What is it like to post on AO3 and/or RR?

[Premier]

AO3 you can't advertise on at all, as a self-protection measure from them so they don't get accused of helping people profit off of fanfic. I've used it more for reading original works than fanfics, myself. They also have like, hands down, the most writer-friendly policies. I really like them, but most of the content is fanfic.

I'll probably try out RR if I ever get around to writing a non-smut thing.

You can't advertise but you can link your twitter and then just advertise on there.

Silly loophole but it works

 

[beast_regards]

Depends on what your goal is.

The Royal Road is a hyper-capitalistic hyper-competitive toxic hellhole, but the people who survive it have a chance to earn real money through Amazon Publishing.

If your goal isn't making money, the Royal Road isn't for you, it isn't worth the constant abuse unless you are a masochist, or really desperate. They do have a large user base that covers most Western-made original fics, and they don't have competition in size of the user base.

AO3 is mostly a fan-fiction site, with much of it being smut, though you can post anything original as well under some loophole or another. You will get complaints, but they can only vote you up.

The Webnovel is practically the Royal Road equivalent on the Eastern Asia end, same problems with the five spices flavour of oriental despotism. However, since they are oriental despots, they take out trash with all the dissenters, and thus no negative comments.

 

[CrimsonGenius]

I like Ao3. RR is starting to be annoying. I think wanted me to change something that may have changed the premise.

 

[fantasyretreat]

RR has an issue with people gaming the recommend lists by downvoting any work that isn't in a group. You will get downvoted no matter how good your work is as people don't want you to take their spot on trending.

Have this issue on RR. One thing I can say for RR is that PF and LitRPG are what trends over there. I write PF and within a month I had quite a lot of eyes on my book. But like you said, the downvotes were a nightmare.

The best thing to do is just to detach your emotions from criticism and learn to take it like a champ. Learn from it too.

Dark One [A Progression Fantasy]

Dark One is set in the kingdom of Vorthe, a land that has earned its peace and stability as a result of the efforts and sacrifices of past heroes. But alas, calamity draws near! A being of unearthly hunger for chaos and destruction, which leaves ghost cities in its wake —...

www.scribblehub.com

 

[DaScoot]

Checking on Similarweb, RR currently gets about 4x the traffic of SH. Personally I'm currently only getting about 2-3x the traffic on RR, but that may be partially due to the semi-smutty nature of my story which is more popular on SH than RR (RR has limits on how smutty a story is allowed to be, incidentally).

Calling it hypercapitalist doesn't make much sense since you can't earn money from RR. Stories have been written there and then later moved to Amazon, but you could write a story on SH and move it to Amazon too. I do agree that RR readers generally seem to have higher standards than SH ones, my rating here is currently a good half a point higher.

If your story isn't too smutty to be allowed to post there, you should probably post there. After all, if it's just a secondary site for you to get more views on, then you don't need to get your feelings hurt if the ratings are lower.

 

[FrankieCheng]

I started out on RR, writing original works. I've been on there nearly 3 months now, and have had pretty good feedback. Since my stories are still flying under the radar, I've avoided the 0.5 star bombers, and people that have engaged with my stories have been polite and supportive. I've been enjoying the community on the forums too. We'll see how long that lasts
Cross-posting to SH was interesting, since I'd already gotten used to RR. I definitely appreciate the added functions that SH has.

 

[Ai-chan]

Depends on what your goal is.

The Royal Road is a hyper-capitalistic hyper-competitive toxic hellhole, but the people who survive it have a chance to earn real money through Amazon Publishing.

If your goal isn't making money, the Royal Road isn't for you, it isn't worth the constant abuse unless you are a masochist, or really desperate. They do have a large user base that covers most Western-made original fics, and they don't have competition in size of the user base.

AO3 is mostly a fan-fiction site, with much of it being smut, though you can post anything original as well under some loophole or another. You will get complaints, but they can only vote you up.

The Webnovel is practically the Royal Road equivalent on the Eastern Asia end, same problems with the five spices flavour of oriental despotism. However, since they are oriental despots, they take out trash with all the dissenters, and thus no negative comments.

Even if you're on Amazon (KDP in Ai-chan's case), the salty authors who didn't get as much fanbase as you or the fanbase who are fanatically loyal to their fav authors from Royal Road will still try to take you down. This time, they will take you down on Amazon. Ai-chan was downvoted 1 several times by people who clearly never read the published story. One actually gave Ai-chan rating of 1 commenting only on Ai-chan's map and credits page. Twice Ai-chan was reported for pedophilia content but both times Amazon cleared it and nothing more came of such reports.