what is the best time to upload

Ai-chan

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Best time? Whenever it's done. Even if some time is the best time, if everyone's uploading at the same time, it becomes the worst time. Those who care enough about 'best time' will not tell you, because that means you will be infringing on their 'best time', making it 'worst time'.

So don't expect too much from this question. Those who don't care will probably answer you with their best time. But those who have indeed found that 'best time' will try to mislead you so that you will not get into their time slot.

For example: 1AM-5AM on Monday used to be the best time, but if you upload around that time now, your upload will disappear extremely fast.
 

Alverost

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at certain times I get 100 reader and other times I get like 10, what have you found is the best time to upload a chapter?
Timezones make it almost impossible to find the best time to upload a chapter. The best way to get a lot of readers is just to regularly upload so you get more exposure. Also, I recommend uploading at different times so you get different readers from different timezones.
 

queenofthefuzzybugs

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Consistent exposure is more important than when exactly you post. So, for instance, posting 3x a week will get you more readers than 1x a week. Posting 5x a week will get you more readers than 3x a week. The reason for this is your story usually hits the "New" section on the front page at least once or twice a week. Being on the front page is, like, suuuuuper important for getting readers.

The other thing to keep in mind is the genre your story is in, and even the sub-genre. For instance, there are TONS of harem stories on this website.:blob_unamused: If someone searches the harem tag, they're going to get lots of results. Newer stories with fewer/no reviews will be much further down the list and thus less likely to get readers. Over saturated tags are harder to be successful in, period.

Lastly, timing and consistent posting won't matter if you can't spell and string together a coherent thought. Getting a bad review will turn off potential readers. Put effort into making your story legible so no one writes a review that says "The premise is interesting, but the writing is atrocious! TWO STARS!" You can't help if people just don't like your story, but you can write well with practice and study.
 

feirut

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I've been in that situation once. What I did was to note the increase in views whenever I posted a chapter at different times. It did help, to be honest. In the end, the answer I came up with is... post it once you are satisfied.

I know views and numbers are quite exciting to watch since it shows how many are interested in what you created. But rather than care about that, try to just write as much as you can. Of course, you should care not to burn yourself up in the process. In my case, to shift my attention away, I play games or read possible references based on the age of the world I was creating.
 

Ddraig

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Consistent exposure is more important than when exactly you post. So, for instance, posting 3x a week will get you more readers than 1x a week. Posting 5x a week will get you more readers than 3x a week.
This is generally true but there are novels that are exceptions, a lot of them. Thing is all those exceptions have something huge going for them. That being said consistent posting is one of the easiest methods to get readers as long as your novel is not horrible.
 

Rubylicious

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Put effort into making your story legible so no one writes a review that says "The premise is interesting, but the writing is atrocious! TWO STARS!" You can't help if people just don't like your story, but you can write well with practice and study.

Recently, I find myself leaving this kind of review a lot. Good premise, horrid grammar. Sometimes, it's like I'm reading MTL. I always say find a proof reader or editor. Doesn't have to be a professional one, there are lots of bored ppl on the internet. Or spend some time to polish ur grammar.

I dunno. You post just really spoke to me.
 

OddJamm

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As a reader I think just upload consistently. I would often check on my favorite series to see if they uploaded yet and once I realize when they upload everytime, I go on at that time for the update. Meh just me?
 

ChronicleCrawler

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Recently, I find myself leaving this kind of review a lot. Good premise, horrid grammar. Sometimes, it's like I'm reading MTL. I always say find a proof reader or editor. Doesn't have to be a professional one, there are lots of bored ppl on the internet. Or spend some time to polish ur grammar.

I dunno. You post just really spoke to me.
It's fine, I get that too. You just gotta stay in your toes and write while learning new things about English grammar.
 

XianPiete

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Recently, I find myself leaving this kind of review a lot. Good premise, horrid grammar. Sometimes, it's like I'm reading MTL. I always say, "find a proof reader or editor." It D doesn't have to be a professional one, there are lots a lot of bored ppl people on the internet. Or spend some time to polish ur your grammar.

I dunno. You Your post just really spoke to me.

Every writer hopes to read a well thought out criticism of their work, but not every writer is looking for someone to slam their work based on their level of language mastery. I would encourage you all to point out mistakes to an author, but critique the work based on the content rather than the author's command of the language.
 

queenofthefuzzybugs

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This is generally true but there are novels that are exceptions, a lot of them. Thing is all those exceptions have something huge going for them. That being said consistent posting is one of the easiest methods to get readers as long as your novel is not horrible.

I wouldn't say there are a lot of them. I would say that, once a story hits a certain favorite-rating-view thresh hold, how often they post matters less. Basically, if for some reason you become popular you can afford to be lazy about chapter posting. But for new authors or those starting out on the website, the chances of them becoming popular suddenly aren't great so it's better to be consistent right out of the gate.

It would be interesting to hear from the top 10 most popular authors about how they got to where they are... maybe they just had a good story to tell, or maybe they're good at networking online, or maybe they just got lucky. But it'd be interesting to know!

Every writer hopes to read a well thought out criticism of their work, but not every writer is looking for someone to slam their work based on their level of language mastery. I would encourage you all to point out mistakes to an author, but critique the work based on the content rather than the author's command of the language.

You don't have to be perfect in the language you're writing in, but you do need to be proficient. Because the content of a written story is... the writing. It's literally what you write and how you write it! So poor writing hinders a story. There's no way to get around this. If readers need to think like an Editor to understand a story, then the Author has already failed. They forced their readers to work, instead of just letting them enjoy and immerse.

I'm not trying to discourage new writers. I was young once and couldn't write. I practiced a lot... in private. :sweat_smile: Occasionally I'd have a family member give me feedback. But I waited a long long time to post anything online. Not because I wanted to be perfect (there's no such thing), but because I wanted to be proficient enough as a writer that my story was judged for it's plot and characters, not how many times I misspelled there, their, or they're in a single chapter.
 

Jemini

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As a reader I think just upload consistently. I would often check on my favorite series to see if they uploaded yet and once I realize when they upload everytime, I go on at that time for the update. Meh just me?

This is exactly what I've found as a writer as well. As I was beginning with my series, I tried a few things with my upload times and I discovered that consistency really is the most important thing. I keep to a consistent schedule of Monday, Wednsday, Friday, and weekend (Saturday or Sunday, although it has absolutely always been Saturday and I have never wound up going with Sunday.)

In addition to the consistent schedule though, I actually posted exactly what my schedule was going to be in a forward chapter (placed as the very first chapter on the chapter listing.) This has an effect of creating a little bit of a saw-tooth pattern in your viewership statistics, but it actually does up your views for both the posting days and the off days as well. On the posting days, your consistency gives you a MASSIVE boost to your view counts since your audience has grown used to your pattern and a lot more will pile on on those days. On your off days, the boost you got from your posting day will up you in the rankings and thus increase your visibility, thus giving you the chance at some new readers.

Of course, posting every day is the best overall effect, but very few people can do that. I know it would be absolutely impossible for me since I post some long chapters, over twice the length of the average WN chapter and a lot closer in length to a book chapter. (Well, Death Mage was one of my inspirations to start writing, and my chapter length is only about half the length of a Death Mage chapter, so maybe Death Mage inspired me in more ways than one.)
 

XianPiete

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If you guys want to know what I do... I update 3-4 times a day (time of day really doesn't matter). I keep my chapters down around 1k words. I make sure the synopsis, title and picture work for my story.

The rest just comes down to the reader's taste. Sometimes you'll love an idea or story and people will hate it. Sometimes you'll write something and people will love it, even if you aren't sold on it.
 

Jemini

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If you guys want to know what I do... I update 3-4 times a day (time of day really doesn't matter). I keep my chapters down around 1k words. I make sure the synopsis, title and picture work for my story.

The rest just comes down to the reader's taste. Sometimes you'll love an idea or story and people will hate it. Sometimes you'll write something and people will love it, even if you aren't sold on it.

See, I can't do that. There is a balance to be struck, in my case around 1/4 of my chapters contain a single idea that takes nearly 4K words to express properly, and if I were to break it off part way through relaying the concept it really would hurt the quality of the story. As for the rest of the chapters, I push multiple concepts in the same chapter in order to bring it up to the same 4K words as the ones with the big concepts in order to keep them close to the same length.

In other words, I write enough I could easily meet the same release schedule, but I feel it would really cause the quality of my writing to suffer if I were to do that, and I'm not going to do something like that for a cheap trick to get more views. (Then again, my dedication to quality seems to have built up a plenty big following without the cheap tricks, so I'm speaking from a bit of a privileged position.)
 

Piknos

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Recently, I find myself leaving this kind of review a lot. Good premise, horrid grammar. Sometimes, it's like I'm reading MTL. I always say find a proof reader or editor. Doesn't have to be a professional one, there are lots of bored ppl on the internet. Or spend some time to polish ur grammar.

I dunno. You post just really spoke to me.

Couldn't agree more. I've dropped many novels simply because I can't be bothered to read what appears to be an intriguing story that was somehow thought up by a primary school child. If you're going to write something, at least make it readable. I understand that some people may be new to the whole writing scene but if you've any passion for writing or care about your story in any significant way don't you think you'd at least take the time to make the story clean? A lack of proper grammar and all that just tells me that your story isn't good enough for you to care, so why should I? Plot and development can be learned, but when someone doesn't bother to do a simple spell check it makes me really eager to put the novel in my dropped pile.

Aside from that little rant, I don't think there is a specific "time" to upload. If your story is well written enough it will rise, either by enthused readers sharing it among others or ratings and reviews pushing it up to the top. The most important thing would be communication. Maybe set up a twitter account or short story update for delayed chapters or hiatuses, keep regular uploads otherwise. When people know what to expect they'll keep coming back. Most don't have the time and patience to check for a missing chapter or to sit down and regularly refresh the page to check.
 

XianPiete

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See, I can't do that. There is a balance to be struck, in my case around 1/4 of my chapters contain a single idea that takes nearly 4K words to express properly, and if I were to break it off part way through relaying the concept it really would hurt the quality of the story. As for the rest of the chapters, I push multiple concepts in the same chapter in order to bring it up to the same 4K words as the ones with the big concepts in order to keep them close to the same length.

In other words, I write enough I could easily meet the same release schedule, but I feel it would really cause the quality of my writing to suffer if I were to do that, and I'm not going to do something like that for a cheap trick to get more views. (Then again, my dedication to quality seems to have built up a plenty big following without the cheap tricks, so I'm speaking from a bit of a privileged position.)

You shouldn't equate word count with quality writing. The reason for trying for around 1000 words per release is to realize how your audience is consuming the content. You as a writer, should understand the medium you are writing for at the time you sit down to create your work. If you are writing for a 20 minute TV show for instance, you know that writing a novel for each screen play would get you fired and your work would never reach the target audience.

Our target audience for a web novel is most likely going to be reading from a cell phone during periods they have time (breaks at work, between classes, lunch breaks etc.). A shorter release means that person with the cell phone can finish reading in those short breaks. You certainly can write out long, harder to read releases, but you'll be removing a large part of the audience you have by doing so. You are writing an epic novel for people to try and read in fifteen minutes. It's frustrating as a reader to be left without a beginning, middle and an end.

Challenge yourself to write with the media in mind, rather than what you think is proper for any writing. If you were hired to write greeting cards for instance, would you feel that only four thousand words would be a quality product?
 

Jemini

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You shouldn't equate word count with quality writing. The reason for trying for around 1000 words per release is to realize how your audience is consuming the content. You as a writer, should understand the medium you are writing for at the time you sit down to create your work. If you are writing for a 20 minute TV show for instance, you know that writing a novel for each screen play would get you fired and your work would never reach the target audience.

Our target audience for a web novel is most likely going to be reading from a cell phone during periods they have time (breaks at work, between classes, lunch breaks etc.). A shorter release means that person with the cell phone can finish reading in those short breaks. You certainly can write out long, harder to read releases, but you'll be removing a large part of the audience you have by doing so. You are writing an epic novel for people to try and read in fifteen minutes. It's frustrating as a reader to be left without a beginning, middle and an end.

Challenge yourself to write with the media in mind, rather than what you think is proper for any writing. If you were hired to write greeting cards for instance, would you feel that only four thousand words would be a quality product?

I can see what you're saying, but shorter chapters do limit the scope of ideas you can present and it actually does lower the overall quality since you wind up wrapping up these thoughts a lot quicker. I have seen writers make it work, but my own writing style doesn't work for broken thoughts very well.

I have seen novels with longer chapters succeed, and I tell my readers up front that my inspirations are Death Mage and WMW and to expect a lot of the same things. As I mentioned before, Death Mage's chapters are about 2X mine in length, which brings them to about 8X yours. It seems to still get plenty of success and is easily of novel quality.

The big thing though is definitely the writing style. The slow pace of my writing style makes it so the readers would probably be Ok with waiting 40 chapters till the first major conflict, but 160 chapters is an entirely different story. Just the psychological meaning of those numbers also has a big influence. There are a lot of things to consider, and simple rules of thumb like what you are presenting here will not work for everyone.
 

Ai-chan

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I can see what you're saying, but shorter chapters do limit the scope of ideas you can present and it actually does lower the overall quality since you wind up wrapping up these thoughts a lot quicker. I have seen writers make it work, but my own writing style doesn't work for broken thoughts very well.

I have seen novels with longer chapters succeed, and I tell my readers up front that my inspirations are Death Mage and WMW and to expect a lot of the same things. As I mentioned before, Death Mage's chapters are about 2X mine in length, which brings them to about 8X yours. It seems to still get plenty of success and is easily of novel quality.

The big thing though is definitely the writing style. The slow pace of my writing style makes it so the readers would probably be Ok with waiting 40 chapters till the first major conflict, but 160 chapters is an entirely different story. Just the psychological meaning of those numbers also has a big influence. There are a lot of things to consider, and simple rules of thumb like what you are presenting here will not work for everyone.
Not necessarily. While shorter chapters does limit what you can write, it doesn't have to be of lower quality. In many cases, stories with short chapters are of better quality as the author removes fillers that make the stories boring or lengthy. Of course Ai-chan isn't talking about shianshia, those are filled with fillers so a short chapter is usually nothing more than fillers. You can write about one thing that happens instead of several things that happen. You can forgo scene changes completely, which makes it flow better and make the story easier to read.

The reason for longer chapters is not because it increases quality, but because of consistent length. Basically, you shouldn't have varying length of chapters. It must be more or less the same. It's not just pretty, it's psychological. That's why veteran authors will not put too many ideas into one chapter as that will bulk the chapter so much it breaks everything else. It should be based on only one or two ideas per chapter, with the length fluffed with exposition, dialogues and other literary components.

James Patterson is famous for being one who advocates short chapters. His chapters are generally between 600 to 800 words. His reasoning is the same as Japanese webnovels. Shorter chapters are more engaging and easier to read. You are forced to remove unnecessary or boring sentences to allow people to finish one reading one chapter in the train on their way to work or make people one to read more and more and more before realizing they've run out of things to read.
 

Jemini

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Not necessarily. While shorter chapters does limit what you can write, it doesn't have to be of lower quality. In many cases, stories with short chapters are of better quality as the author removes fillers that make the stories boring or lengthy. Of course Ai-chan isn't talking about shianshia, those are filled with fillers so a short chapter is usually nothing more than fillers. You can write about one thing that happens instead of several things that happen. You can forgo scene changes completely, which makes it flow better and make the story easier to read.

That's the thing. My long chapters, the ones that require me to lengthen everything else to match them, ARE about just one idea with zero scene changes. The thing is, my writing style is extremely descriptive. That's what has been engaging for my readers, and it seems they like it because they have called out my descriptive scenes specifically in reviews. There is also the fact that I wind up working in explanations of actual complex real world concepts or scientific facts that not a lot of people know about. This is another thing my readers have praised.

In other words, my case is extremely specific to my writing style. It is the reason why the advice of making shorter chapters does not work for me. However, at the same time, it is also a reason why my case should not be taken as a reason for other people to ignore the advice you are giving. Rather, the reason I'm bringing this up is to point out that there are special case exceptions to general rules like the one being explained here. You have to know the audience you are aiming for, and the feel you are trying to create.

In my case, I was aiming at an audience of people unsatisfied with the status-quo of the Isekai genre, and I sought to write a novel that specifically avoids a lot of the cleches while playing up some well liked but never done well concepts other Isekai have used, as well as some concepts that are just never seen. This means that I do actually have to set an atmosphere. It is a slightly higher thinking audience that would be craving an Isekai like this, and such an audience is going to want a smarter webnovel woven full of Shakespear level foreshadowing, little hints here and there about the hidden lore of the world, and well planned concepts that don't make sense when they are first introduced but suddenly all come together when you get the full picture.

I'm sure a lot of those things I just described could be done with short chapters, but the atmosphere most certainly could not. And, again, another critical thing that renders my series unsuitable for short chapters is the slow pace. The first actual action scene that is not a flashback is likely going to be between chapters 30 and 40 at the chapter length I'm currently using. It would be between chapters 120 and 160 if I were to keep my chapter length below 1,000 words. 30 to 40 chapters can likely be tollerated for that sort of thing, 120 to 160 chapters though is an entirely different story. As you said, this is something that is mostly psychological.
 
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