MOCHIIICHII The start will be the story. Pump out a quality product someone else is likely to read and that is the first start at nabbing a reader. Sure, you can write solely for yourself. From my experience, it's just yourself reading it in the end.
There's also:
- Commitment (like daily updating sort of thing). Return readers will want to see this,
- quality content. Not just the grammar, but how the story itself unfolds,
- networking with readers and writers like you're doing now,
- observing how things work. Not just on this site, but other similar sites and around the book markets like Amazon. What are other writers doing to gain reads that might be something that could work for you? Example that some writers are testing for readership is #writerslift on twitter, that's a craze of when you get x number of followers, peeps can post a silly comment on your tweet to celebrate with you and so forth.
To be honest. The first focus should be writing a top notch story and finishing it. Put it out there and see what bites. If it doesn't bite. Revise your blurb, cover and metadata (like the tags and categories). Until you're satisfied it's attracting some interest, and the right sort of interest. If you're writing a CEO romance, you don't want to categorize it as a horror story. Unless it's a ghost CEO thing I guess. :rolling_eyes:
Swap reviews tend to work for some.
Shameless plugs. Although, there are a lot of them running here.
There's also the #original novel discussion channel on the discord webnovel server that you can plug your story to. Just don't spam the channel heinously. Actually, don't spam.
The rest is trial, error and observation.
Good luck! :smile_cat: