Or on the virtues of digging deeper yourself, because not everyone’s information is accurate.

Some time ago I wrote a post titled Why You Won’t Be Seeing My Work on Serial Story Sites. It was a small piece, largely an answer to constant question I’d been badgered by in private and in public about why I wasn’t putting my work on services like Kindle Vella, Wattpad, or RoyalRoad.

There’s a problem where that last on is concerned. That being that I screwed up.

See, at the time that I wrote it, all I knew is that it was considered a “serial story site” along with the rest. I doublechecked that it indeed was a fiction site, one hosting stories and ads, and then wrote my general response to serial story sites along with why I found myself less than trustworthy of them.

And that was that. For a while. But then a comment was left noting that RoyalRoad, despite appearances and what I was hearing, was not a serial story site, but a quite hands-off fiction publishing site, similar to a fanfiction site, and that it was on the authors on the site whether or not to follow some of the trends of other serial fiction sites, and this was not controlled by the site itself. Yes, there were premium subscriber features, for both authors and readers, but they were very straightforward about what was done with those subscriptions, mostly removing site ads.

Now, I noted the comment, hit it with a like because it was a good comment, but then made a major mistake. As it was the weekend, I didn’t bother to craft a response or check deeper. The way I remembered it, my piece had been about serial fiction sites in general. If RoyalRoad was not one of those, then that was that. I hadn’t said such about RoyalRoad … had I?

No, actually. But I’d completely forgotten that I opend the piece quoting someone else who had declared RoyalRoad to be “where the money was.” In addition to not at all realizing that I’d failed to make my next sentence clarified that I was referring to serial fiction sites as a whole, not just one particular site. My note that I found the source of that quote suspect failed to land as well, likely through fault of my own.

Basically, a number of people came by to read the post, and then got quite upset that I’d either A) lumped RoyalRoad in with other Serial Story sites or B) seemed to single out RoyalRoad. Which was only mentioned twice in the post (far less than places like Vella) but due to one of those mentions being in the quote I’d mentioned, seemed to indicated to many an ill-informed attack.

Again, I’m not trying to defend the original quote, though I will note to a later commentator that I wasn’t the source on that one. Indeed, it was taken from a private communication someone sent to me. In choosing it to show the general sort of pushes I got to go serial, I seem to have come off to some as attacking the site.

---

So, here’s what I did: I spent some time digging around on RoyalRoad. And yeah, I think those comments about it not deserving to be lumped in with other serial story sites is right. So, I’m amending the original post to remove all mentions of RoyalRoad (of which there were only two, one of which again was the quote). In addition, I’m apologizing here and now to RoyalRoad for indirectly giving them a black mark. That wasn’t the intent, though combined with the quote, seems to be to some what I did.

So yeah, sorry RoyalRoad. I truly didn’t intend to throw a black mark on the site, and should have amended the quote that dropped your name to start with.

And yeah, from what I’ve looked at, you don’t appear share the same behavior as what’s commonly known as a “serial story site.” You’re more of a fiction site.

Does that mean my work will be appearing there shortly? No. I’m still content with what I’m doing.

But I do agree that when it comes to the common threads between sites like Vella, Wattpad, Tapas, and others … RoyalRoad is not from the same mold.

My apologies to anyone who read my post as stating differently. It wasn’t my intent, but I definitely see how it could have been read that way, and that’s on me. Sorry.

---

And with that, I’m off to enjoy my weekend.