Lone: The Wanderer [Rewrite] by Lone

Bad is harsh. There are pros and cons to foreign and English authors.

Traditional webnovelists get paid by the chapter, have barely any room for spacing, and need to be constantly writing to be relevant. This also generally means that stories are drawn out, fairly basic, cliche, and no particularly well-written. Obviously there are gems and stories that break this mold, but this is generally what I see. They also consistently deliver easily digestible entertainment for years on end - so like I said, pros and cons.

English webnovel writers, especially RR writers, traditionally start out writing for fun. They don’t make any money, they don’t have a responsibility to put out chapters, no guidelines on length/plot/consistency beyond what they think is best. Because of this, you’d usually end up with better writing, unique plots, proper story structure, etc. The cons are obvious, since they have no skin in the game, they can and will drop stories with no warning for any reason. They got bored, tired of dealing with reader rage, or life just changed circumstances.

Now, this has been changing for RR writers. Modern day, people have realized you can make money off writing, so it’s because more of an industry in which there are two types of authors. Amazon publishing or patreon based.

Amazon authors tend to write their book (200-300 pg standard) then publish one chapter a day on RR till it’s fully up. This attracts a bunch of readers who become fans. While putting up bk1 they are writing book 2. They then take down book 1 and publish it on Amazon - so you have to buy it, while posting book 2 one chapter at a time on RR. Rinse and repeat. This means that the story will stay high on RR charts since it’ll be consistent writing, but anyone coming in late who wants to read has to buy the previous books to catch up. This can be good if you catch them while they are still on book 1 and you can read everything for free. But it sucks otherwise.

Patreon based authors started as people who enjoyed writing and wrote a lot, and simply let people who wanted to read ahead pay a little bit a month to keep ahead of the public chapters. Nowadays, it’s more streamlined. To be popular on RR the main thing new authors need is a consistent upload schedule, to achieve this an author will have a schedule of let’s say 3 chapters a week Mon,Wed,Fri. Throughout the week they write 5 chapters, leaving them 2 ahead of schedule, meaning that next week they only need to write one chapter to stay on schedule or 3 to stay ahead. If they stay ahead they can let people pay them on patreon to read those extra chapters (called a “backlog”).

Now, these rules don’t apply to well established authors on RR, or people who do it as a side-hustle. This is because RR readers, especially readers who really prefer LitRPG, are essentially gutter rats who will eat up anything that’s offered to them. That means that an author can and will drop off the grid for years, no content, and when they pop back up all of us readers will be right back there, eating up the scraps they through down.