The one month / RS update, plus my experience as a first-time author

Hey guys, I love collecting data and seeing other's experiences with the platform, so I thought I'd share mine as a first-time author who managed to hit RS and got pretty high on their first run (#6 before I started dropping).

Before I get into Royalroad itself, I'll share a bit of my writing experience and how I ended up with my novel as it came to be. I started writing CyberGene and its first volume, Blood and Steel, in late November last year. Since then, I believe I have written about 500k words that I never intended to post until pushed by a few friends. Around early July, I started considering posting but was delayed due to other events in my life. This was probably for the better because it gave me extensive time to research and network.

Network. If I had one tip I could give any of you, it's network and talk. From small to big authors, drop a message and be friendly, inquisitive, and supportive. Find groups to help you grow as a writer, personally, I fell in love with the Council of The Eternal Hiatus on Discord, and don't forget that this is a community. It might be competitive, but that's how any publishing field and gaining an audience goes, it's a sport and a subjective one at that. Everyone started where you and I were, hell, I'm still constantly asking for advice now that I'm considering publishing on Amazon.

Alright, now let's get to when I started posting.

Officially, CyberGene technically came out on September 23rd, but I ended up swapping out the original first chapter for a release date chapter that stated my first six chapters would come out on the 28th. This was so I had time to prepare my ads, but I cannot confirm whether this was helpful or not. In fact, I actually got a 0.5 Star rating because of this, I got it removed later (thanks John!).

Talking about ads, I made three of them. Two of them a bit... sexier, one of them more of an infographic with fancy visuals.

Infographic Ad started at 1.9-2%

This thirst trap ad started at 1.5%

Believe it or not, this one started at 2.7%

I used Midjourney and Canva for all three ads, and you can see that there isn't really a magic formula for them. I didn't go the full four-panel ad which is the current meta (mostly because I couldn't find a way to simplify my story into four panels). Something eye-catching gets their attention, and keywords get them to click it from my understanding. In my case, I used slice-of-crime, which worked well in my experience.

Combined with the ads which I ran from day one, I began posting at a rate of 2 chapters a day until chapter 36 of my novel, and one chapter a day until chapter 41 before moving to a 3x weekly chapter schedule. Also, I did this thing for RS where every ten ranks I climbed would mean I post an extra three chapters each time.

This was only possible because I had a huge backlog before this, but having to edit that much was a bit... taxing. As of my first month, I published 220,000 words. I hit RS on October 4th, switched covers thrice (recommended by some authors), changed my title three times (not too much of a difference, one was for memes which I think actually hurt my engagement lol). There was no explosive growth, I just steadily climbed the rankings one at a time and ultimately got to the top six at my own pace.

One thing I regret not doing is setting up shout-swaps beforehand. I believe I got around 13-15 shoutouts, but the biggest came from the heavy-hitters on RS, Runeblade (Bacon is awesome btw, check his shit out), and The Lone Wanderer (Path is as equally awesome), they've provided consistent engagement but I also received pretty big bumps from Cyber Dreams written by Plumparrot, and Godclads written by OstensibleMammal due to being in similar genres.

All in all, that lended me this result.

As of October 30th, one month and two days after first 'technically' posting. The Rating is 4.69 currently. Also, 16 reviews, none of which were review swaps but two of them were written by acquaintances of mine (Seras and Hamodyalien)

For more details, here.

Began dropping down the RS rankings from 25th October, which fell in line with the reduction of views and follows.

Had consistent growth until October 23rd (around 55-65 new followers daily)

All in all, I wrote in a genre not typically popular in RR, but still managed to get way further than I was expecting. I don't think there's a formula for success, there are patterns you can recognize for sure (genre, ads, RS rankings, tropes, etc.), but ultimately I believe the biggest focus when publishing online should be the story you're writing. Cherish it, love it, nurture it, and it'll sprout. CyberGene's growth may have slowed down now, and may not be the most marketable book, but it's something I care for and plan to get in the eyes of people by just making it the best it can be so they have no choice but to vomit it out to other people online. (And probably buying more ads, lmao)

Hope reading this helped some people figure out the process, and hopefully whenever you guys start posting RS isn't so stacked! Fr, love the work you make, it's yours and only yours.

Wishing you all many successes, Sixbees2.