A Royal Adventure

Life is good on Royal Road

“Road to Somewhere” - Pastel painting by me

I’d been struggling for a while with my writing. Not the writing per say, but I have two completed sci-fi novels sitting on my drive, and I had no idea what to do with them. I dipped into the slog of querying agents and publishers despite reservations. The reports, articles, and social media I read on trad publishing did not fill me with enthusiasm. Things like how hard it is to land a deal, the lack of control, the molasses timelines, and daunting contracts. I know that getting a trad pub is considered the height of success, but I’ve been grappling with what success means to me, and the trade-off for that success.

These days, the self-pub route is quite a doable option. I have a friend who just self-pub’ed and she loved diving in and mastering the self-pub realm all on her own. It’s an impressive undertaking! Self-publishing also means dedicating time to self-promotion. You have to be consistent with your methods and do it like you love it or it won’t land. My hat’s off to her, and those of you that do that and pull it off. For me, it feels like I’d be shouting into the void. I might change my mind about that one day, but today’s not that day.

I also checked into hybrid publishing. It’s an interesting route, reversing the trad pub deal. Instead of getting an advance and then your sales pay it off before you make anything, you give the advance and the hybrid pub company works to pay it off before they make anything. But it’s very expensive (not saying it’s over-valued, just a lot of dosh to lay out) and I’m not prepared to sink a fortune into something I’ll likely never recoup.

I just want readers. Not fame, or money, or awards. Just readers who enjoy my stories. Maybe that’s what all writers want? Tell me in the comments, I’d like to know what you want out of your writing. Anyway, no path felt right for me.

Until Royal Road.

I’d been a member of Royal Road (www.royalroad.com) for a few years, reading and watching from the sidelines. If you’re not familiar with the site, it’s a (huge and free) site for web novels. The site is known for speculative fiction, with LitRPG (literary role-playing game fiction) and isekai (transported to and have to survive in another world) being what the site is most known for. There’s also a ton of sci-fi and fantasy. Detailed worlds, smart character development, and serialized storytelling rule on Royal Road. There are reports of anywhere from 1.4 million unique monthly readers to one site claiming 14 million monthly visitors. Who knows? Not me. But it’s a busy site.

I’ve been tempted for a while to post my first novel on there. It seemed like fun. But where to start? How to approach it? I felt like an outsider as I hadn’t engaged in the community much, and I felt woefully under-prepared to get involved. But more than that, my aptitude for overthinking was really wearing thin. I needed to just do something.

Turns out, you can just jump in. To my surprise and joy, there’s a big supportive community to tap into for help. I did learn that there are good launch strategies that I didn’t know about when I started, but I will utilize for my next book launch.

Royal Road also ties to Patreon, where writers can monetize their releases. Results vary wildly. Most don’t make much (or anything other than mom’s contribution. Thanks mom.) But some make a living, and fewer still make a bucket-load. I just checked the public stats on Patreon and (at the time I checked) the top 3^rd highest income earner for writers on Patreon is a Royal Road writer named Zogarth. I had to put his stats here because it’s kinda mind blowing. This is his first novel, and English is not his native language. His web novel on RR “The Primal Hunter” has 8,395,415 views and 34,393 followers. It’s average chapter length is 2500. And it’s currently 520,822 words long. Ongoing. On Audible, this breaks down to thirteen books, latest published in Jan 2026. His Patreon account has 11K paid subscribers and makes on average $60k/month. I shit you not. And that’s not counting what he’s making on Kindle and Audible.

The 4^th highest is Australian writer Shirtaloon (Travis Deverell) who started by posting on RR. He writes the series “He Who Fights With Monsters.” This one has almost 5 million views on RR, and almost 30K followers. His Patreon is ~45K/month. Not counting his Amazon and other distributers, where he’s been published since 2021. I’m currently enjoying (immensely) the audiobook 4 of 12 of this series. He’s just completed book 13 on Patreon. He still posts new chapters to RR.

This is just to say that there is an elite RR class who are making dosh. I thought it was interesting, and a testament to Royal Road.

As for the wider RR community, there’s an active RR discord channel, a FB page (public and private), Instagram, and a Reddit page. All with people geeking out about writing and reading stories and helping each other out. I’ve learned so much from various guides written by experienced RR authors. Something as simple as how to add your novel to your sig line (not as straight forward as one might think!) to strategies that help boost stats, such as “shoutout swaps” (advertising each other’s stories via swapped code) and the best post schedule for chapters (consistency is the key, but more frequent for launch month is a good idea), and the ideal chapter lengths for this kind of readership (most say 1500-2500 words/chapter. Shorter doesn’t make it worth the wait and longer can be too long to read in one sitting. The occasional deviation is okay.) Completed novel lengths don’t much matter. Seems like the longer the better for some readers. For books that are ongoing (chapters still dropping), readers don’t know how long it’s going to be until you’re done. That said, I’ve heard that many readers wait to see a “complete” tag on a story so they can binge it. Which is really great. It means that all the edits I’m doing to past chapters based on reader feedback now, will be there for those future readers. Cool, right?

The ranking and leader boards on Royal Road feel gamified, which makes it fun. You can see results from efforts. It was hard not to check it compulsively when I first launched, but now that I’m settling in, I’ve got a better handle on that. Kind of.

In the meantime, I’m finding tons of great stories to read. And I’ve started planning my next book. It’s going to be a LitRPG. I love reading that genre, and I really love creating complex worlds, and game systems, and storytelling. I’m super excited. And knowing what I’ll do with it once it’s done is honestly a big relief, and pretty damn delightful, too.

If you’re new to LitRPG and interested in the genre, I highly recommend Dungeon Crawler Carl. It’s gone mega mainstream now. I didn’t look up the stats for that, but trust me, it’s HUGE. You can find it anywhere. The audiobooks are gold. It started on Royal Road.

If you want to check out my book, Game of the Gods, here’s the link: https://www.royalroad.com/fiction/163153/game-of-the-gods

And there’s the little ad I came up with

:

You do need to sign up to RR, but it’s easy and free. There’s also an app if you like to read on an iPad or iPhone. The app’s icon looks like this:

I just found out that there’s a referral code! If you use this code when you sign up I get some rep. :) Learn something new on this site daily. Here’s my code: RR-3924-F5D9

If you read and enjoy my story, please give it a follow. If I can reach 100 followers, then I can play shoutout swaps with the big guns and that will help with visibility and finding new readers for my story. I’ve still got a ways to go to reach that number, but hey, it’s a goal! And then I’ll get an new achievement badge, too.

If you like writing in these genres and you don’t know how to get your stories out there, I recommend giving Royal Road a try. There’s really no harm done. You can still pursue trad or self-pub, even if you’re posting on Royal Road. Or like me, you might find the home for your stories that you’ve been searching for.

If you’re a RR author, drop the link to your story in the comments! I’d love to check it out.