Author Corner: 6-05-2022 (Patreon)

So, this week started terrible and then got a lot worse.

First, I realized the cold I got last week was actually Covid. Then it was 90+ degrees out (I am American. I just use meters in my story because I studied physics.) so I was trapped in my new apartment by myself for days.

Then, Wednesday night, RoyalRoad decided to permanently ban me and I couldn't sleep until about 6 am, only getting about an hour and a half of total sleep that night, and Thursday was spent alternately panicking and trying to figure out what I could do before finally realizing I couldn't do anything.

Friday at least was quite a bit of fun though, as I spent it writing the last two chapters which I just published here, figuring out how someone with access to RoyalRoad's code could fix the massive ratings fraud problem they have, and finally getting a bank account for my business as a writer. I also got to hang out with my sister and that was really nice.

So, what happened with RoyalRoad

The short version is that I saw many people having the type of success I desired doing something morally questionable but technically not against any stated rules. Then I did the same, only in a way deliberately designed for RoyalRoad to easily see what I was doing so if they cared they could rectify the situation. Then RoyalRoad caught me, because I deliberately made it easy for them to do so, and banned me for life without any warning or ever actually telling anyone it was something that shouldn't be done.

Now, the long version.

First, a little background about me. I was a software developer at Microsoft until November last year when I quit my job and decided to pursue my dream of being a full time writer. I've dealt with rating systems before and I've worked on fraud prevention, not of the exact type which has become so common on RoyalRoad, but enough that it is pretty easy for me to surmise how the site's backend code operates, and definitely enough I could trick their backend code if I wanted to so they could never prove I was doing it.

As a reader on RoyalRoad, I could already see the signs of RoyalRoad's ranking and recommendation system being abused. It's the same thing that happens to any site with such systems where actual money is involved. Think Amazon or Yelp, where those types of systems are manipulated all the time.

Then, when I started being an author on the site, I realized the problem was worse than I thought. Within an hour of posting my first chapter, I received my first rating, a half star from some troll. And things didn't get much better from there. RoyalRoad's systems don't reward consistent posting in any way, and instead reward a large influx of readers to a story, whether they be real or fake.

So, after a couple weeks of no one even looking at the first chapter of my story, I realized I had a choice to make if I wanted to pursue being a professional. I could do nothing, like I later did when I started posting to ScribbleHub as well, and have my story get so few views I would have virtually no patreon conversions and no way to make a living. Or I could use my knowledge of software development to fake ratings and reviews in such a way it would be automated and no effort and that RoyalRoad would never be able to confirm it was me.

Instead, however, I chose a third option, a really bad one in retrospect. I manually faked ratings and a few reviews on my own story using fake accounts with the computer I posted actual chapters from, using my home IP address and variations on the exact same email to make it even more obvious. And then I did this an average of about three or four times a day, adding up to somewhere between 500 and 600 fake accounts by the time I posted my 128th chapter.

This was then good enough to put me around 80th in the rankings on the site, not because of bad ratings by actual users, but mostly from the bot someone seems to have created which gives a half star rating to anyone who climbs above 50th.

I did this all manually because I didn't like it and I didn't want it to be easy. There was nothing on the site which said doing this was against any rules and there was nothing which said there would be any punishment, so I assumed RoyalRoad just didn't care. Due to their advertising model, they'd make the same amount of money regardless of any ratings manipulation, but I wanted them to be able to change their mind, so I made it simple to spot what I was doing and straightforward for RoyalRoad to clean up if they ever changed their mind and wanted to clean up the site.

Making it so easy to spot, however, seems to have very much backfired on me as RoyalRoad's stance has been something that, to this day, I just can't wrap my mind around.

On Wednesday night of this last week they banned me, permanently, and hid the fact they did so, not making it obvious to any of my 2,000+ real followers at all. They didn't use it as a way of scaring the monkeys by killing the chicken, and they continue to earn money on the 10,000+ views my story has received on their site since they banned me.

Now, RoyalRoad is a private company. They can do whatever they want (Though I think I can make them take down the story, as they would have it up illegally if and when I ask them to remove it). But I just for the life of me can't figure out why they would do this.

By banning me silently, they are not fixing their fraud problem at all, and by banning me permanently, they are leaving me no choice but to move to another site and explain in a public forum how oddly they are handling the situation. My story was also getting good readership, with over 600,000 views that were not from me, and 20% of the people who started the story reading to the last chapter, so it's not like I was boosting a story which would lower the quality of the site.

I can understand punishing me. From their perspective they caught someone doing something they decided they don't want--even if they never communicated it--but they are doing it in such a way that hurts themselves and hurts their readers as well when they have quite a few other options.

More than anything these last few days, my defining emotion hasn't been sadness or anger, but confusion.

Where do I go from here?

Well, I was on the path to potentially make minimum wage this month, but my guess is that won't happen anymore. And with my main source of getting new patrons cut off, it's unlikely to happen this year. So, I probably need to get a job again, as I can't keep dipping into my savings.

If that is what happens, I will continue posting new chapters of Shadow of the Soul King here, as this story is too much fun for me to write to just stop, but I won't be able to put as much time into it, so there would be less chapters per week.

On the bright side, this thing with RoyalRoad got me thinking about all the ways I could fix their ratings system if I had access to their code, and that's gotten me kind of excited about computer science again, which is at least nice if I have to go back to it.

I might also build my own website, as I've never actually done that end to end before, so it might be quite fun.

Whatever the case, though, I will not be writing this next week. My family and I are all going on a vacation tomorrow until next Saturday, and we would have gone yesterday had it not been for us all getting Covid. My original plan had been to work during the vacation, as keeping a consistent schedule was the only way to keep getting new patrons and potentially actually make a living, but that seems to be impossible now and, after this last week, I need a break.

All my current patrons have already paid for this month, however, and I don't feel comfortable letting your money not earn what you expected, so, while there will be no new chapters of Shadow of the Soul King next weekend, I'll give you something better instead.

My original goal with posting a webnovel was to be able to say to publishing agents that I was a full time writer when I tried to sell the novel I finished last year, and that again seems like it won't happen. So, starting tonight, I'll let all my Insane Crafter patrons and above read the entirety of my completed novel, Legacy of the Archsage.

Just don't get to the one third mark late at night. One of my beta readers ended up staying up till 3 am on a work night because he couldn't put the story down.

Final thoughts

Thank you everyone for your support. And if anyone has any ideas on how I might be able to maintain my status as a full time writer without continuing to bleed my savings dry, I would love any and all input.

Thirteen Life Legion