Welcome to the start of my Novel Failure Notes. This series is on my novel sharing experiences. It captures my failures. Why? Because my failures could give insights toward your success. Why experience it when someone else has? You may be able to avoid traps or see how your experience can be better.
The book for discussion is my recently to be completed Only Fools Pray for Mercy in the Underworld that was posted on Scribble Hub. It’s completed, but I’ve yet to release the final chapters.
Now, before I get into the dissection of this epic failure. A bit about me.
Who Am I?
I’m an author who has been around the web novel scene since 2006. You may go, “has web novels been around for that long?” And I will say yes. Although, before that, they used to be live journals and similar types of sites. It wasn’t long that journals became fiction blogs, especially when WordPress and Blogger released their editing tools. Now, that my tenure is out of the way, and I was reminded of how ancient I am...
What are my qualifications?
None. Well, if you consider Wattpad Ambassador and a writing mod on a discontinued discord server a qualification, then I guess.
The truth is that I’m so undiscovered that my claim to fame is existing on many writing site cache servers. However, like the persistent onion weed that I am, I managed to nab my own Google Search thing> Me Thing.
It pays to be the first persistent Veronica Purcell on the World Wide Web. And also be a regular target for shady spambots and scrappers feeding alligator, er, aggregator sites. They keep my author brand rooted and well-oiled in the search engine.
On to the EPIC FAILURE!
I wrote a BL story about a former human, turned devil cannon fodder after they had died, who has an intimate relationship with an angel lord. For those not aware of what BL is, check out my article on the subject. So, the story is a supernatural theme where the protagonist has to complete a wacked task, so he can live a happy, lovey-dovey, free eternity with his angel lover. However, doing the task will incite a cosmic war.
Does this sound interesting?
From my experience, posting this story on regular updates to Scribble Hub. No. SH readers don’t want this kind of stuff. Let’s sum up what potentially has gone wrong with this story’s success there.
Novel Failure Breakdown
Cover — boring couple that doesn’t give the vibe of supernatural action. For SH Readers, this type of cover isn’t what they expect or go for. Popular SH covers tend to be anime-based to grab the fast-paced, low attention span audience. This cover screams mature, slow, and serious, which is the pace and tone of this story.
Audience Target Mature — The story has graphic sex in some chapters. And as the couple is gay men, not many readers feel comfortable reading these kinds of scenes. BL genre, in general, at that site is the lesser read compared to all others. So, the target audience is few, and discovery chances are competitive.
Chapter Word Count — For Scribble Hub readers, I’ve noticed that the best word count per chapter is 500–900 words. The reason is technology. There is no specific reading application for this site, so if you’re reading on your phone it would be through a mobile browser. And that can be painful, but SH does make the experience on Chrome a lot easier with some reading features. However, the shorter word counts work better with their mobile version. Most readers will be phone users.
My average words per chapter weren’t too bad. Around 1001 words, but some chapters ran on to 2000 words. I was aware this wasn’t ideal, but the flow of some chapters would have been prematurely broken if they were split into two. I pretty much couldn’t half an in-flight action scene. It would’ve been like doing the splits in midair and having to literally split you down the middle to be two parts. So, it was a risk I undertook.
How do I know this is a failure?
Aside from the wonderful charity-like. I do say charity because there were no other interactions to confirm the reader was doing more than passing through. It’s likely they read the chapter and did like it. But the story wasn’t compelling enough for them to continue it. Or there wasn’t enough content at the time for them.
The aspects that told me this story didn’t hit a mark at the end.
Views per Chapter
The site calculated each chapter had an average of 27 views. It looks impressive enough, but when I considered the total views against chapters, the view per chapter was approximately 67 views. So if the average is 27, I sort of worked out (with my wonky math mind. I need to note that I’m not a mathematician) that at any given time of the view total, each chapter had on average 1.5 readers scroll through it. It’s likely that 1.5 readers were me due to proof checking on different devices at one time.
I need to add that 7 readers did add this story to their list, but visibly didn’t progress past chapter 1. And one of those readers was me. I had added and removed myself due to error. So, that could be another reason too. If the read counter hasn’t gone up, it’s likely this book was unread and also removed from the reader’s library.
No verbatim or book interactivity
The biggest measurement for a story's success is reader interaction. If there are none, the story was:
- — Undiscovered throughout its active lifecycle.
- — Discovered but not interesting to readers.
People can argue that there are silent readers who enjoy a story but don’t comment or hit the like button. My truth of the scenario that I’ve experienced is if a story doesn’t move a reader, they won’t talk about it or show their support in some way.
Silent readership = meh or spambot.What to take away from this experience?
Questions for next time, and maybe for another chance at success for this story.
- 🤔 Is the story suited to the audience for the genre at the novel sharing site?
- 🤔 If yes, what is the book package expectations (cover, blurb, metadata)?
- 🤔 Do I need to pimp my writer’s soul in the forums to get noticed?
- 🤔 If yes, how can I not pimp my writer’s soul in the forums by relying on the site’s discovery system?
- 🤔 If it’s not suited for novel sites, should I query this story to be traditionally published? Note that the story would need to be written offline and never shared online.
Taking a knocking, keep on rocking!
Every epic failure is another learning opportunity to see how the next experience can be better and, hopefully, be the success story.
Awesome you. ⭐ If you read through this article, thank you. Keep writing! Hopefully, your story can be a success. Please follow me for more Novel Failure Notes.