Thanks! I'll give that a read!
Make sure you have a nice cover, blurb and schedule. Don't post everyone in 1 go. Give it time and post regularly.
There is not much wrong you can do other than failing on your tags and writing.
And write a lot. Don't expect much until you manage to push into the site a nice amount of words. People that read webnovels usually want to read nonstop, so having to pause and potentially have a story that might drop will not be what they want.
So just be constant and you might do well.
Cover? Yes! Nice? Uh... Look, I am absolutely awful at visual art AND I'm broke, so I paid a dude ten bucks to knock something together (in photoshop, I think), and it's not 'Big Six Quality', but I've seen worse on Amazon. I've seen worse on Amazon bestsellers, so I'm good with that.
Blurb... Oh, shit. I suck at synopses. I have like a three (short) sentence 'blurb'. More of a tease, really. Followed by about a page of 'what to expect'. Hopefully that'll do? Maybe? There's a funny bit in the 'what to expect'?
Don't post everything in one go... Well, off and on since November I've been porting my most popular title from RR one chapter at a time, now it's all loaded up and ready to schedule. I'm gonna be doing twenty-four a day (roughly one an hour) until it's caught up with RR, at which point I'll cross-post.
As for regular posting, I do one chapter a day. It started as a writing exercise. It's grown into my most popular piece of fiction (although I've got one SCS Fanfic over on RR that is higher ranked there). So... Is one chapter a day 'often enough' here? Oh, there are occasional 'extra chapters', but not all that often. So a tiny bit more than once a day.
Not sure on my tags. I tagged the things that seemed like the ones people commented on over on RR, that I think fit the fiction.
worries about tagfail
Is... Um... Two point five million words 'a nice amount'? Again, not sure, it's big there, but that might just be normal here.
Thanks for the advice!
p.s. WAIT WAIT WAIT - Soulless Diaz? Is that a reference to something?
Optimize for what? Numbers? Clicks? Supporters?
It all depends on your goal.
Scribble Hub is famous for not allowing much wiggle room for manipulation. You can only truly get famous when you create stories with a popular genre, a decent cover, and reliable updates.
Good point. Back in the day when I was first published, I was trying to get a lot of followers and turn that into income, so that was huge for me. Unfortunately, I'm not great at writing cliffhangers, and the site I was on practically demanded them for popularity. Prior to that my publisher evolved from 'we publish everything' to 'we do short erotica' over the course of my time with them, and... I do not generally write short erotica. Erotic scenes? Sure, now and then, when they fit the fiction, but pure smut? Not really. Not that I'm against pure smut; it paid for my friend Flash's truck and kitchen. Shit, my SiL's books, which some consider smut (they're Erotic Romance) basically covered the down payment of the house I'm living in.
Gah. Big digression. I'm mostly looking to get more folks reading my fiction. Part of that is maybe boosting my income a little, because my Disability income is gonna drop in a few months. But mostly it's wanting to get my fiction in front of appreciative eyes.
That said, I'm not really looking to 'manipulate' so much as 'avoid pitfalls'. Seriously, my biggest pitfall drop so far? I have a fiction that for a couple months had a 5.0 Rating on RR, that jumped all the way to around seventeen hundred in the overall Rankings, but never made Rising Stars, because it didn't break ten thousand words until the third update, three months in, by which point it had hit that seventeen hundred Ranking. It's currently in the fourteen hundreds, slowly climbing, but it will
never be on RR's RS, because I didn't know that one little caveat to RS.
Tags are you best friend. max out your 25 options. It greatly increases your visibility.
Tagged my fic with the twenty-five most relevant tags! Thanks for the advice!
I want to produce a helpful comprehensive list of all the writing/webnovel/publishing sites and what each provide so I come asking for your knowledge. What are some of the pros, cons, audiences, popular genres, unpopular genres, communities, and scandals or unethical business practices that each...
forum.scribblehub.com
Hope this helps!
Thanks! I'll be sure to look at that!
Back where I come from, the lads call it... "the precepts"
...
step one.
only write on genre and tags, that are trending heavy. No exceptions.
step two.
have a great cover. Have an exceptional blurb (synopsis)
step three.
several chappies released to support the launch, or really frequent releases up front.
step four.
if you're real serious, you do ads.
if you're sort of serious, you do ads only after you see something kicking.
they better be good ads, as important as the cover and blurb.
...
NOTE: there *have* been some *serious* successes, that did not follow the precepts completely.
...
Yeah, I got an ax to grind. I insist on doing my thing, my way.
I accept that quickest or best success, will not likely come from it.
but I'm grinding that ax, trying.
Now I'm wondering where you're from, although the rest of it implies RR...
Ah, shit, already fucked up steps one and two. I can't write to spec to save my life, I commissioned my cover for ten bucks from a dude who does photoshop (nice photoshop, but still) covers, and my synopsis / blurb writing rivals my 'writing to spec' skills.
Hey! Step Three is a go! I'm planning on doing hourly chapters until I'm caught up to the RR version of the fiction, at which point I'm gonna cross-post daily.
Step Four... Huh. I mostly ignore the ads on RR, but I guess I might try to run one at some point. Maybe if I can win one of those contests they do. The magazine ones, not the writeathon ones. THOSE I've been nailing on the regular, thankfully. I guess they're not a thing here though, which is cool, since I can't afford them anyhow.
I get that there's no reliable way to make something to go viral, and that's where those massive successes come from. I'm curious which one you were referring to with the ninety grand a month down to twenty grand a month. Frankly if I could break four figures a month I'd be thrilled (I've very briefly gotten to three digits on my Patreon for like two months).
All that said, I feel you on that. I write what I write. I've written other things (or tried), and I'm not very good at it. I'm also awful at any kind of marketing or promotion, so I'm going it entirely on 'reliably writing decent quality fiction'. I'm not so much doing it from 'having an ax to grind' as 'not having the spoons to do anything else', but I figured asking was a good way to make sure I don't have another H&CQ situation (my will-never-hit-RS SCS FF).
Thanks to everyone for all the advice! I've scheduled my first ninety-six chapters, and the first one goes live at midnight! Wish me luck!
