Does it matter what time I post my chapters?

[ThatOne]

I usually post them at like 2-4 am (where i live), not sure if the time i post my chapters affects anything

 

[SailusGebel]

No, it doesn't.

 

[Aoi_Sora]

I think it does. But it doesn't matter what time you post, it's a matter of how many authors posted their chapters.
I mean, if you post a chapter of your story when authors aren't posting theirs, your story will stay mostly in the first page of the website and most people who are visiting the site won't bother looking through multiple pages of new chapters.

 

[Minx]

No, but being consistent does helped your readers.

 

[NotaNuffian]

No, I only care for the constant flow of my fix, not what time it arrives.

But if you want more addicts who might have never seen your work before, try varying your release time so that you get a chance to expose yourself to them.

Or just advertise in SHF and NUF until the sun burns out.

 

[CupcakeNinja]

I usually post them at like 2-4 am (where i live), not sure if the time i post my chapters affects anything

If you know your reader base, yes, it matteers.

Take Webnovel for example. Their analytics page shows you where your readers are from. My readers are mainly from China, U.S and some in...Philippines? Taiwan? Somewhere like that. I think the U.K too.

Amyway the point is that depending on where the majority of your readers live, and their ages, they may not be awake at 2am to read your stuff. They may be asleep either for work or school
Feel me?

I dont think SH goes that deep into analytics tho. Maybe just make a poll asking where your readers are from? And what times updating would be best for them. Which I mean, what time they would be liking to catch it right away

 

[bloodyWriter]

I think it does. But it doesn't matter what time you post, it's a matter of how many authors posted their chapters.
I mean, if you post a chapter of your story when authors aren't posting theirs, your story will stay mostly in the first page of the website and most people who are visiting the site won't bother looking through multiple pages of new chapters.

Precisely. You could go a step further and adjust this with the users online. It doesn´t matter if you have the newest chapter if everyone is asleep.
Going by my own statistics page, I would say the majority of users here are from the usa.

 

[Cipiteca396]

If you want new readers, you basically have to post it when they happen to be looking at the Latest Updates part of the front page. Otherwise, it doesn't matter. Anyone who already has your book favorited will read it whenever they get the chance, not immediately upon release.

 

[Echimera]

There are also quite a few people who like to let chapters accumulate and then read in binge-sessions. If you have many readers of that type, when exactly you post the chapters becomes about as meaningless as your chances of getting into trending (sadly, some stories really deserve more exposure).

You'll need to get a feel for your readers and adjust accordingly, if you want to use this and gain additional exposure via the trending section. There are a few topics where people post their theories on how the algorithm works and can be used best.

 

[ThatOne]

If you know your reader base, yes, it matteers.

Take Webnovel for example. Their analytics page shows you where your readers are from. My readers are mainly from China, U.S and some in...Philippines? Taiwan? Somewhere like that. I think the U.K too.

Amyway the point is that depending on where the majority of your readers live, and their ages, they may not be awake at 2am to read your stuff. They may be asleep either for work or school
Feel me?

I dont think SH goes that deep into analytics tho. Maybe just make a poll asking where your readers are from? And what times updating would be best for them. Which I mean, what time they would be liking to catch it right away

Oh, SH does have a page where they show you where your viewers are from. I guess I'll just continue uploading at 2 am because it seems to not matter much

No, I only care for the constant flow of my fix, not what time it arrives.

But if you want more addicts who might have never seen your work before, try varying your release time so that you get a chance to expose yourself to them.

Or just advertise in SHF and NUF until the sun burns out.

What is SHF and NUF?

 

[Cipiteca396]

ScribbleHubForum and NovelUpdatesForum.
Or so I imagine.

 

[ThatOne]

ScribbleHubForum and NovelUpdatesForum.
Or so I imagine.

Oh ok

 

[Mechaphobic]

I find that if you release at the same time then you start to hit a bottleneck on getting new readers. I would recommend varying your releases throughout the day in cycles to reach as many different time zones as possible.

 

[CaTastrophy427]

I generally look for times when few others are posting, so I can stay in the 3 most recent ones for as long as possible and be shown in the sidebar of NU. Not sure how effective that strategy is, I still have very few readers... Tho, part of that is probably because I have such a slow release rate (on the order of weeks, not days) due to IRL stuff. Wish I had more, but there's not much I can do about that unless I wanted to split my chapters into tiny fragments for more exposure. No thank you, I personally hate it when authors do that, and it won't work for my writing style, as I often revise the whole chapter as I write each new bit, so...

 

[Derin_Edala]

If you know your reader base, yes, it matteers.

Take Webnovel for example. Their analytics page shows you where your readers are from. My readers are mainly from China, U.S and some in...Philippines? Taiwan? Somewhere like that. I think the U.K too.

Amyway the point is that depending on where the majority of your readers live, and their ages, they may not be awake at 2am to read your stuff. They may be asleep either for work or school
Feel me?

I dont think SH goes that deep into analytics tho. Maybe just make a poll asking where your readers are from? And what times updating would be best for them. Which I mean, what time they would be liking to catch it right away

The readers you have don't matter, they'll check the updates when they log on. They're not sitting at the computer refreshing and waiting for an update. If you post at the same time every time, you have the benefit of total consistency, which a lot of readers do like -- they like to know for certain if the chapter will be up or not at their normal web surfing time or if they'll be waiting until the next day -- but apart from this slight consistency appreciation, they're not relevant to posting times.

Of course, if your logic is "most readers from China = story tropes popular with Chinese = makes sense to target Chinese web surfing times to most effectively advertise to new readers", then yeah, that is a good point. If there might be a reason, beyond coincidence, that your readers are all from one area, then posting when non-readers from that area are likely to see it is a good idea. But personally I think posting at different times and casting a wider net around the world is more effective unless your readers are almost exclusively from one location.

I schedule my chapters to crawl forward by one hour per update, and update at a specific odd number of minutes off the hour (for example, 3:19 one day, 4:19 the next, 5:19 the next, etc., not 3:00, 4:00, 5:00). This covers the whole globe every 24 updates and means I'm not posting at the exact same time as most other queued updaters, as most people prefer to post on the hour or half past. I'm not very good at advertising to specific demographics so casting the widest net possible works for me.

 

[Mechaphobic]

There are a few misconceptions people have that I can go over here, because I have also made these mistakes so far.

1.) Small chapters might help exposure, but most people don't like them. If it is under 1500 words then I find they all tend to lack details everywhere. While this might help you build up readers you will also hit a plateau much faster. Write what you want to write and set a schedule, if you only focus on getting readers then your story will have serious problems.

2.) Decide why you are doing this, if it is only an attempt to get famous then you are better off going elsewhere. If money is your goal then release straight to KU there is no point wasting time here. If you think that you produce something marketable then go straight to the source of money printing.

3.) When you release matters! I can not stress this enough. Yes, it is awesome to release when it is dead and you can get more exposure, but why is it slow? Has everyone become a reader? No, it means there is no traffic, the people are usually proportional. It is more important to get your post out even if it is only seen for 15 or 20 minutes on the front page. Spend time picking names for your chapters that sound appealing.

4.) Clickbait is a double-edged sword. It may seem nice to get lots of people reading your story and you might go to vast extremes to do so. Think about your limitations as a human, if you are new to this, you probably don't want a ton of exposure. First impressions are important, and if you link someone's name with something you hate then it is very likely you will ignore all of their future work. I read a book that was badly tagged and it was so upsetting to me I wanted to block the author. They used NTR everywhere and it wasn't tagged, that was fun.

 

[Reyezwriting]

I read a book that was badly tagged and it was so upsetting to me I wanted to block the author. They used NTR everywhere and it wasn't tagged, that was fun.

Yeah, those are the worst kind of authors!

 

[aree]

Yes, for a new novel, time is important. But that sweet time varies on the days too. Like if you post the first chapter from Friday to Sunday, your novel will be less time on the new novel bar (around 3-4 hrs on the front page), hence less view. A novel posted on a weekday gets about 8-10 hrs of exposure depending upon the time you post. Though I do not know about the site traffic distribution.

The point is the view surely depends on the time you post, however, the amount of readers depends on the content. That is for a new novel.

For chapter posting, try changing it doesn't matter by much. Try various times till chapter 10-20, after that fixed a time so that your reader base (No matter how small) doesn't get harassed.

At the end of the day, It's the CONTENT that matters.