Author skills
What Exactly Is ‘Royal Road’
And why is it such a big deal to LitRPG and Gamelit authors?
If you’ve spent time on some of the Facebook or Discord groups for fantasy and sci-fi fans and authors, you will surely have seen someone mention Royal Road (‘RR’).
So what exactly is it, and is it worth diving in?
Personally, I came to fantasy through physical books first, as a kid. Then, as I started to get into LitRPG, it became clear that Kindle Unlimited was the way to go – so many books are available to read for a flat monthly fee that way, and loads of the top authors and series can be found there.
Really, KU is the aspiration and necessity for most fantasy authors, and especially so for LitRPG (which tends not to be traditionally published).
Why, then, is a free web-novel platform like Royal Road such a big deal?
About Royal Road
Royal Road (or ‘RR’ for short) is a site that publishes web-novels. These ‘serialised fiction’ stories are released a chapter at a time, often on a regular schedule such as one or two chapters per week (you can check out one of my novel-length stories on there here!).
In fact, some of the most successful stories release a chapter every single day, as I discuss here:
Unlike other web-novel sites like Smashwords, the stories on RR are very heavily skewed towards fantasy and sci-fi. And in particular, the various flavors of LitRPG and gamelit are really strongly represented.
This means that the site is packed with avid readers of those genres, and authors who write those sorts of novels would be wise to at least consider publishing there.
How to monetize Royal Road
Many readers of fantasy and related genres like to read a lot. They enjoy long novels, and when it comes to web-novels, they would prefer a new chapter every day if at all possible.
This is a challenge for authors, but if it is one you can master, there are rewards to be gained — even from a free platform.
There are two main ways to monetize RR, at least in the short term:
- Paypal
- Patreon
You can see below what displays at the end of the first chapters of one of my own RR web-novels, The Tooth and Claw Guild:
Those Paypal and Patreon buttons are built into the site, making it very easy for authors to just connect their accounts.
Each can act as a virtual tips jar, allowing readers to contribute a few dollars to the author as a ‘thank you’ for the story, or to support the author’s ongoing creative work.
Out of the two ways to pay, Patreon seems to be by far the bigger deal to most authors. The site allows them to put advance chapters up before they appear on RR, meaning that the most avid readers will sign up to the Patreon accounts of their favorite authors in order to access the latest instalments that bit sooner.
‘Cause sometimes you just can’t wait!
Moving to ebook
There is another element for authors to consider.
There are two main ways to monetize RR, at least in the short term.
Earlier I said “in the short term”, and what I meant by this is that Patreon and Paypal are the only direct, immediate ways to earn from launching a story on Royal Road. There are no royalties paid by the site based on reads, for example.
However, many authors move from RR to ebook, launching their stories on Kindle after the first novel-length arc has been complete. Doing so usually means that the relevant chapters will be taken off RR, because KU requires books to be exclusive.
If this sounds like bad news for the RR readers, remember that the most avid fans will be up-to-date. It doesn’t actually matter very much to them if the author takes down the chapters that they read some months ago!
As well as direct earnings, then, RR can be seen as a way of building an audience. The most avid fans might buy the ebook as well, or at least re-read it on Kindle. More importantly, the awareness of the story among an existing set of fans makes it much easier for the author to achieve a successful ebook launch.
And that is why Royal Road is so important to LitRPG and gamelit authors.
I hope that was useful to you. Good luck with your writing!
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