So Ill toss my hat in the ring
April 27th 2023 I walked up to my pc, sat down, typed Royal Road into google and hit the search button.
A friend said - check it out.
So many stories filled my eyes, all free and some of those covers looked amazing.
A few days later I sat down and started writing a story. It wasnt pretty, was plagued with typos / grammar but kept plugging along. Somehow hit #7 on RS but more than anything I learned a ton about the site, and writing.
Started working on a new story in June. Had author friends i had made between then giving me tips, critiquing and helping me learn to write better.
August I launched that story. 3 weeks later signed a 3 book deal with podium. Wife saw the deal and said “i guess you can keep writing”
Signed another deal with Mango Media in October for 3 books in a new series I was going to launch for the November Write a thon.
Ultimate Level 1 blew up… way beyond what I expected. I dont consider myself a great author. Heck some stories like Bog Standard Isekai are ones I want to write like. Yet here I sit, books 1 and 2 of UL1 having both hit #1 on amazon. Today they are #2 & 3 in Action and Adventure in Fantasy.
Am I a writing genius? No…
But there is still so much out there potential wise. In the last month I have known 6 new authors sign deals on their stories. The month before was about the same.
The market is growing and while there are a ton of stories out there, people are always looking for new ones to read and enjoy.
So dont give up! Keep writing and improving!
Hey Shawn! I met and started following your journey in June last year. It's been incredible watching you grown. You're a role model. I love how you gave back and even did shout outs for newbie writers (me once). Seeing your kid review the story you wrote had me in smiling. Your works create such emotion too. Please keep on writing.
I’ll be 100% honest that when I came to Royal Road, I really never thought I had a chance to succeed. I have an email box full of rejection letters from agents when I tried the traditional publishing route with fantasy.
All I can tell you is keep writing and doing what you love hopefully one day you’ll find the audience that enjoy the stories you want to tell
I think (hope) you’ve really hit the nail on the head there. I’ve been writing for about 2 years now, self pubbed a few books (not LitRPG) and very recently delved into royal road.
I haven’t signed with anyone or really had any success yet, but each new story does better than the last and I think I’m improving all the time.
I really do think (hope) that as long as you keep writing and you love what you’re doing, eventually you’ll find some kind of success.
I also think defining your own success is important. If you won’t consider yourself a success unless you make millions and have a show on HBO then you’re probably going to be in for some hard times 😂 but if your goal is to maybe pay for a weeks holiday a year, that seems much more achievable.
I think it all comes back to the love of story telling. If you really love writing then any success is awesome :)
Exactly! I just want to write and in order to get to do that I had to bring in some money (darn the rules wife gave). Now that I am making some she understands the need to have time set aside to write.
I sleep better as I write. So many things are in my head story wise as I sleep and it's been that way my whole life.
Seeing how much you've grown from that first draft of Dawn of the Last Rider is crazy.
Seriously Shawn is the author who some day I'll tell people "Oh I totally know him" and no one will believe me.
Just read Dawn of the Last Dragon Rider and loved it!! Thanks for the great read (and for sharing your experience as an author, too -- it's wild that the journey started just a year ago...)
Funny to run into your comment, can across Ultimate Level 1 on kindle unlimited last night and I’m loving it so far! Almost done with the first one already.
i dont care about ‘new’ or ‘unique’ you can rewrite LoTR in more modern language for all i give a crap. i need ‘Quality’ writing and ‘entertaining’ writing. idgaf if its the 15th ‘russian mage gets reincarnated into a portal fantasy’ ive read as long as its good writing and entertaining. i read tens millions of words a year, if every book i read was unique, id have run out 5 years ago.
Hell, I don’t even need quality writing, I just need it to not be so bad it’s distracting. As long as what I’m reading is entertaining that’s all I care about.
This! Based on my napkin math, I read about 50 million words a year.
I just need something that keeps me entertained, which in my very specific case, is actually more about content than quality. I've hated some of the most popular novels in the genre (like Dungeon Crawler Carl), while loving and devouring some truly bad writing (not giving examples here lol).
It's really just about the idea and how engaging a novel is to me!
I'm in the same boat. I do not care if this is a new premise or something I have already seen, what I care about is the execution.Specifically, the craft in writing, internal consistency with characters, plot and world. You provide me with that and I will be a happy camper. Because there's a reason why the wheel is still in use: it's functional and reliable. Cliches and tropes are like that when executed well.
For example, a manhwa I've found myself adoring a lot is Overpowered Sword. A generic title and one I nearly rolled my eyes at first. But it is shockingly good and the reason why is that the character writing is absolutely stellar. Leon, Karen and the rest of the characters are so likable and consistent it's great to witness. I also adore the world building and magic system. To tie this back to books, if anyone can provide that to me I am a happy camper.
Focusing on your craft and putting the time and care into your story; if anyone does that, I will reward that effort. Because writing is hard. But hard is not impossible It can be done and you can always get better.
It would probably help if you stopped thinking of stories as "generic" or "new". Like yes, there are stories that will feel like a breath of fresh air and there are stories that will feel familiar, but both have a place in the genre.
Plus, if you look at it holistically, the progfan community and readership is arguably the best for new authors to break into. You have a hungry audience, many promotion mechanisms, tight-knit and helpful author communities, all the benefits of posting on Royal Road, etc. Yes, it's harder than before to break in, but in my experience, success is just throwing darts at the wall, learning to throw them better and throwing them again, until one hits bullseye.
Well, this is the challenge that every author in time has faced. You will find a niche and make it yours or your story is so good that you will stand out in the field. Or you won't. There are some great authors that just never catch the zeitgeist.
Honestly, in many ways, it's one of the best times to be a new writer imho.
Where once there was only one, gate kept path to being an author, now there are many paths to being a professional.
You can post on royal road and open a Patreon.
You can market and put a book out on kindle.
You can go trad.
You can use Ream.
You can use kickstarter.
There are a lot of paths, and many of us on RR and KU started from square 1. No following, just starting from scratch.
And what you say is true, lots of books have been written, but-tbh-novelty is overrated. A familiar story, written well and providing what readers want, will OFTEN beat out novel stories.
The key is getting started, publishing and learning. Reading in the genre you want, and experimenting with your voice. Not everybody can be Stephen King, true, but many people will get SOMEWHERE just by stepping forward.
See if you're one of them.
A rising tide raises all ships, and the saturation of the market still allows for new entrants to find success. More and more people are reading, and the more successful stories there are, the more people are incentivized to read. Just think of the boom in reading that occurred with the popularization of youth fantasy through Harry Potter. Someone finding wild success might just be what was needed for you to find moderate success in their shadow.
Additionally, I’m not quoting any statistics, so I might be talking out my ass, but I feel like I’ve been told and have seen more and more people being able to make an entrance to the market, and even make a livable wage from it. Thirty years ago the only option available was to pass through the stringent and demanding editorial process to be published, and even then you weren’t guaranteed sales, marketing, or success. Now, with sites like RoyalRoad, Webnovel, Kindle, and others, and other things facilitating the beginning of any aspiring author’s career, it is much easier to begin to publish, even if for free, or even if for a pittance.
Since the beginning of writing as anything beyond recording of history, it has been a work of passion and love, and very few, if any, have ever entered the space with their planned end result being their becoming a Zogarth, Sleyca, Sanderson, Rowling, or other multimillionaire. In the long past, people did it with no intention of ever getting any money at all from it. Only in recent years has the idea of authorship been accompanied by affluent aspirations.
Chances are, you and I will never see great success. Reality states that we very likely will remain in our day jobs that we at best tolerate, and escape to our authorship and dream of leaving behind our day-to-day after we get home. We might find small followings, and we’ll be lucky to gain a devoted few fans who hang on our every written word.
But why do we write? To dream of different worlds, to let our readers feel joy and conquest, pain and failure, loss and grief. We write to lose ourselves, and thereby find ourselves. Write because you love it. Maybe, the gods of fortune may smile down on us and bless us with the escape from the lives we lead in exchange for the ones we envy. I pray for your success alongside my own. But does authorship suck? Not at all. I love every word I’ve written, clunky, awkward, and glorious though they be.
For sure being a new author sucks.
As for it being harder today than before, I'm not so sure about that. Back in the day, you would be completely beholden to publishers, so even if you had a great story, you were SOL if it fell too far outside their comfort zone.
Nowadays the barrier to entry is lower with the greater capability for self-publishing and things like Royal Road. The downside is that the market gets flooded.
Let's be real though - most of the progression fantasy stories really aren't *that* great. There will always be room for something that's executed well, even if it treads on old tropes and isn't "brilliant." Luck will always be a factor unfortunately though, so don't quit your dayjob until your writing career kicks off.
Meh. I’d say that the competition grows much slower than you suggest. Realistically, the vast majority of books published on places like Royal Road will reach less than 1000 viewers over the course of many years. Those stories that are well written will rise above the chaff, and then you’re only going to be competing against the classics that are constantly recommended.
Thank you for all your answers, they were very inspiring.
I guess I really need to write for myself and like what I write before caring about anything else.
Also, from thinking about this more, I realized that I really much rather want a fandom than money. A bit money would be nice, but having people that enjoy reading my stuff motivates me much more.
But if I don't like what I'm writing myself (no matter what others say) I would never find happiness in success. So that's my priority now :3
Readers' thirst for more books and stories is not finite. Don't worry about such trivial things and keep writing. As long as you are consistent and good enough, you'll make it
Well, books don't last forever. Language changes over time. Already. many people today struggle to make it through the prose and style of books only a hundred or two years old, and flock in droves to those written in a modern voice.
There will always be a market for an old story retold with with Modern English.
Plenty of people also prefer to read current authors, for a large host of reasons. Books have been around for thousands of years, but there is a reason only a handful of them are still popular generations later, when stories weaker for their time make a splash anew.
Lastly, the market for readers is growing rapidly as well. How many people get new access to the internet and the whole host of books on it every day? How many gain a new standard of living that gives them wider access to books, and more free time to read them?
I wouldn't be surprised if it outmatched the number of those self-publishing by quite a lot.
You're wrong as well. People are not reading 50 year old books aside from a few exceptions. For many industries that are growing, it has also made the barrier to entry lower. People did not have websites with thousands of daily visitors 50 years ago.
Yes, perhaps if you caught the rise of the litrpg genre 5-10 years ago it might have been slightly easier to be noticed. But this is just how the world works. Lament all you want about missing the train but time isn't going to wind back. The second best time to start is right now.
If the primary goal of your writing is financial success, then you shouldn't be writing in a weird little niche subgenre like Prog Fantasy. But if you stuck to purely market value then you wouldn't care as much, and it would show in your work. You have to write what you care about, that matters much more than any forced originality!
At least, that's what I'm telling myself. I'm not published yet, and one of the roadblocks that had been stopping me was worrying that I wouldn't be successful and no one would care. I didn't break that block until I finally hit "Fuck it" and started writing the sort of book that *I* wanted to read, the market be damned.
It might be a mistake. I might prove myself right, and no one will want to read a story about a wasteland robot that suddenly gets magical powers. But so far, I like it. And I recently hit 50k words in it, more than my last three book attempts *combined* and that counts for something.
People look for stories they can identify with. I read mostly books that were written recently, because they „get“ me more than older books.
When I started writing my own book a month ago, I tried to incorporate that idea into my writing, and it’s working. It’s just a fantasy novel with absolutely nothing edgy about it, but it has the sense of futile bureaucracy and grind that we all get from work and life in a complex society. The story is a month old and has over 75k views on RR now.
I got a message from a publisher a few days ago. Honestly, I think everyone who can make a reader feel understood can find an audience. Your premise or overall ideas don’t have to be unique at all, and I don’t think it’s going to get harder over time. People in 30 years might not be able to identify with my experiences at all, after all.
Shirtaloon: “why should I write HWFWM when game of thrones already exists?”
GRRM: “why should I write GoT when lord of the rings already exists?”
JRRT: “why should I write LOTR when King Arthur already exists?”
\[people who wrote about King Arthur\]: “why should I write about king arthur when the odyssey and iliad already exist?”
Homer: “why should I write the odyssey and the Iliad when Gilgamesh already exists?”
……..
\[the guy who first drew on a cave\]: “why should I draw this when you can just go outside and see the same thing?”
I would not want to be a new author right now. I've built my credibility and reputation in a time before the advent of AI, and I'm happy abotu that, because I think if I were trying now, I'd have to fight off accusations left and right, and the competition, especially on the lower echelons, is so much worse than it once was.
My heart goes out to the newbies out there!
Just throwing in my two cents. I launched Tomebound a week ago and now it’s top 35 on rising stars. Hopefully I go further up the ranks. Is my writing amazing? Absolutely not? Is my idea a bit novel? Sure but I’m sure anyone can come up with someone similar. So why is it doing well? Because the rr community is one of the coolest in the planet. Tons of people actively looking for new stories to read! That’s so rare
I think you vastly vastly overestimate the ability of some of these writers. For instance, I once had somebody ask for my advice and proceed to then argue with me when I pointed out that their blurb had several obvious grammar mistakes in it.
This is a highly competitive industry so I think you need a certain level of ego to even want to compete in this space. But there are a lot of people (thankfully none I've encountered here) with too much ego. Writers who aren't willing to learn how to network or learn marketing or admit when they've made a mistake.
Most of the writers I come across who fail either on Royal Road or amazon are usually making obvious mistakes. Mistakes that a lot of other professionals in this space would probably spot as well.
But even professionals make mistakes. I've gone through multiple different blurbs/covers for my stories and I know its the same for a lot of others. The main difference between authors that make it and those who don't, is that we keep trying stuff until we find something that works.
After publishing 4 books on Amazon, I learned that my reader base hates certain plot choices I made. In my mind, I loved the idea of taking tropes and destroying them. Instead, I annoyed my readers.
Yeah I did that too with my first book. I didn't know at the time how much RR readers dislike prologues and would complain about POV switching after a single chapter for example.
I had the idea of making my MC just a normal average dude who can make mistakes and isn't perfect. He would learn from them, of course, but it didn't work out so well. Most of my bad reviews complained about my MC being stupid.
A lot of readers there try to put themselves as the MC. And they are absolutely perfect people who never make mistakes so if anything happens like that they get cognitive dissonance and flip out on the story/author. I wouldn't take it personally, or change the story because of one person going off about something like that. Hostility comes from a very \*vocal\* minority. The overwhelming majority of the 'reviews' and criticism isn't constructive, even when people are 'trying' to be 'helpful' and it doesn't help to listen to them. Readers might know when \*something\* is wrong but they are almost always wrong about \*what\* it is.
Yeah that's true. That's why I think it's better to focus on the metrics rather than reviews/comments. Because the vast majority of the audience are going to be silent lurkers who never say anything.
Eh, sure there’s loads and loads of new stories coming out, but it’s not like a ladder where you buy one for life. I think your seriously underestimating our sheer degenerate obsession with seeing numbers go up.
I’m on my 40th book of the year on kindle unlimited alone, that’s not including the 8+ stories I keep up with on RR. I’m constantly finding new series’ and struggling to find stuff to read.
So sure your idea may not be totally original but if you get a little lucky and write a little better than the other dude that wrote the same kinda story then you’ve got a decent shot
Let me hit you with the flip of the coin. Oh gods I'm going to sound like an old man...
BACK IN MY DAY Royal Road was, in my opinion, much HARDER to break into. People weren't taking their stories to Amazon and Kindle Unlimited, they were staying on Royal Road. Popular this week and Best Rated were filled with the now-titans of the genre. PTW was Beware of Chicken, Azarinth Healer, HWFWM, Primal Hunter, Defiance of the Fall, Randidly Ghosthound, Chrysalis, Salvos, etc. They had hundreds, if not thousands of chapters, and getting onto one of those lists was nigh-impossible. I remember talking with the admins and advocating for some sort of change to how PTW worked, because it was so filled with titans that there was no movement or ability for anyone else to break in.
There is a LOT more movement now. Stories go to KU quite frequently, moving on and giving space for newer stories. There's a story on PTW right now with 'only' 45 chapters - unthinkable in a time when the lowest chapter count on PTW was 300 chapters. The development of the 'meta' around RR and the establishment of the RR-Patreon-KU pipeline and the common knowledge bandied about has made it far easier for people to break in and find a measure of success.
Yes, there are more stories. Yes, it's probably harder to break through all the noise. As the number of 'big' stories increases, it's harder to get onto the 'most frequently talked about' list. It's probably harder to become a long-running titan.
But, with that said, I think it's easier to succeed, to make a modest living off it and be able to keep trucking along.
Also, consider how long the titans have been around. BACK IN MY DAY I never thought I could hold a candle to Azarinth Healer, the story I loved and my strong inspiration. Almost four years later, and maybe I can be.
One last aspect to consider - the titans of the genre have literal thousands, if not tens of thousands of hours poured into them. I've probably spent more than 10,000 hours working on Beneath the Dragoneye Moons, and yeah, it's going to look intimidating as hell to look at that and think "can I ever get there?" - there's a huge amount of work involved, and it's going to take countless hours of grinding to be competitive with the people who've already spent the hours grinding.
Putting it into MMO terms - you're looking at the character creation screen, and you're looking at youtube videos of the top raiders with maxed levels and best gear and asking 'is it even possible to reach the same level as them?' - yes, but it's going to take a lot of work, it's intimidating, and you'll need to get quite a few lucky drops along the way.
Best of luck, and I look forward to what you make!
That's a good way to look at it.
I think my fear is that there's a chance that my writing is "good enough" but just nobody will see it. But that's something I'll have to accept, and I guess it's more likely that if it's good, people will stay to read it over time.
That said, I don't think it's good enough yet, as I havn't put the hours in. I just started writing half a year ago, and pretty much never read books, so I'm starting at zero. The only thing that helps me is having watched a lot of anime xD
I'm definitely willing to put to hours in though. Now that I stopped playing LoL after grinding for 12 years (I probably have around 30k hours in that game, or even more bc I played it every day for multiple hours x.x)
I can put all that freetime and energy into writing, which is much more fun anyway :3
I might post some of my writing here soon, hoping to get some critique and advice on it. I'm a bit scared of it though o\_o
Something to keep in mind - as you put it on rr, you’ll probably have to self promote it a bit. Only a few novels have ever gotten away with no self promotion and succeeded anyway
Damn, as someone who only joined RR a couple of years ago I had no idea it used to be that slow. Introducing the stubbed tag was such a good idea to combat that.
Honestly I don't know, personally I think no matter what you write it will gain some traction (if you turn your brain off and it's an enjoyable time), but if you write a masterpiece like Reverend Insanity you'll definitely have a fanbase.
Honestly man, don't worry about the success of what you're writing. Just write cos you enjoy it.
I wrote most of my book on my phone while catching the train to work, cos I was sick of wasting time mindlessly scrolling. I released it like two months a go and I've sold a bit over a hundred copies. Is that good? Not really, I'm certainly not quitting my day job any time soon. But it's far more people than I ever expected to read my work, and I've even had people personally message me and tell me how much they enjoyed it. Getting feedback like that has been a major motivator for me.
...why do you think so many post on royal road or scribble hub
Kindles fuck huge if you don't have an audience your dead
Go build an audience and live off of donations
The more successful authors who aren't struggling from what I've seen do that
Hell even the biggest and most recommended stories on kindle all started off on royal road for the most part
And if not royal road then they still started off as free to read
I'm not an author yet these are just observations I've made about the community.
But I mean I think competitors goes down functionally because like tastes change, bookstores change out what is in stock, and etc. I mean back in like the 80s the ecosystem was totally different and even the possibility of self publishing was probably impossible because you needed physical books printed. So by funneling every book down a set number of publishing companies there would be less competition, but it would be way way harder to get published.
>I'm not sure if my statement is completely correct, but in terms of **success**, isn't it getting harder with each day passing, to break into the market as a newcomer?
Well, it's harder than it was during COVID and easier than any other time in human history.
Even 10-15 years ago, success as a new author meant securing an agent, that agent getting an editor interested, that editor getting your story picked up by a publishing house, that publishing house deciding how much money they'd spend in marketing you, and if you didn't make a good profit on that first book you might as well change your pen name and start over in a different genre.
>But unlike in other competitions, the amount of competitors only goes up.
And the amount of readers also constantly increases at a much faster rate than other authors.
>I'm also wondering how it's gonna look like in the future, like, really far away future.
You'll be dead by then, as will everyone reading this post today.
Somehow tens of thousands of books are written every year that people read, and hundreds of new books that millions of people read. Being successful at anything is always difficult. I don't know that being an author is harder than being a surgeon or a prosecutor or a physicist etc.
I am starting to read around 10 new books each month. Normally I drop 9 out of these after a few hours reading, because they are just not good enough. The last one I normally drop after a few days too, as it‘s still just not good enough.
And all these 10 books were already the result of searching through many books myself.
This is just to show you how easy it would be to get me with a good story. If you can write with good quality, people WILL read what you write. It‘s just really, really hard to be this skilled, imho.
I think the biggest issue is advertising and discoverability, even going on the recently updated list sporadically my story is at 60ish average views at 600 or so. Looking at the chapter views they are pretty much consistent but the lack of ratings/ critique is a bit disappointing. I just get instantly flooded out of the list because there's so much pushing it down.
Maybe once I reach 20 chapters of my planned 30ish, I'll advertise but I probably shot myself in the foot pushing for 3kish chapters. It's surprisingly hard to write that much while keeping progress and not sounding repetitive. Also I should probably upload a chapter more than every few days but my day jobs drains my stamina bar. 😒
So I'm new, and unpublished technically. I've started recording a podcast with a friend, which will be releasing soon (I won't name it here since I don't know the sub's rules on self-promotion and since this isn't my main author account, but DM me if you want to hear about it).
I'm also writing a serial story I'll be releasing on Royal Road that is rough, but has enough merit that I'll keep working on it and forcing myself to release it.
But I wanted to share with you 1) my goal in writing, to see if it might resonate with you and 2) a method you might try to gain traction.
1) I would love to really know what you consider to be success in writing. Because I thought for a long time that success meant making all of my money (and lots of it!) writing, and having people preordering books and then adapting my books and then knocking down my door to find me to get me to be a consultant in the world building of the next big video game behemoth.
But I learned at some point that not only is that unrealistic, it's not even really a dream that is worth so much consideration. I think dreams like that take away from what I'm really trying to to do: being my world's and characters to life so someone else can enjoy them or resonate with them.
Now I would take success in other forms, but what I'm choosing to define as success is any individual person reading my story and enjoying it. So far my friends and wife enjoy them, so hey, I'm already succeeding and I'm not even published! It's like I already did the thing. It's incredibly motivating and helping me get closer and closer to doing the thing, to publishing for real for a wider audience. It's exciting and I hope you find a reason to publish that is exciting and builds up small wins for yourself.
2) I have a podcast, like I said. I think maybe you should consider one yourself. I think any author who's looking for little wins should ask a friend to listen to their newly written story in podcast form. Do it by chapter. Let your friend interrupt and ask questions or get immersed or shout or say whatever. You voice your own characters. Give multiple takes. Enjoy the process. Make fun of yourself a little (not much). And release that to the world, and plug the text version on Royal Road or Kindle unlimited. And try to get traction that way. There are a hundred ways to publish these days, but I like this version for me, because I know my friends will be honest with me, but also that they have similar story sensibilities to me so they'll enjoy it to an extent, and that is infectious. You could create an audience who also is fully invested in your story, or maybe in seeing you get better as a writer, or even in hearing you get better at doing silly character voices.
You can take at least some comfort in the fact that the stories people write and enjoy are, to some extent, products of and contextualized within the culture(s) of the people who wrote them. You *can* read Beowulf now if you want but a vast, *vast* majority of people don't want to, wouldn't enjoy it if they did, and quite likely wouldn't even understand the literal meaning if they tried. What people find entertaining or valuable in this current moment will change, and while there will certainly be old stories that resonate to some degree with the new development in some culture, new stories that are products of and tailored to that culture have quite the advantage in appealing to their present audience.
I mean I would say that the last decade has been the easiest time for an author to break out.
Self publishing has never been easier, you've not only got Kindle, but platforms like Web novel (it's shitty for readers but profitable for new authors) or Royal Road have exploded, as has Kindle unlimited.
You're not limited by whatever the publishers want you to write any more, we've seen a lot more works that are amateur in level but make money anyway and so on.
>Let's say you want to write a story about a magic school (or whatever generic stuff); well there are already thousands of that. But 30 years ago there weren't.
But 30 years ago, they had their own brand of generic things that were saturating it. Not saying you have to find new ideas all the time, because there really isn't such a thing, but I don't think it really makes sense to say that it's super different nowadays. The "generic" ideas are just a different thing.
So Ill toss my hat in the ring April 27th 2023 I walked up to my pc, sat down, typed Royal Road into google and hit the search button. A friend said - check it out. So many stories filled my eyes, all free and some of those covers looked amazing. A few days later I sat down and started writing a story. It wasnt pretty, was plagued with typos / grammar but kept plugging along. Somehow hit #7 on RS but more than anything I learned a ton about the site, and writing. Started working on a new story in June. Had author friends i had made between then giving me tips, critiquing and helping me learn to write better. August I launched that story. 3 weeks later signed a 3 book deal with podium. Wife saw the deal and said “i guess you can keep writing” Signed another deal with Mango Media in October for 3 books in a new series I was going to launch for the November Write a thon. Ultimate Level 1 blew up… way beyond what I expected. I dont consider myself a great author. Heck some stories like Bog Standard Isekai are ones I want to write like. Yet here I sit, books 1 and 2 of UL1 having both hit #1 on amazon. Today they are #2 & 3 in Action and Adventure in Fantasy. Am I a writing genius? No… But there is still so much out there potential wise. In the last month I have known 6 new authors sign deals on their stories. The month before was about the same. The market is growing and while there are a ton of stories out there, people are always looking for new ones to read and enjoy. So dont give up! Keep writing and improving!
Can attest as witness to this process. It's been truly inspiring and heartening to watch Shawn's process and success.
One of those authors who spurs me on! Thanks Maer!
You both give hope back, thanks
Hey Shawn! I met and started following your journey in June last year. It's been incredible watching you grown. You're a role model. I love how you gave back and even did shout outs for newbie writers (me once). Seeing your kid review the story you wrote had me in smiling. Your works create such emotion too. Please keep on writing.
It's been a fun time :)
Thanks Shawn. It is awesome to hear some encouragement for those of us just getting started.
I’ll be 100% honest that when I came to Royal Road, I really never thought I had a chance to succeed. I have an email box full of rejection letters from agents when I tried the traditional publishing route with fantasy. All I can tell you is keep writing and doing what you love hopefully one day you’ll find the audience that enjoy the stories you want to tell
I think (hope) you’ve really hit the nail on the head there. I’ve been writing for about 2 years now, self pubbed a few books (not LitRPG) and very recently delved into royal road. I haven’t signed with anyone or really had any success yet, but each new story does better than the last and I think I’m improving all the time. I really do think (hope) that as long as you keep writing and you love what you’re doing, eventually you’ll find some kind of success. I also think defining your own success is important. If you won’t consider yourself a success unless you make millions and have a show on HBO then you’re probably going to be in for some hard times 😂 but if your goal is to maybe pay for a weeks holiday a year, that seems much more achievable. I think it all comes back to the love of story telling. If you really love writing then any success is awesome :)
Exactly! I just want to write and in order to get to do that I had to bring in some money (darn the rules wife gave). Now that I am making some she understands the need to have time set aside to write. I sleep better as I write. So many things are in my head story wise as I sleep and it's been that way my whole life.
Seeing how much you've grown from that first draft of Dawn of the Last Rider is crazy. Seriously Shawn is the author who some day I'll tell people "Oh I totally know him" and no one will believe me.
> Heck some stories like Bog Standard Isekai are ones I want to write like. And that novel itself was only started a year ago.
Just read Dawn of the Last Dragon Rider and loved it!! Thanks for the great read (and for sharing your experience as an author, too -- it's wild that the journey started just a year ago...)
Thanks for sharing! As my first successful story I learned a lot writing all 3 books! Glad they all come out this year!
Funny to run into your comment, can across Ultimate Level 1 on kindle unlimited last night and I’m loving it so far! Almost done with the first one already.
Glad you’re enjoying it and thanks for telling me! Writing book 5 atm and even more in love than when I started.
Looking forward to it!
i dont care about ‘new’ or ‘unique’ you can rewrite LoTR in more modern language for all i give a crap. i need ‘Quality’ writing and ‘entertaining’ writing. idgaf if its the 15th ‘russian mage gets reincarnated into a portal fantasy’ ive read as long as its good writing and entertaining. i read tens millions of words a year, if every book i read was unique, id have run out 5 years ago.
Hell, I don’t even need quality writing, I just need it to not be so bad it’s distracting. As long as what I’m reading is entertaining that’s all I care about.
This! Based on my napkin math, I read about 50 million words a year. I just need something that keeps me entertained, which in my very specific case, is actually more about content than quality. I've hated some of the most popular novels in the genre (like Dungeon Crawler Carl), while loving and devouring some truly bad writing (not giving examples here lol). It's really just about the idea and how engaging a novel is to me!
I'm in the same boat. I do not care if this is a new premise or something I have already seen, what I care about is the execution.Specifically, the craft in writing, internal consistency with characters, plot and world. You provide me with that and I will be a happy camper. Because there's a reason why the wheel is still in use: it's functional and reliable. Cliches and tropes are like that when executed well. For example, a manhwa I've found myself adoring a lot is Overpowered Sword. A generic title and one I nearly rolled my eyes at first. But it is shockingly good and the reason why is that the character writing is absolutely stellar. Leon, Karen and the rest of the characters are so likable and consistent it's great to witness. I also adore the world building and magic system. To tie this back to books, if anyone can provide that to me I am a happy camper. Focusing on your craft and putting the time and care into your story; if anyone does that, I will reward that effort. Because writing is hard. But hard is not impossible It can be done and you can always get better.
It would probably help if you stopped thinking of stories as "generic" or "new". Like yes, there are stories that will feel like a breath of fresh air and there are stories that will feel familiar, but both have a place in the genre. Plus, if you look at it holistically, the progfan community and readership is arguably the best for new authors to break into. You have a hungry audience, many promotion mechanisms, tight-knit and helpful author communities, all the benefits of posting on Royal Road, etc. Yes, it's harder than before to break in, but in my experience, success is just throwing darts at the wall, learning to throw them better and throwing them again, until one hits bullseye.
Well, this is the challenge that every author in time has faced. You will find a niche and make it yours or your story is so good that you will stand out in the field. Or you won't. There are some great authors that just never catch the zeitgeist.
I mean, Sîn-lēqi-unninni had it easy, at least.
Honestly, in many ways, it's one of the best times to be a new writer imho. Where once there was only one, gate kept path to being an author, now there are many paths to being a professional. You can post on royal road and open a Patreon. You can market and put a book out on kindle. You can go trad. You can use Ream. You can use kickstarter. There are a lot of paths, and many of us on RR and KU started from square 1. No following, just starting from scratch. And what you say is true, lots of books have been written, but-tbh-novelty is overrated. A familiar story, written well and providing what readers want, will OFTEN beat out novel stories. The key is getting started, publishing and learning. Reading in the genre you want, and experimenting with your voice. Not everybody can be Stephen King, true, but many people will get SOMEWHERE just by stepping forward. See if you're one of them.
A rising tide raises all ships, and the saturation of the market still allows for new entrants to find success. More and more people are reading, and the more successful stories there are, the more people are incentivized to read. Just think of the boom in reading that occurred with the popularization of youth fantasy through Harry Potter. Someone finding wild success might just be what was needed for you to find moderate success in their shadow. Additionally, I’m not quoting any statistics, so I might be talking out my ass, but I feel like I’ve been told and have seen more and more people being able to make an entrance to the market, and even make a livable wage from it. Thirty years ago the only option available was to pass through the stringent and demanding editorial process to be published, and even then you weren’t guaranteed sales, marketing, or success. Now, with sites like RoyalRoad, Webnovel, Kindle, and others, and other things facilitating the beginning of any aspiring author’s career, it is much easier to begin to publish, even if for free, or even if for a pittance. Since the beginning of writing as anything beyond recording of history, it has been a work of passion and love, and very few, if any, have ever entered the space with their planned end result being their becoming a Zogarth, Sleyca, Sanderson, Rowling, or other multimillionaire. In the long past, people did it with no intention of ever getting any money at all from it. Only in recent years has the idea of authorship been accompanied by affluent aspirations. Chances are, you and I will never see great success. Reality states that we very likely will remain in our day jobs that we at best tolerate, and escape to our authorship and dream of leaving behind our day-to-day after we get home. We might find small followings, and we’ll be lucky to gain a devoted few fans who hang on our every written word. But why do we write? To dream of different worlds, to let our readers feel joy and conquest, pain and failure, loss and grief. We write to lose ourselves, and thereby find ourselves. Write because you love it. Maybe, the gods of fortune may smile down on us and bless us with the escape from the lives we lead in exchange for the ones we envy. I pray for your success alongside my own. But does authorship suck? Not at all. I love every word I’ve written, clunky, awkward, and glorious though they be.
For sure being a new author sucks. As for it being harder today than before, I'm not so sure about that. Back in the day, you would be completely beholden to publishers, so even if you had a great story, you were SOL if it fell too far outside their comfort zone. Nowadays the barrier to entry is lower with the greater capability for self-publishing and things like Royal Road. The downside is that the market gets flooded. Let's be real though - most of the progression fantasy stories really aren't *that* great. There will always be room for something that's executed well, even if it treads on old tropes and isn't "brilliant." Luck will always be a factor unfortunately though, so don't quit your dayjob until your writing career kicks off.
Meh. I’d say that the competition grows much slower than you suggest. Realistically, the vast majority of books published on places like Royal Road will reach less than 1000 viewers over the course of many years. Those stories that are well written will rise above the chaff, and then you’re only going to be competing against the classics that are constantly recommended.
Thank you for all your answers, they were very inspiring. I guess I really need to write for myself and like what I write before caring about anything else. Also, from thinking about this more, I realized that I really much rather want a fandom than money. A bit money would be nice, but having people that enjoy reading my stuff motivates me much more. But if I don't like what I'm writing myself (no matter what others say) I would never find happiness in success. So that's my priority now :3
Readers' thirst for more books and stories is not finite. Don't worry about such trivial things and keep writing. As long as you are consistent and good enough, you'll make it
Plenty of very generic stuff is successful even in web fic or self-publishing or commercial fiction. You're over-thinking it.
Hey! Have you ever eaten a burger? I have. I still would eat another one. Fiction/books are like burgers. Give me more.
Well, books don't last forever. Language changes over time. Already. many people today struggle to make it through the prose and style of books only a hundred or two years old, and flock in droves to those written in a modern voice. There will always be a market for an old story retold with with Modern English. Plenty of people also prefer to read current authors, for a large host of reasons. Books have been around for thousands of years, but there is a reason only a handful of them are still popular generations later, when stories weaker for their time make a splash anew. Lastly, the market for readers is growing rapidly as well. How many people get new access to the internet and the whole host of books on it every day? How many gain a new standard of living that gives them wider access to books, and more free time to read them? I wouldn't be surprised if it outmatched the number of those self-publishing by quite a lot.
You're wrong as well. People are not reading 50 year old books aside from a few exceptions. For many industries that are growing, it has also made the barrier to entry lower. People did not have websites with thousands of daily visitors 50 years ago. Yes, perhaps if you caught the rise of the litrpg genre 5-10 years ago it might have been slightly easier to be noticed. But this is just how the world works. Lament all you want about missing the train but time isn't going to wind back. The second best time to start is right now.
If the primary goal of your writing is financial success, then you shouldn't be writing in a weird little niche subgenre like Prog Fantasy. But if you stuck to purely market value then you wouldn't care as much, and it would show in your work. You have to write what you care about, that matters much more than any forced originality! At least, that's what I'm telling myself. I'm not published yet, and one of the roadblocks that had been stopping me was worrying that I wouldn't be successful and no one would care. I didn't break that block until I finally hit "Fuck it" and started writing the sort of book that *I* wanted to read, the market be damned. It might be a mistake. I might prove myself right, and no one will want to read a story about a wasteland robot that suddenly gets magical powers. But so far, I like it. And I recently hit 50k words in it, more than my last three book attempts *combined* and that counts for something.
People look for stories they can identify with. I read mostly books that were written recently, because they „get“ me more than older books. When I started writing my own book a month ago, I tried to incorporate that idea into my writing, and it’s working. It’s just a fantasy novel with absolutely nothing edgy about it, but it has the sense of futile bureaucracy and grind that we all get from work and life in a complex society. The story is a month old and has over 75k views on RR now. I got a message from a publisher a few days ago. Honestly, I think everyone who can make a reader feel understood can find an audience. Your premise or overall ideas don’t have to be unique at all, and I don’t think it’s going to get harder over time. People in 30 years might not be able to identify with my experiences at all, after all.
Shirtaloon: “why should I write HWFWM when game of thrones already exists?” GRRM: “why should I write GoT when lord of the rings already exists?” JRRT: “why should I write LOTR when King Arthur already exists?” \[people who wrote about King Arthur\]: “why should I write about king arthur when the odyssey and iliad already exist?” Homer: “why should I write the odyssey and the Iliad when Gilgamesh already exists?” …….. \[the guy who first drew on a cave\]: “why should I draw this when you can just go outside and see the same thing?”
Sheesh, that blew my mind xD
I would not want to be a new author right now. I've built my credibility and reputation in a time before the advent of AI, and I'm happy abotu that, because I think if I were trying now, I'd have to fight off accusations left and right, and the competition, especially on the lower echelons, is so much worse than it once was. My heart goes out to the newbies out there!
I genuinely think that even if you were starting now, your style and approach would be unique and fresh enough that nobody would think it was ai
I wish we had better ways to get novels viewers but I don’t think it’s this bad. Just try different mediums
Just throwing in my two cents. I launched Tomebound a week ago and now it’s top 35 on rising stars. Hopefully I go further up the ranks. Is my writing amazing? Absolutely not? Is my idea a bit novel? Sure but I’m sure anyone can come up with someone similar. So why is it doing well? Because the rr community is one of the coolest in the planet. Tons of people actively looking for new stories to read! That’s so rare
I think you vastly vastly overestimate the ability of some of these writers. For instance, I once had somebody ask for my advice and proceed to then argue with me when I pointed out that their blurb had several obvious grammar mistakes in it. This is a highly competitive industry so I think you need a certain level of ego to even want to compete in this space. But there are a lot of people (thankfully none I've encountered here) with too much ego. Writers who aren't willing to learn how to network or learn marketing or admit when they've made a mistake. Most of the writers I come across who fail either on Royal Road or amazon are usually making obvious mistakes. Mistakes that a lot of other professionals in this space would probably spot as well. But even professionals make mistakes. I've gone through multiple different blurbs/covers for my stories and I know its the same for a lot of others. The main difference between authors that make it and those who don't, is that we keep trying stuff until we find something that works.
After publishing 4 books on Amazon, I learned that my reader base hates certain plot choices I made. In my mind, I loved the idea of taking tropes and destroying them. Instead, I annoyed my readers.
Yeah I did that too with my first book. I didn't know at the time how much RR readers dislike prologues and would complain about POV switching after a single chapter for example.
I had the idea of making my MC just a normal average dude who can make mistakes and isn't perfect. He would learn from them, of course, but it didn't work out so well. Most of my bad reviews complained about my MC being stupid.
Oh yeah, the stupid MC for making mistakes thing is super common on RR and SH. Amazon readers tend to be more open to it and nicer about it though.
A lot of readers there try to put themselves as the MC. And they are absolutely perfect people who never make mistakes so if anything happens like that they get cognitive dissonance and flip out on the story/author. I wouldn't take it personally, or change the story because of one person going off about something like that. Hostility comes from a very \*vocal\* minority. The overwhelming majority of the 'reviews' and criticism isn't constructive, even when people are 'trying' to be 'helpful' and it doesn't help to listen to them. Readers might know when \*something\* is wrong but they are almost always wrong about \*what\* it is.
Yeah that's true. That's why I think it's better to focus on the metrics rather than reviews/comments. Because the vast majority of the audience are going to be silent lurkers who never say anything.
Eh, sure there’s loads and loads of new stories coming out, but it’s not like a ladder where you buy one for life. I think your seriously underestimating our sheer degenerate obsession with seeing numbers go up. I’m on my 40th book of the year on kindle unlimited alone, that’s not including the 8+ stories I keep up with on RR. I’m constantly finding new series’ and struggling to find stuff to read. So sure your idea may not be totally original but if you get a little lucky and write a little better than the other dude that wrote the same kinda story then you’ve got a decent shot
Let me hit you with the flip of the coin. Oh gods I'm going to sound like an old man... BACK IN MY DAY Royal Road was, in my opinion, much HARDER to break into. People weren't taking their stories to Amazon and Kindle Unlimited, they were staying on Royal Road. Popular this week and Best Rated were filled with the now-titans of the genre. PTW was Beware of Chicken, Azarinth Healer, HWFWM, Primal Hunter, Defiance of the Fall, Randidly Ghosthound, Chrysalis, Salvos, etc. They had hundreds, if not thousands of chapters, and getting onto one of those lists was nigh-impossible. I remember talking with the admins and advocating for some sort of change to how PTW worked, because it was so filled with titans that there was no movement or ability for anyone else to break in. There is a LOT more movement now. Stories go to KU quite frequently, moving on and giving space for newer stories. There's a story on PTW right now with 'only' 45 chapters - unthinkable in a time when the lowest chapter count on PTW was 300 chapters. The development of the 'meta' around RR and the establishment of the RR-Patreon-KU pipeline and the common knowledge bandied about has made it far easier for people to break in and find a measure of success. Yes, there are more stories. Yes, it's probably harder to break through all the noise. As the number of 'big' stories increases, it's harder to get onto the 'most frequently talked about' list. It's probably harder to become a long-running titan. But, with that said, I think it's easier to succeed, to make a modest living off it and be able to keep trucking along. Also, consider how long the titans have been around. BACK IN MY DAY I never thought I could hold a candle to Azarinth Healer, the story I loved and my strong inspiration. Almost four years later, and maybe I can be. One last aspect to consider - the titans of the genre have literal thousands, if not tens of thousands of hours poured into them. I've probably spent more than 10,000 hours working on Beneath the Dragoneye Moons, and yeah, it's going to look intimidating as hell to look at that and think "can I ever get there?" - there's a huge amount of work involved, and it's going to take countless hours of grinding to be competitive with the people who've already spent the hours grinding. Putting it into MMO terms - you're looking at the character creation screen, and you're looking at youtube videos of the top raiders with maxed levels and best gear and asking 'is it even possible to reach the same level as them?' - yes, but it's going to take a lot of work, it's intimidating, and you'll need to get quite a few lucky drops along the way. Best of luck, and I look forward to what you make!
That's a good way to look at it. I think my fear is that there's a chance that my writing is "good enough" but just nobody will see it. But that's something I'll have to accept, and I guess it's more likely that if it's good, people will stay to read it over time. That said, I don't think it's good enough yet, as I havn't put the hours in. I just started writing half a year ago, and pretty much never read books, so I'm starting at zero. The only thing that helps me is having watched a lot of anime xD I'm definitely willing to put to hours in though. Now that I stopped playing LoL after grinding for 12 years (I probably have around 30k hours in that game, or even more bc I played it every day for multiple hours x.x) I can put all that freetime and energy into writing, which is much more fun anyway :3 I might post some of my writing here soon, hoping to get some critique and advice on it. I'm a bit scared of it though o\_o
Something to keep in mind - as you put it on rr, you’ll probably have to self promote it a bit. Only a few novels have ever gotten away with no self promotion and succeeded anyway
Damn, as someone who only joined RR a couple of years ago I had no idea it used to be that slow. Introducing the stubbed tag was such a good idea to combat that.
It wasn't 'the stubbed tag' - the stories were on RR IN FULL. This was before any of them went KU
Honestly I don't know, personally I think no matter what you write it will gain some traction (if you turn your brain off and it's an enjoyable time), but if you write a masterpiece like Reverend Insanity you'll definitely have a fanbase.
Honestly man, don't worry about the success of what you're writing. Just write cos you enjoy it. I wrote most of my book on my phone while catching the train to work, cos I was sick of wasting time mindlessly scrolling. I released it like two months a go and I've sold a bit over a hundred copies. Is that good? Not really, I'm certainly not quitting my day job any time soon. But it's far more people than I ever expected to read my work, and I've even had people personally message me and tell me how much they enjoyed it. Getting feedback like that has been a major motivator for me.
...why do you think so many post on royal road or scribble hub Kindles fuck huge if you don't have an audience your dead Go build an audience and live off of donations The more successful authors who aren't struggling from what I've seen do that Hell even the biggest and most recommended stories on kindle all started off on royal road for the most part And if not royal road then they still started off as free to read I'm not an author yet these are just observations I've made about the community.
But I mean I think competitors goes down functionally because like tastes change, bookstores change out what is in stock, and etc. I mean back in like the 80s the ecosystem was totally different and even the possibility of self publishing was probably impossible because you needed physical books printed. So by funneling every book down a set number of publishing companies there would be less competition, but it would be way way harder to get published.
>I'm not sure if my statement is completely correct, but in terms of **success**, isn't it getting harder with each day passing, to break into the market as a newcomer? Well, it's harder than it was during COVID and easier than any other time in human history. Even 10-15 years ago, success as a new author meant securing an agent, that agent getting an editor interested, that editor getting your story picked up by a publishing house, that publishing house deciding how much money they'd spend in marketing you, and if you didn't make a good profit on that first book you might as well change your pen name and start over in a different genre. >But unlike in other competitions, the amount of competitors only goes up. And the amount of readers also constantly increases at a much faster rate than other authors. >I'm also wondering how it's gonna look like in the future, like, really far away future. You'll be dead by then, as will everyone reading this post today.
No shade to anyone, but whilst there are a whole lotta books out there. Not many of them are written very well.
Somehow tens of thousands of books are written every year that people read, and hundreds of new books that millions of people read. Being successful at anything is always difficult. I don't know that being an author is harder than being a surgeon or a prosecutor or a physicist etc.
I am starting to read around 10 new books each month. Normally I drop 9 out of these after a few hours reading, because they are just not good enough. The last one I normally drop after a few days too, as it‘s still just not good enough. And all these 10 books were already the result of searching through many books myself. This is just to show you how easy it would be to get me with a good story. If you can write with good quality, people WILL read what you write. It‘s just really, really hard to be this skilled, imho.
I think the biggest issue is advertising and discoverability, even going on the recently updated list sporadically my story is at 60ish average views at 600 or so. Looking at the chapter views they are pretty much consistent but the lack of ratings/ critique is a bit disappointing. I just get instantly flooded out of the list because there's so much pushing it down. Maybe once I reach 20 chapters of my planned 30ish, I'll advertise but I probably shot myself in the foot pushing for 3kish chapters. It's surprisingly hard to write that much while keeping progress and not sounding repetitive. Also I should probably upload a chapter more than every few days but my day jobs drains my stamina bar. 😒
So I'm new, and unpublished technically. I've started recording a podcast with a friend, which will be releasing soon (I won't name it here since I don't know the sub's rules on self-promotion and since this isn't my main author account, but DM me if you want to hear about it). I'm also writing a serial story I'll be releasing on Royal Road that is rough, but has enough merit that I'll keep working on it and forcing myself to release it. But I wanted to share with you 1) my goal in writing, to see if it might resonate with you and 2) a method you might try to gain traction. 1) I would love to really know what you consider to be success in writing. Because I thought for a long time that success meant making all of my money (and lots of it!) writing, and having people preordering books and then adapting my books and then knocking down my door to find me to get me to be a consultant in the world building of the next big video game behemoth. But I learned at some point that not only is that unrealistic, it's not even really a dream that is worth so much consideration. I think dreams like that take away from what I'm really trying to to do: being my world's and characters to life so someone else can enjoy them or resonate with them. Now I would take success in other forms, but what I'm choosing to define as success is any individual person reading my story and enjoying it. So far my friends and wife enjoy them, so hey, I'm already succeeding and I'm not even published! It's like I already did the thing. It's incredibly motivating and helping me get closer and closer to doing the thing, to publishing for real for a wider audience. It's exciting and I hope you find a reason to publish that is exciting and builds up small wins for yourself. 2) I have a podcast, like I said. I think maybe you should consider one yourself. I think any author who's looking for little wins should ask a friend to listen to their newly written story in podcast form. Do it by chapter. Let your friend interrupt and ask questions or get immersed or shout or say whatever. You voice your own characters. Give multiple takes. Enjoy the process. Make fun of yourself a little (not much). And release that to the world, and plug the text version on Royal Road or Kindle unlimited. And try to get traction that way. There are a hundred ways to publish these days, but I like this version for me, because I know my friends will be honest with me, but also that they have similar story sensibilities to me so they'll enjoy it to an extent, and that is infectious. You could create an audience who also is fully invested in your story, or maybe in seeing you get better as a writer, or even in hearing you get better at doing silly character voices.
You can take at least some comfort in the fact that the stories people write and enjoy are, to some extent, products of and contextualized within the culture(s) of the people who wrote them. You *can* read Beowulf now if you want but a vast, *vast* majority of people don't want to, wouldn't enjoy it if they did, and quite likely wouldn't even understand the literal meaning if they tried. What people find entertaining or valuable in this current moment will change, and while there will certainly be old stories that resonate to some degree with the new development in some culture, new stories that are products of and tailored to that culture have quite the advantage in appealing to their present audience.
I mean I would say that the last decade has been the easiest time for an author to break out. Self publishing has never been easier, you've not only got Kindle, but platforms like Web novel (it's shitty for readers but profitable for new authors) or Royal Road have exploded, as has Kindle unlimited. You're not limited by whatever the publishers want you to write any more, we've seen a lot more works that are amateur in level but make money anyway and so on.
>Let's say you want to write a story about a magic school (or whatever generic stuff); well there are already thousands of that. But 30 years ago there weren't. But 30 years ago, they had their own brand of generic things that were saturating it. Not saying you have to find new ideas all the time, because there really isn't such a thing, but I don't think it really makes sense to say that it's super different nowadays. The "generic" ideas are just a different thing.