblockers and only display on pc.

yea ik cuz i always use and ad blocker everyday fr. you can't trust ads nowadays

I’ll be her: she looks hot!

?__?

More seriously: I think I have clicked on maybe two ads on Royalroad ever, and neither had stick figures in them.

Can’t tell you the stories they were associated with, it’s been a while :-/

sure you can be whatever you wanna, and i get you i forget stories i read only a week after

 

[JayMark]

yea ik cuz i always use and ad blocker everyday fr. you can't trust ads nowadays

sure you can be whatever you wanna, and i get you i forget stories i read only a week after

I actually like many of the RR user ads. Sometimes they make me chuckle.

 

[Tyranomaster]

...but now, with the five star ratings, the critics could defeat your story with the basic math, even if there isn't any special algorithm attached to it reducing the visibility of the stories that hide or delete them as the Amazon Road does.

Having the lower star rating is enough. It's a simple psychological trick that suggests the higher values are better, and lower are worse.

It's a monkey brain trick, and you abuse it to the great extent.

"3 out of 5" simply reads much worse than "1 dislike, 1 like, i.e. balanced"

One 1*, two *5 is 3.6 which sounds considerably worse than "mostly positive"

Every rating system has flaws because they're trying to measure a subjective thing. In aggregate with enough ratings, all systems approximate the rating.

I advocate for my custom, complicated rating system I've dubbed 'true score', which uses the 1 to 5 star system, but then looks at user rating history compared to averages, then weights and skews scores accordingly. If someone only gives 1's and 2's then they're downweighted in general in the score, but their rating is also increased by an amount proportional to their score error. Different genre ratings are also adjusted to match the norm. This system still falls victim to problems.

Readership is only matter of statistics for the big players. For the small players it is relational psychology. Statistics don't matter when all people see is the rating. Get hit with the early down votes and perish into obscurity because nobody will look at a trash voted fiction and if they do look they will now be statistically more likely to judge and not read. God forbid you approach the RS list as a small timer and incur the wrath of the royal shill army.

I guess I am an exception then? My story on RR had a rocky start that involved my first review being a 2 star rating, and my overall rating being 3.6. I now have 1500 readers there and a 4.3. I've had my share of actual malice reviews and comments. I reported them and RR took those down in a day, and some accounts have been removed. That said, I never quite made it on the rising stars list, so I can't comment on that.

 

[abu_nur]

I actually like many of the RR user ads. Sometimes they make me chuckle.

yea i meant i still use an ad blocker anyways. idk why but when in my country malicious ads appear more on random websites, and mess clicking one will be deadly. so my point is, it might be better to advertise stuff via word of mouth, rather than via RR ads. cuz i am sure i am not the only one doing what i am doing. that if you wanna advertise.

 

[beast_regards]

Every rating system has flaws because they're trying to measure a subjective thing. In aggregate with enough ratings, all systems approximate the rating.

I advocate for my custom, complicated rating system I've dubbed 'true score', which uses the 1 to 5 star system, but then looks at user rating history compared to averages, then weights and skews scores accordingly. If someone only gives 1's and 2's then they're downweighted in general in the score, but their rating is also increased by an amount proportional to their score error. Different genre ratings are also adjusted to match the norm. This system still falls victim to problems.

... and I advocated against having the degrees of dislike counterbalanced by the only good rating.

Or at least, before you forced me to leave the Royal Road.

Because that's what the 5 star is. Only good rating. It's a psychological trick, as neither the writers nor authors think in terms of statistics or scale, and are deceived into thinking that higher value equals to higher quality even if there isn't any objective, independent measurement in place and values are arbitrarily assigned either without thought, or with malicious intent.

Stars are a lie. They always have been a lie, made up by marketing teams, in order to deceive the customers. They have no place on the sites which feature works of amateurs which couldn't pay the marketing team, or influence or manipulate the rating the same as the large company and their teams do.

 

[JayMark]

I guess I am an exception then? My story on RR had a rocky start that involved my first review being a 2 star rating, and my overall rating being 3.6. I now have 1500 readers there and a 4.3. I've had my share of actual malice reviews and comments. I reported them and RR took those down in a day, and some accounts have been removed. That said, I never quite made it on the rising stars list, so I can't comment on that.

I think one of those accounts being removed might have removed one of my half stars. lol. But they are getting wise and giving 1 and 1.5s now!

Because you've established a reader base through perserverence of quality writing, your next work might even make RS if you play your cards right. But ughhhh, review swaps... I can't...

I'm not saying one can't perservere in that system with plenty of rating swaps, high quality well edited prose, research, walking on egg shells with critics, timely posting, ad buys, elbow grease and luck. But that takes grit, time, and effort that many quality hobbyist writers with full time jobs don't have, especially once their ship has been blown out of the proverbial water. Remember, writers are replaceable, so no one cares if they give up.

One mitigation of this problem is make the search functions so one can find mid-list fiction for a start. Because I tested their search features. It's bad. You see new stuff, you see high ranked stuff, and for anything inbetween you have to dig in such a time consuming fashion it's not worth it. But then I thought about it a little bit, oh right, ads.

And I would never dare write any of this on RR forums. *Probably not wise to be writing it here*

 

[Tyranomaster]

I think one of those accounts being removed might have removed one of my half stars. lol. But they are getting wise and giving 1 and 1.5s now!

Because you've established a reader base through perserverence of quality writing, your next work might even make RS if you play your cards right. But ughhhh, review swaps... I can't...

I'm not saying one can't perservere in that system with plenty of rating swaps, high quality well edited prose, research, walking on egg shells with critics, timely posting, ad buys, elbow grease and luck. But that takes grit, time, and effort that many quality hobbyist writers with full time jobs don't have, especially once their ship has been blown out of the proverbial water. Remember, writers are replaceable, so no one cares if they give up.

One mitigation of this problem is make the search functions so one can find mid-list fiction for a start. Because I tested their search features. It's bad. You see new stuff, you see high ranked stuff, and for anything inbetween you have to dig in such a time consuming fashion it's not worth it. But then I thought about it a little bit, oh right, ads.

And I would never dare write any of this on RR forums. *Probably not wise to be writing it here*

I've never used their forums, or done a review swap. There is one review on my page that says it might have been a swap, but a reader asked me if I would give him feedback on his work a month after he'd given me a review because he liked my work and wanted my feedback. He didn't ask for a review, and just wanted feedback, but I left him an honest one. Honestly, I thought his work was better than mine, but it was fairly short at about 20k words total.

The only thing I've done differently on RR vs SH is that I've bought three ad runs, all after I had a fairly established reader base. I did the calculus at the time and said, "my SH readership is way higher than RR", and the expected patreon income from jumpstarting the total readership should more than pay for the ad. At the time I'd just crossed 900 readers on SH, but was only at 300 on RR. That first ad run net me about 300 readers, and 6 patrons. The second was only about 200 readers, and the third about 50 (damn banner runs).

For example, one $10 a month sub on patreon would take about 10 months to pay off an ad run, after tax and Patreon cut. If that potential sub starts reading a year before the natural growth would get them into the story, then it's well worth it. In practice it's been a few extra subs. Considering my story isn't going to be neverending, there is a finite amount of months before the income dries up, so getting that in early was a no brainer.

Other than the ads though, I've done none of the usual RR "do this to get readers" stuff. I don't buy into that stuff. I can say, pleasantly, that every few weeks, people recommend my story to others on reddit, and that's probably helpful, but I don't use reddit myself.

 

[LilRora]

The vast majority of ads on RR are so low-effort it's almost funny, and a significant part is just obvious bait. I can never seriously treat a story which advertises itself with paint-drawn stick figures.