Ideas

The top ideas submitted by the users for the website
Aiden Marquis Aiden Marquis ago

Making it Easier to Find More Stories

Many writers have expressed frustration that the amount of time that their story lasts on "Latest Updates" is so short. I have some suggestions that could make it easier to find more stories for readers and increase discoverability for authors without sacrificing what is working well. 1. Adding a "Latest Updates" by Genre/Tag Many writers have expressed frustration that the amount of time that their story lasts on "Latest Updates" is so short. What if we also added a "Latest Updates" by genre/tag? It's not just about finding the most popular stories or the ones that updated within the last few minutes. Readers want options. And writers want discoverability. But it would have to incorporate all of the genres and tags, not like Genre Rising Stars, where some of them are hidden. Speaking of which... 2. Making All of the Genres/Tags Available for Genre Rising Stars Other than "Newest Fictions" and "Latest Updates", Genre Rising Stars is the next place writers hope to show up. Let's face it, most will not reach Rising Stars. But Genre Rising Stars is relatively accessible. Readers who love certain genres likewise use this to search for books. But some of the genres/tags are hidden. You have to take the URL, remove said genre, and add the genre or tag that you are looking for - and you have to know to put an underscore where some spaces are! Many readers aren't going through all that - or don't even know they can. In my opinion, we should be doing what we can to increase the ability of readers to find stories, not make it more difficult. Another solution to this would be to enable more results for searches. 3. Enabling More Results for Searches On Amazon, if you want Epic Fantasy, you click on it and boom: you have all of them. You may get 50 or 100 results, but then you click to load more. Prolific readers who love a certain genre can keep looking for gems. Writers who are newer and have had a little success but not enough to make Rising Stars due to not writing in the popular genres can now be found. I feel like this just makes so much sense and it would be an easy tweak. The fact that "Epic Fantasy" is the biggest category of fantasy on Amazon but doesn't even have a tag on plotgenre.com is a topic for another day... 4. A Tag Limit Some of these suggestions would work best if writers had a limit on tags, like they do with genres (where it is 4). With tags, perhaps it could be 5. The point would be to pick the tags that best describe the story. Even under the current system, this would allow for new stories to be discovered via Genre Rising Stars. The fact is that many writers spam their tags (and who can blame them) to increase discoverability. But this method actually hurts discoverability because now all of the same books are on all of the same Genre Rising Stars. I am slightly exaggerating but you get my point. If authors had to select their most pertinent tags, it would make it possible for other stories to make some of these lists without a few stories hogging all of the spots. TL;DR: By making all of the tags visible for Genre Rising Stars, adding a "Latest Updates" by genre/tags, allowing for more results for searches, and placing a limit for how many tags an author can select for their books, plotgenre.com would allow vastly more options for readers and facilitate discoverability for writers.
Open Fictions
kanadaj kanadaj Official response ago
1. There is already a latest updates by genre: https://www.royalroad.com/fictions/latest-updates?genre=fantasy The dropdown for it is at the very top. If you change the URL it also works for tags, but we found it too much to add to a dropdown. 2. You can set global tag filters for your account: https://www.royalroad.com/account/options it's at the very bottom, and we're working on making the existence of the feature more visible. This also affects Rising Stars along with all other lists, with the exception of Recommended For You (still working on that one, it's a bit more work to implement and we are working on too many things atm) 3. Yeah we should probably add an Epic Fantasy tag 4. Tags are not limited because some fictions can make do with 3, others need over 10. We have 49 tags on the website and may add more over time.
Zek Zek ago

Introduce a way for authors to give announcements too their readers without them making a chapter that could mess up bookmark progress if you just want to read the announcement without being up to date with the book.

Basically introduce a type of chapter (or a separate place) where authors can make announcements about their book, many authors do this currently by making a chapter called announcement/important and generally it pertains to the future of the book (something like “don’t worry if I don’t post I’m not dropping but I’ll be out of state for a few days” etc.)  currently unless the placeholder is made to also detect jumps of more than one chapter forward this can screw up where you are in a book if you just want to find out what’s up on a book that you haven’t been keeping up to date on. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve clicked on a announcement chapter from the bookmarks tab on a book I’m not caught up on only to never go back because I can’t find my place.

Open General
Velonea Velonea ago

More stats on ads

At the moment the stats we get on ads are ridiculously sparse. There’s no way to optimize anything if we know just a flat CTR. The most important stat to know would be Read Through Rate. If a person clicks on an ad, how likely it is they: - bounce immediately off the page/chapter - click to read the first chapter/to the next chapter - follow - favorite One ad might have 3.4 % CTR but convert only 14 % of clickers to readers. Another ad might have 0.9 % CTR but convert 70 % of clickers to readers. Which one is better? At the moment, there’s no way to know. Or even know which ad is which.
Completed Premium
kanadaj kanadaj Official response ago
There we go, it's a thing now for follows and favorites. We can't really measure bounce rate and reading the next chapter because that requires an insane amount of data churning and system memory usage.
augustdotart augustdotart ago

Allow authors to hide ratings until they reach at least 5 ratings or reviews.

Right now readers can leave a 1 star or any low rating after a single chapter. This can easily kill a story before the story gets started and is given a fair shot. Additionally, the average stars is shown on top of latest releases which new readers often click into from the latest updates section of the front page. They see this low rating without knowing its only from 1 reader and assume the worst, leaving the story to find a higher rated one. By letting authors hide ratings until they reach 5, you allow the story to grow past a few chapters and attract new readers.
Open Fictions
o0shad0o o0shad0o ago

remove stubs from best rated list

Putting stubbed fictions in the best rated list just winds up as advertising for KU, and if the reader doesn't have it and doesn't notice before they start, the fictionus interruptus is rather unpleasant.
Open General
Pandaviking Pandaviking ago

splittind the "dungeon" tag into "dungeon crawler" and "dungeon core".

currently the "dungeon" tag lumps both stories where the protgonist/s are adventurers diving into one or several dungeons, and dungeon core / dungeon master novels where the protagonist is responsible for creating and/or improving/managing the dungeon. both genres are good, but when you are looking for one type of story and the list is filled with the combined mass of both genres it gets a bit frustrating.
Open General
ArcanePigeon ArcanePigeon ago

Shadow ban a user from rating if more than a certain percent of their ratings are 0.5 stars

prevent trolls who rate things 0.5 stars without reading a fiction at all by hiding their ratings and reviews from everyone but them. they get to think they are causing harm without actually doing it. Easy to detect as I have seen several of these trolls never have more than 1 or 2 reviews in their profiles above 0.5 stars. Edit: This should also include protections for low ratings on the first few chapters as some are likely to see this and skip to chapter 2 or 3 and rate it 1.5 stars instead (which has already happened to me since I posted this)
Open General
KingMaster80 KingMaster80 ago

LGBT+ Tag

An LGBT+ tag to allow readers to know if a fiction has or not LGBT+ content.

Open General
Anonyndeed Anonyndeed ago

A "Default" Author's Note

Alright, hear me out—what if we had a "default author’s note" feature? Basically, you set up a note once, tweak it whenever you feel like it, and it’ll automatically be the default pre- or post-chapter author note (there should be an option to choose). It should also "update" on every chapter it is in if the "default AN" draft is ever edited or tweaked. But if you want to write a fresh note for a specific chapter, you can do it like normal, and it’ll override the default one for that post single post. Why? Because manually typing (or copy-pasting) the same thing every time is a crime against laziness. This way, we can maximize laziness—er, I mean, efficiency—by not having to copy-paste the same thing every time. Set it and forget it kinda thing.
Open Fictions
Toilet_Face Toilet_Face ago

Be able to exclude hiatus as a tag

I feel as though it would be nice to not read a book and only then find out it’s on hiatus
Open General
Nobunaga Odin Nobunaga Odin ago

Make STUBS more noticable

I often encounter the issue where a story I’ve marked as 'Read Later' gets stubbed before I have a chance to read it. It would be helpful to receive a notification if an author plans to stub a story. Additionally, having a category for 'soon-to-be-stubbed' books would be great, so I can at least have a chance to read them before they’re no longer available.
Open Fictions
Vegetables Vegetables ago

Do not remove deleted fictions from follow / favorites / read later

I was reading a story just recently that's been deleted - I was starting to question whether I'd read it on plotgenre.com or some other site somewhere. The annoying thing about it was I couldnt remember the title/authors name. I eventually found a reference to it in detailed history (I'm pretty sure non premium members do not have access to this, so it's even worse for them). I'd like to ask that deleted fictions stay in follow/read later lists even if deleted, maybe with a red title or something, even if they cant be accessed. That way at least I can maybe find the story/author again somewhere else if I couldnt remember the exact title. Some kind of notification would be nice too instead of it just disappearing into the ether (I know that has been requested elsewhere). It'd also be nice to know (if possible) _why_ a fiction was removed such as it breaking the rules, because I have _no_ idea why this has gone bye bye.
Open General
Zek Zek ago

Crafting tag

A tag for those books that focus completely or heavily on crafting items (High fantasy or cultivation inspired), potions/pills, enchantments/inscriptions, spells, etc. there are many of these books out right now but they are a massive pain to find as there are more books that pop up with the words “not a blacksmith” or “become anything you want even an alchemist” when you search up key profession words rather than books actually about those professions. Some crafting story’s use the ruling class tag because generally crafting and kingdom building fit well together but it would still be nice to be able to pick out pure crafting novels.

Open General
Alodar Alodar ago

Snooze button for things I'm following

Not everything is best read in smaller doses; some of them need or want to build a (tiny?) backlog. Some of them I want to specifically let build up because I'm anticipating a cliffhanger, and want to wait past that, some I just find better in bigger chunks, and some I just am bored with but not ready to give up on yet. Let us have a snooze button based on time or number of entries (chapters? posts?) with either some pre-defined values or maybe a scrollable date/number list to choose from for our follows list, so that we can keep up on some things, and sometimes have a backlog show up.
Open General
Robert Betan Robert Betan ago

Forums reader in app?

Can you add a basic interface for forums in this app? The ideas section is in the app, and its basically the prototype for the forums proper. I use the app more then the desktop site -- only used for posting stories. So having forums on app would let me stay involved a lot more. Thanks!
Open General
YJarex YJarex ago

Make the follow author button more accessible

The fact that you can follow an author is good, great even. Chances are if you liked one book from a specific person, you'll like their future works as well. But why can you only find the button in the author's profile, and as a small button at that? Simple fix: Petition to move the 'Follow Author' button to somewhere on the front page of their fictions. This means one click less to follow an author, which helps with establishing authors' on-site fandom.
Open General
Visiorex Visiorex ago

Percent Complete Stat

I'd like to see a percent complete stat on the books in my library. You can calculate it in whatever way you want, but I'd like to know at a glance more or less how close I am to reaching the most recent chapter.
Open General
Bill Shyroku Bill Shyroku ago

Rising Stars Tag Search

It would be nice for the rising stars drop down menu to include at least a separate section for the tags in case we're looking for specific tags. I already saw they have them but you would need to manually put it on the URL just to look through it.
Open Fictions
Vitronic Vitronic ago

Force Fanfictions to state / link their inspirational material

See Title. It is often not obvious or stated what the original material of the fanfiction is.
Open Fictions

Ads of the story in the books about fiction tab

When you open to a books page under the about fiction it would be cool to see what ads the author created for the book. It would also be cool for a place to see the funny meme like ads all in one place, just to browse.
Open Other
Ekichi Ekichi ago

Auto-Collapse Advanced Search Panel After Submission

I find it a bit distracting that the advanced search panel stays open after setting the search parameters and clicking 'Search'. It would feel cleaner and more streamlined if the panel automatically collapsed after the search is submitted, and could then be reopened only when needed to adjust the criteria.
Open General
oswstesi oswstesi ago

Let us mark chapters/Stories as Unread

Some user-ads link to the first chapter instead of the overview/story page, meaning if you decide to follow the story, it shows up in the followed stories page as having read a chapter already, causing some small confusion when you finally get around to reading the story.
Open General
U N i C o r N U N i C o r N ago

Stop recommending things I put as not interested

I keep getting recommended books that I put as not interested. I keep getting the same genre of books- Pokemon fan-fiction- and I have nothing wrong with them, I don't want to read them and keep getting recommended. Could there be a way to fix this?
Open Other
watlix watlix ago

Add a dropped and finished reading list

I sometimes drop stories that i don’t find interesting compared to the rest of my reading list. But I want to be able to find the books I dropped when there’s stories pops back into my head. For the finished list it less needed but it Would free up my favourite list as an actual favourite instead of a pseudo fav/finished list.
Open General
Eternal Reader Eternal Reader ago

Alert a Reader to Stubbed Stories in Read Later List

As the title states, add a way for readers to know when a story has been stubbed. If a person has over 20 stories in their read later list, it is likely that one of them will have their first book or all of it removed. Personally, if there were a novel in my read later list that got stubbed, I would remove that novel because I have no interest in reading a story where part of it is missing.
Open Fictions
Zoboso Zoboso ago

I know this is an odd request

Sometimes I see an advertisement to a story on the site and don't register that I want to click on it until after I've moved off of the page. Is it possible to put all active advertisements on a page so I could go find the one I saw.
Rejected General
Iamkrazycat Iamkrazycat ago

Battery

The battery drains noticeable faster when using this app, for example reading on my browser drains around half as much for around the same time spend reading.
Open General
Ruben B Ruben B ago

Swipe between tabs on Library

I keep trying to swipe between them. Honestly would appreciate this being a thing.
Open General
Knight on a Bike Knight on a Bike ago

Make it possible for readers to highlight grammatical errors for the author to fix.

Add a  tool for the readers to highlight grammatically incorrect sentences. It would help the author find errors to fix.

Completed General
Yorth Yorth ago

Glossary/Fandom

The idea is simple. Add a glossary next to the table of content where readers can check the names of major organizations, how certain characters look, what is their personality. Basically, stuff that would help both new and old readers keep up with the story, especially when the latter becomes bigger and bigger.

Planned General
kanadaj kanadaj Official response ago
This is actually on my list to do. I very much understand the demand for it, and the upcoming mobile app could integrate this particularly nicely.
j03man j03man ago

Uncap text to speech speed (resolved)

Edit: Tts now hits 4x speed! Tts is capped at 2x speed for no good reason. Changing my phone's tts settings doesn't affect the app's tts speed. I'll just go back to the browser t2s app cause the next chapter, skip author note functionality is somehow not enough to make up for the capped tts speed.
Open Premium
Scarlust Scarlust ago

The ability to arrange Read Later

I think it could be useful to have an ordering feature on Read Later so that it is easier to find novels in it months after having added them to the list. These lists can be large and so I think an system which can order the read later section similar to the Advanced Search criteria would be useful. In particular:

  • The Status of Complete, Ongoing or Hiatus.
  • The Order By Functions; Last Update, Release Date, No. Pages and Popularity
  • Genre Selection - Although this might be a bit clunky in the form it is

These would enable people to use Read Later as more than just a jumbled pile of books which you thought the covers looked interesting and would allow users to use Read Later as a way to keep track of Fictions they weren't ready to read/bookmark straight away, giving the option to wait until a books completion before reading it or alternatively not putting the time into books which have been on hiatus for the last 4 years.

(Downside is that it could potentially promote a culture of waiting to see if a novel flourishes before interacting with it which may reduce the views new fictions get. I might be overthinking though)

UnderReview General
Eternal Reader Eternal Reader ago

Adding a "Finished Novels" List for Novels Like in the "Follow List"

Right now, we only have "Follow", "Favorite", and "Read Later", lists but no "Finished" lists for novels. Currently, all the novels that I've finished reading are simply sitting at the bottom of my "Follow" list and are just adding to the time it takes to scroll all the way to the bottom of the list.

I don't want to place every single novel I've finished into the "Favorite" list because that should be reserved for only novels that I consider my favorite novels.

So, my suggestion is to add a list where you can move novels to after you're done reading the entire novel. To make sure a reader doesn't miss any updates from a novel in that list, any novels within that "Finished" list will be moved back to the "Follow List" where they can read the update and move it back to the "Finished" list in case it's not an announcement for future chapters. 

This new List can be added to the Statistics if people think it's a good idea to do so.

Open General
KorcanHoca KorcanHoca ago

Read Later Random/SurpriseMe Button

I would really like it if there was a button that suggest a title from my read later list since I have lots of titles in my list and have trouble choosing among them. This leads to decision paralysis and I lose precious reading time. Of course, the button should implement true randomness for fairness to authors. Thanks.
Open General
PjBlackmoore PjBlackmoore ago

Warn user before autosaving if there is LESS text in chapter than before.

The autosave feature regularly loses me work because my main computer loads the browser I use for writing in the background, saving over the chapter I was working on on my laptop without me realising. This has happened many, many times and I can't seem to stop doing it. My suggestion is to simply have a popup appear if the text to be saved is more than ten words shorter than the text it is saving over. A warn if the IP is different would also be helpful.
Open Fictions
HaltWrite HaltWrite ago

Author Notification when story hits trending / popular this week / top rated, and its sublists

I think it would make for a huge confidence boost to authors if they knew their stories were getting traction in the algorithm somehow. It's not really convenient to check all those lists early on, especially when you have to navigate to the last page, so unless someone else mentions it, you won't really know you're on it (and I assume more stories get on those lists at the lower end for a while, then fail to stick around, so it would really be encouragement for those authors).

Open General
RhetoriKILL RhetoriKILL ago

Let me see suggested edits while I'm in edit mode.

Let me see them while I'm editing, and it would be extra fancy if the text the edit was pointing towards was highlighted when I scrolled over the suggested edit. If you wanted to go all the way you could let me accept suggested edits automatically, but I understand that might be to difficult to implement. So, at the very least, let me scroll through and dismiss suggested edits while I am editing the text.
Open General
captain tungsten captain tungsten ago

'Unread' filter for V2 follow list

An option to filter the V2 follow list to only show stories with unread chapters. Ideally, this should have a unique URL so you can save it as a bookmark. I imagine most people use their follow list to catch up on stories which have updated, rather than managing/accessing stories they have already fully read.
Open General
HighVal HighVal ago

Read Timer on Viewers Before Allowed to Rate a Novel

I noticed this problem recently when I gave a critique on a novel that I deemed pretty fair. Just for a cult to come after my own novel out of nowhere. Getting half stars reviews instantly after posting my fair review. Coincidence, I think not as I had previously had no reviews for my novel before my post! Please, someone, fix this problem, as it incentivizes people to not rate novels properly. Without a function like this, a novel could be falsely saturated. Most likely like the novel I left my review under as it was trending when I first saw it, however, reading deeper this was simply impossible, no offense... I recommend adding a read timer for viewers making it so they are unable to review until a certain time limit of reading the novel is up.
UnderReview General
mythdefiant mythdefiant ago

Stub Alert / Countdown for Stories Leaving RR (for KU)

Readers are often surprised and frustrated by stories which suddenly get removed from RR (usually for Kindle Unlimited's exclusivity agreement). Not too long ago, Melas changed the title of Salvos *every single day* in an effort to warn readers. Even when authors try to give good faith announcements like this in advance, readers don't always notice them in time. I think an alert and / or countdown might help with this communication. Authors can set the date that they plan to enroll in KU / remove chapters from the site like they can already change some of the 'completed', 'hiatus', 'dropped', or 'stubbed' statuses. A notification could accompany this change and be sent out to followers of the story, especially for those whose bookmarks are in the affected chapter range (or volume) and those who have the story marked in their 'Read Later' list. A feature like this can benefit readers who receive better information, the authors who opt to use it, and RR because then the site will keep more of its traffic and direct less readers to KU. Thanks for any consideration given to this idea.
Open Fictions
Identity Identity ago

Be able to delete history

I use the history page to continue what I read but there are some fictions which i don't want to see after reading the first couple of chapters if possible I would like to have an delete option because the Not interested button doesn't help me with that

Open General
Eleeyah Eleeyah ago

Ban False Advertising

Do not allow misleading fiction advertisements. If an ad is designed to display a character like they're the main character, but they aren't, that's misleading advertisement. Something is being promised that isn't true. Ban that bullshit, please.
Open Other
PrimalShadow PrimalShadow ago

Don't serve ads for "Not interested" fiction

If I've already marked down that I don't want to read a story, why show me ads for it? That just makes the ads less useful, for both the reader and whoever is paying for the ad.
Completed General
Celivalg Celivalg ago

List running ads

Create a tab to list currently running user ads, I saw one I actually wanted to click on, but refreshed the page and couldn't get it again.
Open General
Silas Kriegsende Silas Kriegsende ago

Quick Play Button for TTS on a chapter in the App

This would be a quality of life improvement that I think benefits both free and premium users. I have recently discovered the TTS, and it works great (especially because it easily ties into device defaults for TTS, which allows me to use my favorite TTS voice). It would be nice if there was a quicker 'play chapter' button, rather than having to go into the separate "audio" menu, and then tap the 'play chapter' button. I have my settings set in the menu, so I'd like to go to the next chapter and then click 'play chapter' right away, rather than having to open the menu each time. This would benefit free users, since they have to start each chapter, as well as premium users who are moving to a different story and want to dive right into the reading.
Open General
Deleted Deleted ago

Option to change line spacing, rather than just paragraph spacing

I would like the ability to change the line spacing. While paragraph spacing is a nice option, there are some dense paragraphs of text where a slightly larger amount of line spacing would make reading easier.

Open General
SnowLabrador SnowLabrador ago

Country data to analytics

I would love to see what countries I'm getting a lot of views from. Is this possible to implement? Thanks.
Open General
Nacra Nacra ago

Library folders

Hello team, I'm reading quite a few stories simultaneously, and sometimes I would like to put a story aside for a while, so that I can go back to it a few months later. There are 4 folders in the library: follow, download, favourite and read later. Let's ignore downloads, which is for offline reading. All the stories I currently read are in follow. The precious few I really consider gems are in favourite. And read later has tons in it, everything that piques my interest. And I'm kinda stuck for stories I want to put on hold, because if I put them back in read later they get drowned in tons of stories, and I also don't necessarily want to favourite them. So my improvement suggestion would be to have additional folders in the library. Of course I know this would mess up your statistics, because follow and favourite are very important to track popularity. But if you create a pause/on hold folder, everything in that folder could still be considered as something that is being followed. Thanks for reading me and have a nice day. Nacra
Open General
timeless_being timeless_being ago

Add a way to perform a search within a novel

Sometimes when I read a novel, the characters mention a term (e.g. the name of a place, of a person, of an item, of a skill) that has been mentioned before but that I can't remember. Being able to search the past chapters of the novel for that term would be nice.

This is also a very useful feature for fan communities, as it makes it easier to search for information to fill a wiki, or can simply be used to answer the question "what have we actually been told about this character?" when discussing fan theories

Open General