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The answer is in your last statement. Harem with some 'sexy time' gives more views. Also a lot of authors here write for fun. People are not exactly making money on here (only a few do) so people will just write low effort works or their own fantasies. It's not like most people have editors to rein them in unless they are legally contracted with Webnovel.

Most of these harem are aimed at teenagers and are mostly wish fulfillment.

Greed... For anything and everything...

Look at other sites, I've found a few really good non-harem novels. But, they're freaking rare. Like, I spent hours just searching.

Maybe there are some here, who knows, I never spent time looking through them.

Kirisuna1 worlds' apocalypse online have that harem tag just for show, there is very exceptional girl in it and till now there is nothing like the usual ones, the most the mc did with them is a kiss or a hug, bot because he is a pūzzy or a beta protag, no no no at all he is just that busy surviving and solving the problem of the coming doom the is always apon his head from different apocalypses and schemes. It's a good read really.

Kirisuna1

Unfortunately I am going to tell you what you said last.
"IF YOU DON'T LIKE IT THEN DON'T READ IT"
I mean seriously though, I am not a fan of harem or romance either, but this is a free writing site, and anyone can write what they want. You, as a reader, need to choose what to read. There is even a NO Harem tag for this purpose so just don't read those novels.
Or maybe just look for another site, the novels here are mostly mediocre, except few anyway.

For Dragon's Thrones : Rise of Dragons the herim trop is done in part as a joke but mostly tied to the lore around how the different breeds of dragons came about. I won't go into the details but one example is Sea Dragons are the children of dragons and merfolk (mermaids/mermen). It is also a play on real history as pretty much any emperor would have 1-3 official wives and up to a thousand concubines. The novel even pokes fun at him for collecting brides of different races.

To escape reality.

Real answer: They have this need for creating a story satisfying themselves with their creation, these people’s heads are full of imagination (or lust probably). Majority of the writers about this story are male, ranging from adolscent to young adult (take it with a grain of salt). These people are still young, or at least their mind is, so they are still creating this fantasy of people living with 900 women.

The bad thing is that if the writer is older than 20-ish, they use it to escape reality. Having no gf and all of that. OR satisfy the readers. If he chose the latter, then he's making big bucks.

Conclusion: they do it to satisfy themselves and readers'

To be honest, one time I tried to add Harem in my work, but I realize that it would be a pain in the head, especially I work in almost 4 projects for now. So, I decided do drop the harem keep it straight, one girlfriend is enough.

Kirisuna1 Because maybe it's the authors wish to be as freaky and swingers in real life???

Kirisuna1 Men usually go the harem route. It's a big fantasy of theirs and something I noticed with my husband. I think some women might have the fantasy of a reverse harem with only guys but it has also had some part in history as well. Men in power keeping concubines or mistresses, it is unfortunate that a writer feels compelled to write in such desires. But it is obviously what that writer or writers wish to write about and some folks like to read about. I personally like the soulmate romance novels myself. Two people falling madly and deeply in love with each other.

Beats me
Just being in one relationship can already be stressful...
I can't even begin to imagine a harem.
Just why would you do that to yourself!?
...
I'm kidding BTW.

I mean, if you got the choice to bed women every day or risk your life fighting, why would you choose to expand your kingdom by personally leading wars against other kingdoms and risk losing your life? That's why you'd get a general or someone to fight for you and take care of your problems, the only problem with this is you'd be giving someone else control of the military, which would later come to bite you in the ass with a coup d'etat or other less savory options. So as a king you'd be practically forced to lead major battles to not shake your rule. Also, as a king, you wouldn't really bed every woman you had in your harem, because if you had over 200 concubines and you tried to bed every single one of them every day... you wouldn't rule for very long. (not enough stamina, build additional pylons). (～￣▽￣)～
I don't see a problem with people writing about harems, even though I hate them. In the end, it's just a guy trying to write a story, and the story ends up as a harem because the author can't come up with any better motivations for the MC than to collect women for his harem, it's sad, really. (Sad because the author has no motivations to live himself, and is surviving off of the validation from his readers)

Even when you find a novel without harem, you will find a horney bit** in the reviews giving one star because it is not harem lol

Kirisuna1 YOU SHOULD CHANGE A GOOD STORY INTO A TRASH ONE

I’ll let you in on a little secret - if You don’t like something, it doesn’t mean that it is trash.

Now grow up, gently extract the 20 inch dildo out of your arse and avoid novels with a harem tag.

A_Gitagon It's not like most people have editors to rein them in unless they are legally contracted with Webnovel.

Oh bro, I'm gonna strongly disagree there. Content Editors rarely do anything of that sort. We can turn to them with technical difficulties, or questions, but they won't really help us write. That's not really their job either. Even us, contracted authors have to get an independent editor, to help out with what we should be wiriting. And well, as you said, we're not really making a lot to be able to afford that.

Kirisuna1 I don't often enter these discussions, but, well, as someone who wrote a yuri harem story, I feel I have a little bit of enlightenment to offer. So, here are a few reasons why authors like myself will opt into writing harems:

1. They're fun. There are a lot of funny, entertaining character dynamics you can get into when you approach a harem from the right angle.

2. Horny =/= bad. This is just a personal thing, but people often say "if you want to write horny stuff, just write porn" to which I respond, "but what if I want the horny stuff to have a plot?" I don't really think giving into The Horny (TM) makes a story inherently less creative or lazier, tbh. Hell, I honestly think it's the opposite.

Do you know how hard it is to write a sex scene that doesn't feel cringe to read about? It's pretty difficult in my opinion.

And, finally:

3. Well-written harems are kind of underrepresented. So, if I feel like I can flex my author muscles in that direction, it's tempting precisely because I know there's not much quality at the bottom of that barrel.

I hope this was illuminating to someone.

Kirisuna1 if only webnovel made an effort to add an 'exclude tag' filter