Starting out as a webnovelist – or a web serial writer, as the most pedantic would put – is hard. It’s not the long hours of the job, for most. It’s about the stress of deadlines. While a normal author has deadlines counted in months, the unluckiest webnovelist may have them counted in hours. And even though there are not many polls going around in this industry yet, I’d wager that burnout takes out most aspiring writers. The rest I'd tag it on toxic readers leaving inflammatory comments and poisonous reviews. However, all of this is second to losing ‘motivation.’ But I would change that in ‘giving up,’ and therefore ascribe it as every profession’s bane – not just writing [online].

Once you keep up with the deadlines, you earn that agonized Patreon money, you get a Stabby, even… what do you do? What’s next? How does your work evolve?

Is writing online a different sport compared to writing for a traditional publishing house? And so, do you wait long enough for this sport to get big or do you jump over your ancient and rusty neighbors? I mean, they have more cash, allegedly, so, why not?

Should you try to cater more to the traditional readers? Web writers you usually meet them at the Amazon intersection – Kindle, that is. Kindle is where web novelists and self-publishing authors meet the traditional publishing. So, web writers are tempted to go exclusive on Kindle to get better money, to get better opportunities. First of all, if you are on Kindle Unlimited, your revenue might skyrocket. Clear numbers are hard to establish, but it’s definitely 8-9 times more profitable than just selling normally through Amazon. But that’s the trick, Kindle Unlimited requires that your online content live only on Amazon’s platform.

Is that bad?

It really depends.

When you have all the power and very restrictive rules, things can go south pretty quickly. Especially if Amazon one day decides your content is not up to their standards or guidelines. However, that’s not really the biggest bone I have to pick with their program; and beware, I might even use Kindle Unlimited myself. Why? I mean, if I were rich enough to ignore the changes a massive jump in income would bring, I wouldn’t, but that’s not really the case.

So, Fowl, what’s so bad about Kindle Unlimited?

Well, styling and format.

Web novels have ‘web’ in their title. But why? What classifies them as 'web' if only few authors use CSS in them? What's so 'web' about it? The broader distribution? I mean, that utilizes only one out of many tools available.

And LitRPG has ‘RPG’ (ndr, role playing game). Both the web and games have visual elements that make them stand out compared to normal print or… rock, paper, scissors? Playing with sticks?

Now, if you are an author reading this, you might already be scoffing and raising your eyes to the sky. People are very averse to this little thought of mine about the industry, for some reason. Man, I have had ‘big players’ of the web novel industry make ridiculous claims about what I’m about to say.

There's a chance that the greatest thing about web novels will involve the 'web' component. But there's more than a problem in this regard. Why? Well, RoyalRoad only allows limited styling and Kindle is even worse. Also, Kindle is not 'web.'

Unless you have your own website, it seems very unlikely that you would be able to craft an ad-hoc experience. Also, if you do some of this in the wrong way, it may end up looking like a windows 98 computer infested by malicious ads and pop-ups. But, if you think about it, now that Gravesong is coming out, a big player like Pirateaba is putting music in her audiobook. That's... something. Pirateaba was also one of the first author I've seen putting colors and music in the first Clown/Tom chapters. Hell, I distinctly remember being spooked as hell when I heard the laugh out of nowhere. It was wild. I always wondered why the author didn't raise the stakes, to be honest. I think The Wandering Inn could have been one of the forerunners in the sector.

I use colors in Casual Heroing and I'm trying to think how to insert even more. But we lack the right designers, the right expertise to do this stuff right. Most people look at web novels like a blog. And the people at webnovel.com don't allow any styling, not even Italics. Isn't that absurd?

Now, I'm working with some other stuff, like change in fonts, on top of that. Glowing text. I wish I could have more ideas, try out more stuff. But I think that it will be a gradual process, if anything happens at all. People will start trying out different things and the things that work will be copied by others.

That is, if the websites working with web novels will allow extensive styling and CSS. I find it so funny that people from above think they should decide how a webnovel should look, how long a chapter should be, and so on. But more than funny, it's dangerous. It can change the balance in this world when the major websites impose nonsensical restrictions.

One day, a start-up might pop out of the blue and bring easy to use tools to style your web novels, chapter by chapter, making this process easier to approach. And hell, I bet that most of the stuff created over there would be hideous. But is that an argument? Isn't the majority of web novels a huge pile of steaming shit? So what? People need to experiment to evolve. We need someone ready to push the envelope in order to see if there's really something in here.

Who knows, I might be right, or I might be wrong. But I think that the 'web' in 'web novels' ought to mean something more than an extended and serialized version of blogging.