Novel websites comparison

GodlessEmperor

Emperor of trash writing
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Jan 1, 2019
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Sometimes people say stuff like "Your novel would fit in more in Qidian" or Tapas or RR or...
I somewhat understand the audience and size of SH.
From what I understand, tapas has a more lgtbq+ community. Qidian has a "very large audience". And finally, RR is, umm, speaking freely when giving critique.
I understand that, if I wanted a larger audience, I should just upload everywhere to cover all grounds. But I'm lazy. I'm simply curious how those other websites are~

Thank you :)

On a side note; I uploaded my novel on Qidian now because I wanted to see whether I would get more views there since there are more readers on there. I was also curious about the "they use bots there" rumor. After some experimentation, I found out that each view is worth a random 4 to 16 views~ Idk how the fake views behave once you reach a higher number than 10k though...
 

Lomyril

Well-known member
Joined
Jun 4, 2021
Messages
30
Points
58
I'm not familiar with Tapas. With that said, there are three web sites I go to visit on a regular basis.

ScribbleHub
Webnovel
RoyalRoad

ScribbleHub - I had been reading here for a while before making an account. I decided I just had to give a positive review for one of the stories I liked to read, so I finally bit the bullet. That then allowed me to put a number of stories I have been following on a reading list, rate them, etc. I have found ScribbleHub to be pretty friendly in terms of comments made in the stories to encourage authors. I have also seen more LGBTQ+ stories here than other web sites. Right now I like ScribbleHub the most. It has some of the most interesting stories I have been reading for a long time. I've even donated to a few using the donate buttons, and a few stories I have purchased from Amazon.

Webnovel - It seems to be easier finding new stories to read here, even if they do not "go the distance" and get completed. It is also easier to find cultivation novels here. The community tends to be more silly with comments, suggestions and encouragement. I expect that is because of the fun GIFs you can add for memes like saying something is "Over 9000" or "Awesome" etc. I keep hearing horror stories about authors who sign contracts with Webnovel though. You'd basically be signing away your intellectual property. Just posting your stories seems OK though. With that said, I do support some stories with the web novel coins because some of the stories are just that good... even if you can find the stories on other web sites that copy off of Webnovel. Webnovel also seems to be able to help me find the stories I would be interesting in reading compared to these other sites. It is also easy to find fan-fictions here.

RoyalRoad - I have been with RoyalRoad the longest. I've been paying to support the web site with a premium account from time to time. With that said, I doubt I'll be paying again. I have heard some horror stories from authors who were not getting support from the admins there, so they left to post their stories elsewhere. A few of them came over to ScribbleHub, which is another reason why I made the switch to sign up there. RoyalRoad also has a policy that stories have to be more restrictive with their sex scenes. While a good story doesn't need sex scenes, it makes sense that if a man and a woman are together for a while in harrowing adventures they'd turn to each other for comfort and love. I suspect their policy on this comes from being an affiliate of Amazon, but that is just a guess. I do know that some authors have moved their stories to other sites partly because of this policy, as I mentioned above. RoyalRoad's set of stories seems to be more along the lines of "mainstream" fiction. Nothing too far out there with a decent choice of sci-fi and fantasy. I have purchased a few stories on Amazon after reading the stories first on RoyalRoad.

So yes, if you want coverage for your story I'd recommend posting to all three: ScribbleHub, Webnovel and RoyalRoad. Just be aware that they each tend to have different audiences, who will react differently. ScribbleHub may be the most comfortable for authors because a few have mentioned they like the fanbase and the ease of getting formatting/tables/images in their story chapters.

Good luck!
 

NikkuNii

Socially awkward Vampire/Yandere Madlad
Joined
Nov 18, 2021
Messages
226
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43
I'm not familiar with Tapas. With that said, there are three web sites I go to visit on a regular basis.

ScribbleHub
Webnovel
RoyalRoad

ScribbleHub - I had been reading here for a while before making an account. I decided I just had to give a positive review for one of the stories I liked to read, so I finally bit the bullet. That then allowed me to put a number of stories I have been following on a reading list, rate them, etc. I have found ScribbleHub to be pretty friendly in terms of comments made in the stories to encourage authors. I have also seen more LGBTQ+ stories here than other web sites. Right now I like ScribbleHub the most. It has some of the most interesting stories I have been reading for a long time. I've even donated to a few using the donate buttons, and a few stories I have purchased from Amazon.

Webnovel - It seems to be easier finding new stories to read here, even if they do not "go the distance" and get completed. It is also easier to find cultivation novels here. The community tends to be more silly with comments, suggestions and encouragement. I expect that is because of the fun GIFs you can add for memes like saying something is "Over 9000" or "Awesome" etc. I keep hearing horror stories about authors who sign contracts with Webnovel though. You'd basically be signing away your intellectual property. Just posting your stories seems OK though. With that said, I do support some stories with the web novel coins because some of the stories are just that good... even if you can find the stories on other web sites that copy off of Webnovel. Webnovel also seems to be able to help me find the stories I would be interesting in reading compared to these other sites. It is also easy to find fan-fictions here.

RoyalRoad - I have been with RoyalRoad the longest. I've been paying to support the web site with a premium account from time to time. With that said, I doubt I'll be paying again. I have heard some horror stories from authors who were not getting support from the admins there, so they left to post their stories elsewhere. A few of them came over to ScribbleHub, which is another reason why I made the switch to sign up there. RoyalRoad also has a policy that stories have to be more restrictive with their sex scenes. While a good story doesn't need sex scenes, it makes sense that if a man and a woman are together for a while in harrowing adventures they'd turn to each other for comfort and love. I suspect their policy on this comes from being an affiliate of Amazon, but that is just a guess. I do know that some authors have moved their stories to other sites partly because of this policy, as I mentioned above. RoyalRoad's set of stories seems to be more along the lines of "mainstream" fiction. Nothing too far out there with a decent choice of sci-fi and fantasy. I have purchased a few stories on Amazon after reading the stories first on RoyalRoad.

So yes, if you want coverage for your story I'd recommend posting to all three: ScribbleHub, Webnovel and RoyalRoad. Just be aware that they each tend to have different audiences, who will react differently. ScribbleHub may be the most comfortable for authors because a few have mentioned they like the fanbase and the ease of getting formatting/tables/images in their story chapters.

Good luck!
Yeah I use webnovel as well. I get way more attention on it than I do in SH
Edit: 50K views on my Tokyo Ghoul Novelization
 

Kenjona

Well-known member
Joined
Apr 12, 2020
Messages
489
Points
103
I'm not familiar with Tapas. With that said, there are three web sites I go to visit on a regular basis.

ScribbleHub
Webnovel
RoyalRoad

ScribbleHub - I had been reading here for a while before making an account. I decided I just had to give a positive review for one of the stories I liked to read, so I finally bit the bullet. That then allowed me to put a number of stories I have been following on a reading list, rate them, etc. I have found ScribbleHub to be pretty friendly in terms of comments made in the stories to encourage authors. I have also seen more LGBTQ+ stories here than other web sites. Right now I like ScribbleHub the most. It has some of the most interesting stories I have been reading for a long time. I've even donated to a few using the donate buttons, and a few stories I have purchased from Amazon.

Webnovel - It seems to be easier finding new stories to read here, even if they do not "go the distance" and get completed. It is also easier to find cultivation novels here. The community tends to be more silly with comments, suggestions and encouragement. I expect that is because of the fun GIFs you can add for memes like saying something is "Over 9000" or "Awesome" etc. I keep hearing horror stories about authors who sign contracts with Webnovel though. You'd basically be signing away your intellectual property. Just posting your stories seems OK though. With that said, I do support some stories with the web novel coins because some of the stories are just that good... even if you can find the stories on other web sites that copy off of Webnovel. Webnovel also seems to be able to help me find the stories I would be interesting in reading compared to these other sites. It is also easy to find fan-fictions here.

RoyalRoad - I have been with RoyalRoad the longest. I've been paying to support the web site with a premium account from time to time. With that said, I doubt I'll be paying again. I have heard some horror stories from authors who were not getting support from the admins there, so they left to post their stories elsewhere. A few of them came over to ScribbleHub, which is another reason why I made the switch to sign up there. RoyalRoad also has a policy that stories have to be more restrictive with their sex scenes. While a good story doesn't need sex scenes, it makes sense that if a man and a woman are together for a while in harrowing adventures they'd turn to each other for comfort and love. I suspect their policy on this comes from being an affiliate of Amazon, but that is just a guess. I do know that some authors have moved their stories to other sites partly because of this policy, as I mentioned above. RoyalRoad's set of stories seems to be more along the lines of "mainstream" fiction. Nothing too far out there with a decent choice of sci-fi and fantasy. I have purchased a few stories on Amazon after reading the stories first on RoyalRoad.

So yes, if you want coverage for your story I'd recommend posting to all three: ScribbleHub, Webnovel and RoyalRoad. Just be aware that they each tend to have different audiences, who will react differently. ScribbleHub may be the most comfortable for authors because a few have mentioned they like the fanbase and the ease of getting formatting/tables/images in their story chapters.

Good luck!
With some differences, this is my experience in a nutshell as a reader. I would like to add; I think WattPad has more female centric works than Scribblehub and almost as much if not just as much LGBTQ+. But it is really hard to navigate, at least for me. Their tags do not seem to be consistently applied so reader/author beware.
 

GodlessEmperor

Emperor of trash writing
Joined
Jan 1, 2019
Messages
195
Points
83
I'm not familiar with Tapas. With that said, there are three web sites I go to visit on a regular basis.

ScribbleHub
Webnovel
RoyalRoad

ScribbleHub - I had been reading here for a while before making an account. I decided I just had to give a positive review for one of the stories I liked to read, so I finally bit the bullet. That then allowed me to put a number of stories I have been following on a reading list, rate them, etc. I have found ScribbleHub to be pretty friendly in terms of comments made in the stories to encourage authors. I have also seen more LGBTQ+ stories here than other web sites. Right now I like ScribbleHub the most. It has some of the most interesting stories I have been reading for a long time. I've even donated to a few using the donate buttons, and a few stories I have purchased from Amazon.

Webnovel - It seems to be easier finding new stories to read here, even if they do not "go the distance" and get completed. It is also easier to find cultivation novels here. The community tends to be more silly with comments, suggestions and encouragement. I expect that is because of the fun GIFs you can add for memes like saying something is "Over 9000" or "Awesome" etc. I keep hearing horror stories about authors who sign contracts with Webnovel though. You'd basically be signing away your intellectual property. Just posting your stories seems OK though. With that said, I do support some stories with the web novel coins because some of the stories are just that good... even if you can find the stories on other web sites that copy off of Webnovel. Webnovel also seems to be able to help me find the stories I would be interesting in reading compared to these other sites. It is also easy to find fan-fictions here.

RoyalRoad - I have been with RoyalRoad the longest. I've been paying to support the web site with a premium account from time to time. With that said, I doubt I'll be paying again. I have heard some horror stories from authors who were not getting support from the admins there, so they left to post their stories elsewhere. A few of them came over to ScribbleHub, which is another reason why I made the switch to sign up there. RoyalRoad also has a policy that stories have to be more restrictive with their sex scenes. While a good story doesn't need sex scenes, it makes sense that if a man and a woman are together for a while in harrowing adventures they'd turn to each other for comfort and love. I suspect their policy on this comes from being an affiliate of Amazon, but that is just a guess. I do know that some authors have moved their stories to other sites partly because of this policy, as I mentioned above. RoyalRoad's set of stories seems to be more along the lines of "mainstream" fiction. Nothing too far out there with a decent choice of sci-fi and fantasy. I have purchased a few stories on Amazon after reading the stories first on RoyalRoad.

So yes, if you want coverage for your story I'd recommend posting to all three: ScribbleHub, Webnovel and RoyalRoad. Just be aware that they each tend to have different audiences, who will react differently. ScribbleHub may be the most comfortable for authors because a few have mentioned they like the fanbase and the ease of getting formatting/tables/images in their story chapters.

Good luck!
Thanks for writing it all down! Reading your experiences on those websites was super interesting! :blob_cookie::blob_cookie:
 

MissPaige36

✨Senior Forum Citizen✨
Joined
May 1, 2021
Messages
351
Points
103
Sometimes people say stuff like "Your novel would fit in more in Qidian" or Tapas or RR or...
I somewhat understand the audience and size of SH.
From what I understand, tapas has a more lgtbq+ community. Qidian has a "very large audience". And finally, RR is, umm, speaking freely when giving critique.
I understand that, if I wanted a larger audience, I should just upload everywhere to cover all grounds. But I'm lazy. I'm simply curious how those other websites are~

Thank you :)

On a side note; I uploaded my novel on Qidian now because I wanted to see whether I would get more views there since there are more readers on there. I was also curious about the "they use bots there" rumor. After some experimentation, I found out that each view is worth a random 4 to 16 views~ Idk how the fake views behave once you reach a higher number than 10k though...
Someone told me to post my novel on wattpad instead. That’s an insult. :blob_catflip:
 

SilvCrimBlac

A Historical Bastard
Joined
Apr 7, 2019
Messages
332
Points
103
I know of 7-8 different novel sites, but the main 3 is, as usual, SH, WN, and RR

Webnovel is of course, webnovel. Post here only to avoid having anything and everything plagiarized. As much crap as people give the contracts, if you don't expect to just hit it big, and are willing to put up with schedules and deadlines, WN's contracts are actually about the norm for an online writing contract. And if you dislike the terms, but you start bringing in a certain amount of revenue, you will be allowed to renegotiate the terms. More money means more say in outcomes.

SH. Friendly sure. Professional? Absolutely not. Scribblehub is where you should go if you are concerned with critical reviews and have thin skin and can't handle someone being brutally honest. It is not where you go to improve, because the bar is extremely low here. It's a good place for hobbyists, but not for people who want to do something with writing that involves monetary compensation or whatever. Still, it's by far the best site for casualists.

RoyalRoad. By far the best of the 3 if you want to do something with your writing besides hobbyism (writing for yourself etc.). Has the highest standards, and the best results when it comes to critical reviews. They have a large community of genuinely knowledgeable editors, though you'll have to ask around in the forums to get in contact with them if you don't want to wait for them to find you, which is a fairly unreliable tactic. People complain about its views on LGBTQ, but this is nonsense. I admit it lacks much in the way of a Yaoi/BL scene, but it has just as many if not more Yuri/Gender Bender novels present, and quite a few of them are highly ranked. So saying it is unfriendly to LGBTQ is inaccurate and false. It just favors one side of LGBTQ more.

The only thing people tend to dislike in RR when it comes to Yuri/Yaoi, is that people spring it up in the story without mentioning it will happen in the synopsis or warnings or something. I agree with this. You should give some kind of forewarning or briefly mention that it will be present in your story beforehand. Or even hint at it in the synopsis, which is the most common form used in RR. Do that, and you'll be fine for the most part. Don't do that, and you'll likely get criticism. I don't see the problem. Pure laziness if you don't and still complain.

And just going to toss in Wattpad as an honorable mention. It's a dumpster fire. I used to frequent it back when it had an active forum. It was actually not a bad site. In fact, I was part of a now-defunct site called Figment, that was HarperCollins owned, but was shutdown. The userbase of Figment is split in two. One half went to a place called GetUnderlined, the rest migrated to Wattpad. This was Wattpad's heydey to me, circa 2014-2016. The way it is now....if you don't write smut(mostly from a female perspective) or something do with werewolves and vampires...you won't get much traction. Though I have noticed a recent upsurge in female Protags being assassins/gangsters/etc. on that site lately...not sure what that's about.

A few people I know from Figment, were also from another defunct site called Inkpop, which has always been by far my favorite site. I would still be there and only there if Inkpop was still around. Other sites that I know people in is Mibba, Fictionpress, Honeyfeed, CreativeNovels, Foxteller, Neoread, and Moonquill. Fictionpress was my first site ever and I spent 4 years being apart of a very active community there, though most of us migrated to a Skype chat channel, and then to Discord. After we left, Fictionpress has gotten kind of quiet. It has a community that still regularly posts, but thats all I know, mostly in the Manga, Action, and Fantasy sections. The Adventure section kind of died down though it still has some movement. One of the two first authors I ever became followers to were both originally from Fictionpress, one being a guy named Rental and a girl named Eytha. Rental is....gone. Eytha surfaces from time to time.
 
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KiraMinoru

Untitled Generic Member
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Jun 22, 2020
Messages
473
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On a side note; I uploaded my novel on Qidian now because I wanted to see whether I would get more views there since there are more readers on there. I was also curious about the "they use bots there" rumor. After some experimentation, I found out that each view is worth a random 4 to 16 views~ Idk how the fake views behave once you reach a higher number than 10k though...
The way views work on WN is based upon the length of the chapter. So for example let’s say the base words/view is 250. If you have a chapter that is 1000 words long, as soon as someone so much as opens that chapter 4 views get added. If the chapter is 10000 words long you get 40 views instantly added. Simply switching back and forth between the chapters, each time you do so, you get those views added regardless of whether someone actually read anything or how long they were on the page for. It’s a pretty slimy way to boost views and make them look much larger than they really are. But they’re in a place where big fudged numbers are looked upon favourably even if it’s all fake.

The system is one designed to dangle a carrot in front of an author’s face. The ones who write consistently get more rewards through dopamine rushes seeing small numbers turn into big numbers when in reality they are far smaller than they truly are. It’s all just a psychological game to WN.

I feel like the bad guy telling kids Santa isn’t real.

They made their system game-like to try and create a rather weird situation among readers too where they become addicted to the gaming and level up aspect of it while gaining pointless little achievements that mean nothing. They get to brag to it about other people on the site too I guess? Maybe among their friend group? Dunno, but it’s designed to prey on a certain group of people susceptible to such predatory corporatized practices.
 
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K5Rakitan

Level 34 👪 💍 Pronouns: she/whore ♀
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This is the first I'm hearing of Qidian. Thanks for the tips!
 

Toripuru-S

Well-known member
Joined
Jul 1, 2021
Messages
59
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58
Besides here I also publish on Tapas, Wattpad, and Royal Road.

Tapas, SH, Royal Road = Very positive experience for me. I actually sought out RR because of that critical reputation, and I didn't want to hide from that :blob_shade:

Wattpad = Mmmmm, about average. I haven't had any bad encounters with it's community, but on the software side I find the site and it's publishing tools to be super super clunky 🔨

I thought about giving Webnovel a go, but since I couldn't find a way to insert images into my chapters, I passed on it.
 

ArcadiaBlade

I'm a Lazy Writer, So What?
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Dec 23, 2018
Messages
880
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Before I became a writer, I started on Wattpad to broaden my horizons. It was mainly because I had a hard time drawing comics which a classmate recommend to me to write and after that, started my online career in writing.

I wasn't even good at my English and had to struggle to get some basic sentences to work as Wattpad was a terrible place to write a fantasy romance or even male romance(even till now). I ended up discovering that I can make my website through some authors posting their works on wordpress for me and tried it out, discovered that I can gain fame through RR and headed to promote my works.

At that time, I was fueled with motivation since I was really happy that I started to gain traction...Until RL stuff happen and not only that the critics made it worse considering that I was still learning english. It got to the point where I slowly lose motivation to write and ended up having to stop writing to keep up RL stuff. By the time I came back to continue writing, I lost my wordpress account and the critics got worse on RR.

Writing then became a hobby to occasionally just write about and sometimes I post on Wattpad till Tony set up SH and ended up trying to post a story I had on Wattpad.

Not only it gained traction, I ended up getting poached by Webnovel which I decline since I felt an uneasy feeling on the contract I hesitated to.

There, Wattpad and SH are only two sites I posted to(since I got used to wattpad's app and SH is mostly where I lurk from time to time).

I felt comfortable being lax and on my own pace and don't really want to return to any of those sites since RR almost killed my passion for writing and Webnovel is like stepping on a landmine.
 
Joined
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SH. Friendly sure. Professional? Absolutely not. Scribblehub is where you should go if you are concerned with critical reviews and have thin skin and can't handle someone being brutally honest.
I've gotten more constructive criticism from SH than RR. However, readers on RR seem to be more vocal, especially considering I have quarter of the readers there.
And one major advantage of SH is that it offers much better publicity for newer novels. The latest series tab is a godsend, and on RR you won't find a single novel on trending below 1k readers.
 

Enoch

Active member
Joined
May 30, 2021
Messages
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I strongly advise anyone from publishing on Webnovel. Buggy app updates, horrible user experience and shady practices plague that app. Also you're working with a Chinese company. I thought Webnovel was really great years ago, when locked chapters meant you just had to watch an ad and there was nobody forcing you to pay to read. Now everything is locked and new Chinese novels are being machine-translated, often with poor quality both story-wise and translation-wise.

Just a bad site.
 

Cipiteca396

🌺🌑🐉🪶 Anxiety Overdrive
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I found my story on another site. I've never heard of it before(that doesn't mean much since I don't really pay much attention to things) but considering nobody asked permission or anything, it's definitely not a good site. I recognize a lot of other novels there too, and I'm guessing none of them got asked either. When I googled the name, I did find a thread on this forum about it though. https://forum.scribblehub.com/threads/what-the-hell-is-ltnovel-com.6512/

They made their system game-like to try and create a rather weird situation among readers too where they become addicted to the gaming and level up aspect of it while gaining pointless little achievements that mean nothing. They get to brag to it about other people on the site too I guess? Maybe among their friend group? Dunno, but it’s designed to prey on a certain group of people susceptible to such predatory corporatized practices.
I'm level 4 on Royal Road, and I've only posted a single comment and no story! Impressive, right?!


I probably won't post to the two W- sites, since nobody seems to like them. I DO plan on posting to RR when I get my first volume completed and edited. I don't expect to receive the usual harassment since my story isn't all in on the TQ part of LGBTQ. If they do somehow give constructive criticism, I'll be pleasantly surprised.
 
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