For the skeptics: Yes, I am qualified to speak on this subject. My stories have well over 10,000,000 views, 10,000's of comments and readers, and so on. Across several sites (I write both fanfiction and original novels). For those of you who recoil at my "appeal to authority fallacy", evaluate the post on its own merits.
I'll do my best to be concise, though this is a long post. I won't blather on, though.
Why do some new authors become popular, and others don't? All it takes is an understanding of reader psychology. But not any reader: a specific type of reader. Those willing to click into web novels with no proven track record. Those intrepid individuals sorting the trash pile into two heaps for future readers.
Consider this person. What does their process look like?
- Step 1: They click into a tag or genre they're a fan of, either the "new releases" or "recent updates". A smaller portion will browse the overall "new stories" list, but your visibility there is brief.
- Step 2: They scroll through, clicking on titles/cover images that intrigue them
- Step 3: They read the summary; if they like it, they click into chapter one
- Step 4: They read a portion or the entirety of chapter one, then maybe click into chapter two
- Step 5+: And so on; at this point, they only drop if the story is boring or upsets them, but 99.99% of potential readers (meaning people who scroll past you when browsing a list) will never reach step 5.
Counter-intuitive as it sounds, writing a good, engaging story doesn't mean much. Not if you aren't succeeding in steps #1-3
Each step culls huge portions of your "potential readerbase", usually in the largest amounts early.
So think about it. Why aren't you getting readers?
The fewer readers you have, the more likely you're failing higher up the list.
Let's talk about where things go wrong.
STEP ONE: You aren't writing something people want to read.
More than any other item on the list, this is the most important. The vast majority of people clicking through "new releases" or "updates" on ScribbleHub, RoyalRoad, or anywhere else has a strong idea of the types of stories they like to read. If your story doesn't have popular tags or genres, your odds of becoming popular are astronomically lower.
How do you know what people are reading?
NOT the "highest rated" lists. NOT the "trending" lists (of various flavors). NOT most favorite, most activity, or rising.
The POPULAR lists. On ScribbleHub, it's these two:
www.scribblehub.com
www.scribblehub.com
These are the stories with the MOST VIEWS IN THE PAST WEEK and THE MOST READERS OVERALL.
Write something similar, and your odds of having an audience go up drastically, no matter how poor your writing is. Similarly, the fewer stories you can find that are popular, the less likely you'll be popular yourself, regardless of writing quality.
STEP TWO/THREE: Your Cover, Title, and/or Synopsis are sub-par.
First impressions are everything, and this is doubly true in web novels, where there are a hundred thousand pieces of trash on a giant heap, and readers are rarely willing to give yours a first glance much less a second.
Assuming your work is tagged with popular genres, you are guaranteed to have a decent amount of people put eyeballs onto your cover and title. Assuming those aren't terrible, they'll read your synopsis.
You NEED to hook them with your "front-page material".
STEP TWO/THREE PART B: You aren't releasing chapters fast enough.
You'll have some decent visibility on the "new stories" list, but after that, you need to draw readers from "recent updates". Doesn't matter how well your market material is if nobody sees is.
1x weekly is the lowest you can go, realistically. Would recommend 3+.
STEP FOUR: Your first chapter sucks.
Notice how only now we're getting to what counts as "real writing"?
I have a lot to say on this topic, but the point of this post is to drive home that popularity and writing quality are correlated, but less than you think.
What does "sucks" mean in terms of the first chapter?
- Weak technical writing. Your sentences are clumsy and/or error-filled.
- Your dialogue is weak/unnatural.
- Your pacing is slow; you're info-dumping; etc
- Your characters are bland and/or act unrealistically or awkwardly.
It could be any number of things. There's a lot that goes into writing
STEP FIVE: Your overall story sucks.
Not just your writing at a sentence and scene level, but in a bigger sense.
Again—please note how far down on the list this is. But it does matter. People will stop reading if you do everything else correctly but fumble the story itself. HOWEVER, if you did everything else right, you'll have a decent chunk of readers who followed just out of hope (or have low standards; there are a lot of people with low standards).
Okay, so what do I do?
Naturally, do what makes you happy. Write for the joy of it. But if you're seeking popularity?
From most important to least:
1. Write in popular genres/tags.
2/3. Go see what covers, titles, and summaries popular stories in your genre use and emulate them. ENSURE YOUR FRONT PAGE MATERIAL HOOKS THE READER. This usually means having some sort of appealing gimmick that sets you apart from the masses, while still being firmly in a popular category. Also, FREQUENT CHAPTER RELEASES.
4. Write well at a technical level. This means sentence-level and scene-level writing. If your writing is clumsy/awkward, people will leave before finishing chapter 1. The more digestible your writing is, the less people who will bounce off early.
5. Write well at a higher level: tell stories that engage chapter after chapter and set up story and character arcs that make the reader keep turning pages.
tl;dr: Plenty of shit stories are popular. If you want readers, pay more attention to what gets people to click into chapter one.
I'll do my best to be concise, though this is a long post. I won't blather on, though.
Why do some new authors become popular, and others don't? All it takes is an understanding of reader psychology. But not any reader: a specific type of reader. Those willing to click into web novels with no proven track record. Those intrepid individuals sorting the trash pile into two heaps for future readers.
Consider this person. What does their process look like?
- Step 1: They click into a tag or genre they're a fan of, either the "new releases" or "recent updates". A smaller portion will browse the overall "new stories" list, but your visibility there is brief.
- Step 2: They scroll through, clicking on titles/cover images that intrigue them
- Step 3: They read the summary; if they like it, they click into chapter one
- Step 4: They read a portion or the entirety of chapter one, then maybe click into chapter two
- Step 5+: And so on; at this point, they only drop if the story is boring or upsets them, but 99.99% of potential readers (meaning people who scroll past you when browsing a list) will never reach step 5.
Counter-intuitive as it sounds, writing a good, engaging story doesn't mean much. Not if you aren't succeeding in steps #1-3
Each step culls huge portions of your "potential readerbase", usually in the largest amounts early.
So think about it. Why aren't you getting readers?
The fewer readers you have, the more likely you're failing higher up the list.
Let's talk about where things go wrong.
STEP ONE: You aren't writing something people want to read.
More than any other item on the list, this is the most important. The vast majority of people clicking through "new releases" or "updates" on ScribbleHub, RoyalRoad, or anywhere else has a strong idea of the types of stories they like to read. If your story doesn't have popular tags or genres, your odds of becoming popular are astronomically lower.
How do you know what people are reading?
NOT the "highest rated" lists. NOT the "trending" lists (of various flavors). NOT most favorite, most activity, or rising.
The POPULAR lists. On ScribbleHub, it's these two:
Series Ranking | Scribble Hub
Series Ranking | Scribble Hub
Write something similar, and your odds of having an audience go up drastically, no matter how poor your writing is. Similarly, the fewer stories you can find that are popular, the less likely you'll be popular yourself, regardless of writing quality.
STEP TWO/THREE: Your Cover, Title, and/or Synopsis are sub-par.
First impressions are everything, and this is doubly true in web novels, where there are a hundred thousand pieces of trash on a giant heap, and readers are rarely willing to give yours a first glance much less a second.
Assuming your work is tagged with popular genres, you are guaranteed to have a decent amount of people put eyeballs onto your cover and title. Assuming those aren't terrible, they'll read your synopsis.
You NEED to hook them with your "front-page material".
STEP TWO/THREE PART B: You aren't releasing chapters fast enough.
You'll have some decent visibility on the "new stories" list, but after that, you need to draw readers from "recent updates". Doesn't matter how well your market material is if nobody sees is.
1x weekly is the lowest you can go, realistically. Would recommend 3+.
STEP FOUR: Your first chapter sucks.
Notice how only now we're getting to what counts as "real writing"?
I have a lot to say on this topic, but the point of this post is to drive home that popularity and writing quality are correlated, but less than you think.
What does "sucks" mean in terms of the first chapter?
- Weak technical writing. Your sentences are clumsy and/or error-filled.
- Your dialogue is weak/unnatural.
- Your pacing is slow; you're info-dumping; etc
- Your characters are bland and/or act unrealistically or awkwardly.
It could be any number of things. There's a lot that goes into writing
STEP FIVE: Your overall story sucks.
Not just your writing at a sentence and scene level, but in a bigger sense.
Again—please note how far down on the list this is. But it does matter. People will stop reading if you do everything else correctly but fumble the story itself. HOWEVER, if you did everything else right, you'll have a decent chunk of readers who followed just out of hope (or have low standards; there are a lot of people with low standards).
Okay, so what do I do?
Naturally, do what makes you happy. Write for the joy of it. But if you're seeking popularity?
From most important to least:
1. Write in popular genres/tags.
2/3. Go see what covers, titles, and summaries popular stories in your genre use and emulate them. ENSURE YOUR FRONT PAGE MATERIAL HOOKS THE READER. This usually means having some sort of appealing gimmick that sets you apart from the masses, while still being firmly in a popular category. Also, FREQUENT CHAPTER RELEASES.
4. Write well at a technical level. This means sentence-level and scene-level writing. If your writing is clumsy/awkward, people will leave before finishing chapter 1. The more digestible your writing is, the less people who will bounce off early.
5. Write well at a higher level: tell stories that engage chapter after chapter and set up story and character arcs that make the reader keep turning pages.
tl;dr: Plenty of shit stories are popular. If you want readers, pay more attention to what gets people to click into chapter one.
