Received a request from Neovel — Anyone have experience with them?

[risingshards]

I got a request to have my series on Neovel and wanted to look into it a bit more, I was directed on the Discord server to ask here. Does anyone have experience mirroring a story on there?

My concern is they're like another web story site I was asked to be on, where a quick search of their site got like 100+ "DON'T DO THIS IT'S PREDATORY TO WRITERS" results. Neovel seems newer so there doesn't seem to be as much info when I search for them.

[afuji]

Can you ask questions to the person who contacted you about it?

I feel like if they can give you lots of information and assure you (like ways to cancel or delete if you don't find that it's your thing) then you can take a chance? Like, what benefits would you retrieve from posting it there? Maybe you could expand your audience? Are there ways to monetize your novel? etc

On the other hand, seeing as you did some research and it doesn't look too good from that first review huh?

Some googling, looks like it was originally a kickstarter then launched the app - made their goal of over $7500 so there are people who liked the idea and backed it.

There are more reviews on the app store itself on the app:
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=io.neoread.neovel&hl=en_CA&gl=US

I'm not a novelist, but I hope there's someone with experience with it here that could help you out!

[joannekwan]

I see that @Lahin, @saltycyka, and @CodeMonkeyArts mirror there. Perhaps they can provide some insight?

[LadyOttoline]

I've been watching neovel for a while. I think they have good intentions and are a legit company. I got a message from them too and it seemed different than the usual spam trash I get. It mentioned my work by name, it was cler the sender was a real person who had read my work and it specifically talked about why neovel would be a good fit for me. So I think they are legit and it's an honest offer.

But the app only had like 5k downloads. Books over there tend not have huge followings simply because the readers aren't there. I don't know if it's worth the bother of uploading over there. I'm on tapas as a reader so it's easy for me to hop on and reply to comments since I'm on it every day reading stuff I follow. I don't know if I would bother with that on another platform. I guess it's a question of what your goal for your writing is.

[thedude3445]

Neovel isn't predatory. I've met one of the founders at least once, and several of my author friends use it. The site even had a Kickstarter last year.

They are, however, quite small, so don't expect many views from them. If you have the time, though, it doesn't hurt to post on. I plan to crosspost my newest book on there eventually, although not until much later.

I've done pretty thorough research on a lot of web fiction sites, especially the ones that do solicits to authors, and while I don't like it when sites try to get you to post on them without actually offering anything in return, they are NOT like Dreame/Webnovel/Ringdom/etc. scam sites, at least at the moment.

[Lahin]

I never got a message from them, so I'm not entirely sure about that. But I had been looking into Neovel for a while and decided to mirror my story there recently as well. It is a good site and what you got does seem like a legit offer. @ivanskilling has been on there for longer and might have more insight.

[ivanskilling]

Thanks for the ping, @Lahin!

I've had a good experience on Neovel so far. There's no exclusivity contract or anything (Premium novels included) and there's no minimum bar you have to hit to start earning. Views translate to money, basically. That being said, don't expect to earn much because it's still a new site after all. (Earning $1-2 per month is considered good, for example)

It's a nice place to mirror though because you can schedule chapters and leave it there to grow organically. Also, their audience is different from Tapas - you can see a wide variety of genres on their front page. There's a Discord that you can join too.

[DasIstWunderblyat]

@joannekwan Thank you for the pig, I'm late and there are already better answers.
It's a legit site. Still new and not really big on the readership. However, I prefer its tagging system and word editor there than Tapas. In the Discord you can directly chat to the staff for questions or suggestions, they responds fast.

You can host your story for free and it's belongs to you. So far nothing predatory like Dreame, although IMHO I understand why anything unknown approaching you in the internet might set your alarm blaring because there are many predatory platforms.