I'm talking about authors with less than ~50 K views, going around spamming the swap thread here. I feel like, from around 10 to 20, to maybe even 30 reviews counts as a pretty healthy number. Of course, some of them are bound to be from review swaps, but it's like, fine, to get your novel started off, people have to see a good star rating when they look at it, right?

Not naming novels or anything, but I've seen a novel with 30 chapters, 20 K views, and 73 REVIEWS. That's... not normal? Look at this novel for comparison:
Saving the overbearing CEO: 558 chapters. 2.7 million views. Only 71 reviews.

See?

And there's another one, with 35 chapters, 50 K views, and ONE HUNDRED AND SIXTY TWO REVIEWS. JUST STOP ALREADY.

There is no, possible, way, that these two got more than half of their reviews from actual readers. My own novel, which has nearly 100 K views from 38 chapters alone, only reached 10 reviews after I went onto the swapping thread for the first time, asking for 2 reviews to get to 10. I only had 8 beforehand, one of which was from myself.

like... at some point, these ~4.8 rated, honestly average novels will have unstoppable ratings. Just look at the second unnamed novel I mentioned. It had a rating of 4.81, out of 162 people. How many reviews will it take for the true score to show?
(I read the novel, and it was average, as expected. Maybe 4.5 or 4.6 in webnovel standards. But that would still take hundreds of reviews to balance)

Any thoughts? or is this like, a normal thing
maybe i should boost my novel too lol

    Wookiesmuggler
    These people must have endless free time, ignore them lol. No reader will touch a book with only 20-30 chapters, no matter how many reviews it has.
    200-300 chapters is more like it, and even that can be finished in less than a day.
    Focusing on the wrong thing and doing endless swaps (wasting time), instead of increasing their chapters will only kill their books.

        EternalNightLotus I am writing a short story which will end in 30 chapters now I am scared.
        The thing I saw in review swap is that someone review are so generic that you don't even want to keep them so sometimes they just takes up place. I have been doing review swaping my book is published for 1 month, 16 thousand view, 18 chap, 16 reviews (4 geniune). My reason was that I wanted to know if my novel was trash should I invest more time on it or delete which my first novel was so I deleted it, but most reviews I got from review swap were generic (60-70%). I deleted them but kept review swaping to see at least there will be some real criticism it's really rare in review swap.
        (I know there is honest review swap but I didn't get a reply there.)

            Shubhangi_Kene
            Thats because most people just read the synopsis or the first chapter (or other reviews smh), then add 5 stars.

            Review swaps won't tell you if you book is trash. They want a 5 star from you, so why would they.

            Find someone who's giving out genuine reviews on discord or the forum and ask for one. Until then its best to fill up the 6 with swaps, then wait for genuine feedback from your readers.

              EternalNightLotus

              Sorry if this is a noob question, but I just joined a few days ago and this post scares me quite a bit. My chapters are about 1500 words and the thought of writing 200 chapters before anyone actually reads it makes my brain hurt. How long are chapters on WN that 200-300 chapter stories are expected?

                  Brass_Badger

                  In general average chapter length varies wildly anything from 800 words and up is more the norm. Like yourself I set a chapter length goal for myself at about 2000 words.

                  But similarly my book is only 150 chapters. The claim it needs 200 before anyone reads it is blatantly false. Don't believe that claim for a second. As long as your plot ticks the normal draws on webnovel... 150 chapters or 1500 chapters, it WILL be read.

                  Now my start was certainly helped by winning one of the writing contests but I still get readers though the reviews are only a hand full. I've never put a great import on them, between smiley face spam and toxic one liners the most any book gets is a handful of honest to God reviews, the rest has always been spam that neither helps nor hinders your work.

                      Darth_Xiane The claim it needs 200 before anyone reads it is blatantly false. Don't believe that claim for a second. As long as your plot ticks the normal draws on webnovel... 150 chapters or 1500 chapters, it WILL be read.

                      I agree with you, but I think they meant this amount sounds more enticing because it says to the reader "this author is comitted to the story and juicy stuff is already happening, so I'll maybe get more if I invest in it than in that 10 chapters noob who God knows if they won't drop it."

                      I say this maybe being a bit biased since I've stumbled upon so many corpses of novels which coincidentially died after less than 100 chapters published (many less than 20).

                          Brass_Badger

                          I'm not saying your book won't be read, if there's less. It depends on how good your story is and the patience of the reader.
                          The more chapters a book has typically shows the author is committed to finishing it, because a major issue on this platform is books that are left abandoned without any explanation or put on haitus for months, so having more chapters does help you in the long run to attract more readers.
                          I've personally had people collect my book on say ch5 or something, comment on very early chapters, only to start reading heavily at ch70-100. But every reader is different, and your experience will vary.

                            Shubhangi_Kene I guess we need to mention them. Some people are afraid to do one as giving one negative comment on criticism gets on people's nerves. It is one of the reasons I ended up being a little more positive and gave the critical part in the end.
                            We all want to know what our books are like. That's why some use discord to get to know their areas of improvement, even if they are not published in the reviews. That seems to be the only way to get that response from the people.

                                4 days later

                                EternalNightLotus Pfft they have endless free time because they swap but you can read 300 chapter books in less than a day. Hello kettle how are you?

                                Anyway, I am not a fan of review swaps regardless, but I do agree everyone tries it once or twice on here. But the sheer amount of it going on, on webnovel is a new class of ridiculous.

                                Wookiesmuggler . you are absolutely right, its dumb, and it is a broken system. But what do you expect when the site itself is just one big heap of broken. Especially what they offer in way of writing tools for authors.

                                      Shubhangi_Kene You can not delete books you have put on webnovel. Be prepared to be disappointed if you are sitting and thinking you can. Any novel put on here free or premium cannot be deleted. Only if it is free can you delete all of the chapters inside it.... But the novel itself cannot ever be removed. It's how they make sure you are stuck. It's also how they make it look like there are more books on the site than there are. Also its why there are so many half written abandoned stories. Because it is a content farm and they encourage, not writing well, or even completion just more and more books.
                                      Also Honest review swap is in itself a thread showing just how much you can't trust the reviews on this site. ... Stay away from review swapping. Because you are not even having your demographic that read your story reading it. Just some random person who also wants a read. Mundane example here: They could very well hate your sci-fi romance and call it trash. When in reality your book in itself may not be the problem. But rather the fact that they only read twilight fantasy novels and love simps who daddy this and daddy that. So the review saying your book sucks, is off base and can actually throw away all your actual real customers. Because you review swapped with the wrong audience. But had too because a lot of these threads are swap with the last commentator. Which honestly, doesn't work for twister and is even worse idea for how to run critiquing books.

                                          Geisa_Gomes god knows they won't drop it.

                                          ..... uuhhhh. Authors on here still drop novels when they are around 600 chapters. XD

                                              13 days later

                                              Wookiesmuggler

                                              Thanks for making this thread.
                                              I have a 41 chapters novel (my chapters are 5k words long though) 21k views and only 1 review (from a genuine reader).
                                              The whole review swap thing is intimidating for me, I browsed around at novels, found some with 10 chapters, worse than mine, (my writing is average, I've seen better than me and worse), and they have like 20 amazing reviews and I'm like; whoa!
                                              Sulking led me to this forum, and to the review swap thing, been sitting on the fence for couple of days now wondering if I should go for it or not.
                                              I guess I can't blame people for the blind promotion, this positive feedback does wonders to the author too. Especially when my main struggle is motivation to write.
                                              But I don't want it to be fake either, in the long run it'll make me feel worse, thanks for helping me reach this conclusion.

                                              Shubhangi_Kene
                                              I'll happy to do an honest review swap, that being said, I have to try your work and enjoy reading it, and it has to be the same for you. I don't think I can review a book I don't like, feels wrong.

                                              Brass_Badger
                                              I have a weird advice for you, might help you, might not. Try writing for yourself, forget posting, forget about readers, views, and reviews, forget all of that. Write for yourself, see if you like it. See if you like the world you've made, if you enjoy creating.
                                              If you keep enjoying it, the words will pile up and before you know it you'll have one long novel that fill it up.

                                              I've been writing for myself like that for over a year, didn't have the confidence to upload my work, told myself that if I ever reach 1 mil words I'll start uploading. That's why I'm here...
                                              I am still aren't confident about uploading my original drafts, but it hadn't stopped me from making a new one and keep up the pace.

                                              That being said, the sheer amount of webnovels online is depressing, and I always get the feel of; "with so many books out there, who would even bother to look at mine?"
                                              That's why I understand the whole review swap thing...

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                                                    5 days later

                                                    Honestly I don't really expect much until I have reached at least 50 chapters. I am thankful for those that jump on early though. I personally hate review swapping because I end up with topics that I hate... And yeah not everyone wants to read fantasy/romance that I happen to write....

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