Arc VII Teaser (Patreon)

It's been a quiet month, with little posted here as most of my collected lore notes have already been dumped. However, teaser time has arrived! Arc VII: Rise is the next arc, consisting of 10 chapter and ~82,000 words. By character, it's most similar to Arc V: Gamers, which is to say it covers the growth of the Cloud Island Wilderness through the lens of multiple scenes. Those of you who wanted a break from the tension after Trade, congratulations. The rest who loved the tension, Arc VIII will have plenty of fast and furious action.

Rise brings a lot of changes. At the start of this arc, the population of the Cloud Island Wilderness is around 2,800. At the end, it will have breached 40,000. There's plenty of events too, including: the first election, another meeting with Lucifer, an interlude from Gavin's perspective, and initial preparation for Transcendence.

As a final note, Rise is the last dedicated kingdom building arc. The growth of the Cloud Island Wilderness will continue onward into the future, but I don't plan to make it the focus of an entire book.

Advertisements and Growth

I like to keep statistics on the growth of my story over time. This release period marked the fastest growth I've seen since leaving Rising Stars, averaging around 12.5 follows/day. A result that owed heavily to two moderately successful ads.

Alas, I also had a sharper fall off than normal as well. Well, you win some, you lose some.

So what were the ads? And how did they perform? Well here's Royal Road's statistics:

As an amusing side note, the Arc VI Teaser has the original stats for the Excerpt Ad. Yes, that's right. Somehow I gained 11 follows and 16 read laters. But, that aside, the new ads massively outperformed the previous ones. For those interested in RR and publishing, note that the the later two can be considered 'decent' or even 'reasonably good' results. I've seen results, however, that are closer to 200 follows.

The ads in question are:

I might stir up a similar ad campaign next time, using different images. Or, if inspiration strikes, I might try something else. Experimentation by multiple parties has basically concluded there is very little rhyme or reason to why ads work. The best solution is to throw out a wide net then roll through a collection of effective images.

Speaking of which, I really need to update the Arc II cover with the corrected dress.

In any case, February is coming up quick. I look forward to seeing you all there!