I love that I’m able to share stories quickly by publishing through a fiction-reading app. I’m an author on Radish Fiction, which is owned by Kaokao. I’ve had a ton of success with one (over the last 5 years) and very minimal success with another (out almost 1 year). Let’s take a look.
The Arrangement
Here’s what I see on my dashboard. Now, this is a little misleading. The views are how many people have looked at the SUMMARY of my story, or opened the main page to see what it’s about. Keep in mind that “views” doesn’t mean individual viewers, it means how many times the page has been viewed (so one person can read it like 30 times and it will show up as 30 views). My real readership looks more like this:
Now, these are the first 7 FREE chapters…so you can imagine what it looks like once people have to start paying 😛 Compared to the last 7 chapters?
So my real readership is probably around 10k (probably less if considering individual views). Again, I had this on a “freemium” plan previously, so people could wait for it to unlock and then read the rest. Now that people have to pay after 7 chapters…it’s gone down quite a lot. These are numbers after 5 years.
I’m honestly really happy with this one. It isn’t the best thing I’ve ever written, but it has a lot of tension, very fast-paced, and a bonkers plot (which is something I love in a romance novel).
This is one that I do have a sequel loosely written up. It needs some editing before I start posting it, but I’d love to continue it.
Saving the Music
As you can see…Saving the Music, in comparison…did not do very well. Now, this one has only been up for a year, and has always been on the “wait-to-unlock” plan after only 5 episodes. So, people are waiting on reading the next chapter for free when it unlocks or pay to read immediately with a couple of episodes permanently locked. What really got me down is there are no comments on Saving the Music. I miss the interactions with readers and getting to see what they were thinking about the plot as things went on.
Again, that “views” number is misleading…let’s look at why I’m actually a little disappointed in this one…
Again, the first 5 are free, with the rest on wait-to-unlock. Pretty respectable. But…
Views REALLY tanked by the end…and this could be for a few reasons.
For one, the book is not spicy…at all. It’s a YA book on a Romance site, which doesn’t give it the best chance. I.e. It’s the wrong audience (which is totally fair). For another, the plot isn’t crazy. It’s a story about a normal girl going through normal emotions. (Not a mafia guy and a girl with a hard past like The Arrangement). This book was an experiment for me as well. I don’t typically write contemporary, and less so the YA versions.
However, this book has a special place in my heart. Is it my best work? Absolutely not. But I loved the story, the emotions, and the growth. It’s one that I would love to return to, fix up, and get out there on its own someday.
Future of my books on Radish
Another possibility is that there aren’t as many readers on Radish anymore. I don’t know that for sure because that isn’t something that is directly shared with the authors. I will say, however, that The Arrangement still has more coins being used on it than Saving the Music. Saving the Music had 90 coins spent on it in a good month and 6 in a bad month…whereas The Arrangement had 704 coins spent in a good month and 148 in a bad month.
I’m going to keep them up there for now. I’m hoping to get a Season 2 ready for The Arrangement at some point (hopefully this year). And maybe that will give some things a boost. I’ve thought of putting one other YA/NA book up there that I have completely written already, but…I’m not sure if I want that one to see the light of day or not ahahaha.
Happy Reading!
Rachel
Subtle Stories 