Back in the old days, publishing was simple. You write a story, send it to a publisher, and in the one-in-a-million chance they accept it, it gets printed.

And then people invented online publishing and everything became complicated.

Most people associate Internet fiction with fanfiction. While it's true that the majority of prose content online is fanfic, this won't be the topic today. If you want to write fanfic, just use the established sites for that (Fanfiction.net, Archive Of Our Own, Tumblr, DeviantART, pick your poison). Original fiction, however, doesn't have so many options.

If you are an original Internet fiction author and you want an overview of the various writing platforms I've visited, keep reading. I'll be covering WordPress, Fictionpress, SpaceBattles, RoyalRoad, Geeke, and Wattpad (I think you know about WP already though - unless someone printed this chapter out for you).

WordPress/Your own website

WordPress is a site for hosting your personal blog. Many websites are made using WordPress.

(Have you seen my friend's website about politics already, BTW?

https://alphredism.wordpress.com/

Sorry, had to advertise!)

But did you know you can also post stories by making each blog post a chapter of your novel?

Worm, one of the most famous web novels out there, started on WordPress:

https://parahumans.wordpress.com/

Posting your work on your own website has its advantages. You can build your own community and your novel won't get drowned in a flood of clichéd bad boy stories or anything. The problem is that people need to find your website somehow. Earlier, there was the WebFictionGuide for that (most people found Worm there), but it doesn't exist anymore.

Also, getting a good WordPress domain often costs money.

I don't have much experience with posting your book on your own website. I wanted to make a blog for Starsnatcher, but the money and lack of discoverability stuff put me off.

There are guides online on how you can increase traffic for your blog and how you can give it a good layout.

If you are comfortable with this sort of stuff, do it. I just can't give you much advice here.

Fictionpress

Fictionpress is like Fanfiction.net, only for original fiction. That's all there is really to say about it.

I posted Starsnatcher there and, despite regularly updating for months, it got zero reviews and maybe five followers or so.

The site is dead as a doornail. I think it used to have active users, but they all either left or emigrated to Wattpad and the like. The audience for original fiction just isn't so large. People know that. That's why they sometimes turn original fiction into fanfic and post it on Fanfiction.net instead.

I heard the site has a forum, but no-one posts there, so, I haven't tried it out.

It's a fine site when you're writing for yourself, though Wattpad gets that job done, too, so, not really an advantage.

RoyalRoad

RoyalRoad is a whole different beast. Whereas Fictionpress has close to no discoverability, RoyalRoad has much better discoverability than anything else on that list. Starsnatcher got close to 20,000 views there! Unfortunately, it also got terrible ratings (hence, I deleted it) which brings me to RoyalRoads disadvantage: The community isn't very forgiving of amateur authors.

Consider the popular superhero time travel story Reroll. Reroll has an ending many readers didn't like. On SpaceBattles (to which I'll get later), the comments were like "I liked the story, but the ending could be better". On RoyalRoad, the comments were like "Your story deserves the Guinness World Records entry for the worst ending ever" or "The ending is even worse than the 8th season of Game of Thrones". In other words, not the nicest community. Even the most popular and best-rated stories have at least 30-50% negative comments from what I see.

If you struggle with grammar, narrative styles, characterization, pacing, or the like, there are better sites to practice. I recommend RoyalRoad when your craft is polished and you want it to present it to the bigger world.

Now, RoyalRoad does offer review swaps, but I don't find them very helpful. For one, the purpose of a review is not to give you feedback, but to tell your prospective audience what to expect from your story and to improve your rankings. For this reason, they are rarely genuine (especially those "I give your story 5 stars, now your story gets 5 stars, too"). Moreover, RoyalRoad's community expects regular updates from its stories (at least once a week), so, if readers find your chapters terrible, you won't have much time to fix them.

This brings me to my next point, RoyalRoad can be very time-consuming.  The community there has a certain culture and the site offers scheduled release. Almost all stories I've seen there update at least twice per week on specific dates. Many multiple times. If you aren't good with schedules, consider that.

Also, even if your story is good and you update consistently, a readership is all but guaranteed. Like I said, the site has a culture. It started as a site for translating light novels, so, the people there like Asian-inspired stories. Since most are teenage boys, they like Asian-inspired power fantasies the most. The most popular genres there are isekai (ordinary loser gets transported in a fantasy world where he gets a harem, easily defeats his enemies, and becomes the king), LitRPG (ordinary loser gets transported into a video game world where he gets a harem, easily defeats his enemies, and becomes the king), and Xianxia (Chinese-inspired genre where young masters get their clan killed and then kill everyone who looks at them wrong in revenge). These are the popular genres and almost all the popular stories I see there are power fantasies to some degree, most fit into these three categories as well.

But to end on a positive note, it's easy to make money on RoyalRoad. Just put a Paypal or a Pateron link there and see as your earnings grow. At least, if your story is good and popular (which is why I haven't earned a single penny there).

Also, the moderation is fairly active (as active as itcan be, anyway) and if you open a support ticket, you'll get an answer.

If you're an experienced author and you want to get a big audience and maybe some money, RoyalRoad is your best option as far as online publishing platforms go. But for those who are still learning (like me), there are other sites.

SpaceBattles

Yes, this is technically a discussion forum, but it has a rather large subforum for creative writing and I visit this site a lot.

To get one thing out of the way, yes, the creative writing subforum is mainly for fanfiction. However, it also has a sub-subforum specifically for original fiction. It's not terribly active, but it's still better than Fictionpress. Admittedly, low bars make everything, but still.

The demographics are similar to those on RoyalRoad. People there like isekai, LitRPG, or Xianxia stories, although there's also a market for superhero stories and more general fantasy. Like on RoyalRoad, many readers there are teenage boys that like power fantasy.

What distinguishes the site from RoyalRoad is that the readership (for original fiction, anyway) is smaller, but the people there are generally nicer in their comments. Plus, there is currently a guy named FunctionalityOfSystems who made it a habit to comment on almost any original fic there that he finds interesting and that is somewhat well-written (although, naturally, he won't be active forever).

Keep in mind that SpaceBattles is first and foremost a discussion forum. Your story will get more views if people comment on it. The people on SB like sci-fi and fantasy and when they see a sci-fi/fantasy setting, their thoughts are along the lines of "How can this setting be broken?" or "How can the protagonist use their superpowers to their advantage?". That's why the popular stories there read very much like RPGs where everything has clear limitations and rules.

Since the people there are nerds, the readers like "meta" stories, that is, stories that don't take themselves too seriously.

Also, like on RoyalRoad, the people there expect updates to be regular (that is, at least once a week).

Overall, it's a good place for people who are a bit too shy for RoyalRoad but still like to write stories for Internet geek dudes.

Wattpad

Not sure if you heard about it, but there's a super obscure platform for posting stories called Wattpad. It only has about 500 million users, so, you probably haven't heard about it yet.

In case someone printed this chapter out for you, I'll explain the platform briefly. It's basically a social media app for sharing stories. Its demographic is primarily young and female, so, bad boy stories and YA-like stories dominate everything.

Of all the platforms mentioned here so far, Wattpad has by far the largest potential audience. However, the discoverability is terrible. The algorithms are weird, the search function sucks, and the gigantic size of the platform means your story has way too much competition to be seen by anyone. That's why I don't necessarily recommend Wattpad to people who write to become rich and famous.

Moreover, the mods are too inactive. That's why we get outright plagiarized books that can get hundreds of thousands of views without anyone noticing. On RoyalRoad, the mods know how to weed out plagiarized stories before they are posted there.

However, the upside is that, due to the rather young and naive audience, Wattpad feels relatively relaxed. People here aren't that critical about regular updating or even about quality. Encouraging comments are relatively easy to get here. But if you really want to get critiqued, the review shops and contests are there for that.

If you are a rather experienced author though, this platform might not be right for you. Not every kind of story works here. Sappy romances and teen dramas are fine, but stories with more complicated character relationships or mature themes are hard to sell. They aren't perfect for RoyalRoad either, but I still think the audience for that is greater over there. And needless to say, genres that older or male audiences like aren't an ideal fit either. Again, you have RoyalRoad or SpaceBattles for that. I probably wouldn't put stories that are longer than 100,000 words here either (okay, I did that, but that doesn't mean I recommend it). People here read on their phones and don't have infinite attention spans.

But if you're writing YA or NA stuff, Wattpad should work.

Geeke

This is a new writing app developed by my pal hridiv. I'm gonna post this chapter there, too, so maybe you are on Geeke as you are reading this.

Platform-wise, it's kind of like a rural village. Not very large, but in exchange, everyone knows everyone. The site has many glitches, but it's presently under development. Not much I can say so far, but I like the layout, and the site in general looks beautiful.

If you want to pave it a visit, check it out here.

https://geekestories.anvil.app/