Why I’m writing this shoutout swap guide
There are great launch guides by experienced authors that mention shoutout swaps, but those guides didn't answer many of the questions I had as a beginner.
After asking experienced authors about shoutout swaps and going through SerasStreams's mentorship program - plus getting a few shoutout swaps myself - I've learned a lot.
I'm creating this post to answer all the questions I once had, and to ease the initial confusion beginner writers have with shoutout swaps on Royal Road.
What is a shoutout swap?
If you're writing - or considering writing - your story on Royal Road, you've likely heard of the term 'Shoutout Swap'.
It's often recommended as the best free way to market your story on Royal Road. I don't know if I agree with that assertion, because I haven't gathered enough data yet. But it's by far the easiest way for a beginner writer to market their story on the platform.
A shoutout swap is an agreement between authors to advertise each other's stories.
You do this by placing a code at the end of a chapter (in the author notes) which links to that author's story. It usually contains their story's cover and blurb.
Why shoutout swaps help
Shoutout swaps help because they bring more eyes to your story.
It's cross-audience pollination.
If a reader's enjoying a story, they're more likely to listen to that author's recommendations - especially if the story they're advertising is like the story they're currently reading.
Shoutout swaps on Royal Road help both authors reach each other's audiences. The bigger the author you get a shoutout swap with - the better results you can expect (usually).
But the results you get from a shoutout depends on a variety of factors like: genre fit, type of story, the chapter number you're shouted out in, and more that I'm probably missing here.
How shoutout swaps work on Royal Road
Multiple great launch guides provide a brief overview of how to set up shoutout swaps. So you don't have to crawl the internet to find all the guides, I'll include the ones I recommend here. This guide will cover additional info those guys don't get into.
Launch Guides That Mention Shoutout Swaps:
- Shawn Wilson's Royal Road Launch Guide: https://docs.google.com/document/d/193LodSiyt7A9wFH3Cn8ymGmgOm3Y4QTG4pJcFQdByLA/edit?tab=t.0
- SerasStreams Launch Checklist: https://www.reddit.com/r/royalroad/comments/1ji82gh/launch_checklist_free/
This is recommended by experienced authors:
Three days before you launch your story, create a hype chapter.
Here's how:
- Upload the first chapter of your story 2 - 3 days before your launch date, get it approved
- Delete that chapter and upload a chapter informing potential readers your story is launching soon
The reason to do this is to get access to the link to your story. You need your story link to create your shoutout code.
- Once you have the link to your story, go to this website: https://finitevoid.dev/shoutout
- Paste your story link. Then the shoutout code generator will create the code you need to send to other authors
- Customise the colours and details as you like
Additional Notes From Authors:
Fiddlesoup says: "I posted my chapter 2 weeks before I launched. Deleted and posted and made it to top ten rising stars. I do not believe it affected my run at all"
This is where most guides stop. But I'm about to get into the gritty details.
Now you have your shoutout code. Great. But what do you do next? How do these shoutout swaps actually work?
Good question.
Shoutout swaps work on the honor system.
You confirm a date you're going to shoutout another author's story, and they confirm a date to shoutout your story.
The best way to stay organized with your shoutout swaps is by using a spreadsheet.
SerasStreams has a spreadsheet you can copy for free linked inside his mentorship program document. Link here: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1s42g0g4QHIWp3O_U6ZJWleivNA3Q8dDHd1YwVnA-QUg/edit?tab=t.ds552ydqrfwi
When you've organised a shoutout swap - you paste the shoutout code in the author note at the end of your chapter on Royal Road. The authors you swap with will do the same.
Keep in mind that some authors may stop writing, take down their story, or forget to shout you out.
This is something you need to track because no one else will do it for you. In my experience, if an author is taking down their story or won't be able to shout you out, they'll message you to inform you.
But I've also refused to do shoutout swaps with people who seemed unreliable. I suggest you do the same, because you don't want to deal with that stress.
Now you know how shoutout swaps work. But how do you persuade people to swap with you?
Where do you find these generous authors?
How to get shoutout swaps from authors
These Discords are a good place to connect with authors and get shoutout swaps
- Jay Cartere Community (perfect for dark fantasy authors to find on-genre shoutouts): https://jaycartere.com/discord
- COTEH (must post and meet requirements before you can use the shoutout channel): https://discord.gg/CzKpQv6nxp
- Royal Road Writers Guild: https://discord.gg/d9ZtPYP3X6
The guides then instruct you to get involved in the community and make friends before asking for shoutouts.
This is a good strategy, but there are other options.
If you're an introvert like me, then hearing this strategy probably sounds overwhelming. Make friends? Talk to strangers in a public forum? Me?
The thing is, these servers are welcoming communities (for the most part - though I can only make this guarantee for my own server). Once you chat in their channels, you'll probably find it's not that bad.
You might even enjoy it. They're communities of authors interested in writing - just like you. And the moderation means there's less bitterness than in the salt mines of Reddit. Though - this also means you may get banned if you offend someone or say the wrong thing.
You can learn a lot from the experienced authors who hang out in these channels. But I haven't gained many shoutouts using that method.
There's an easier, faster way.
The Discords I linked have specific channels where you're able to advertise for shoutout swaps. This is a more straightforward way of connecting with other authors who are available and willing to shoutout your story.
I posted in a few Discords as well as SerasStreams's Mentorship Discord's dedicated shoutout swaps channels. I also looked through other authors' posts to see which stories were a good fit for mine, then connected with those authors.
This is a better way to get shoutout swaps, because these are people actively looking for them. However, when you get involved in these communities, you'll discover many authors are open to giving you shoutouts - even the experienced ones.
A combination of both strategies is a good move, though the second strategy gives more immediate results - because it takes time to build relationships with other authors.
You shouldn't join a Discord server and immediately get into a chat asking people for shoutouts.
It's a bad look.
A great tip is to change your display name in these Discords and add something like (open for swaps). This makes it clear to others you're open for shoutout swaps. And this can persuade other authors to message you without you doing a thing.
I got a few shoutouts this way. It's great when paired with the other strategies.
Another way to get shoutouts is to create a post on Reddit. For example, in the Royal Road Reddit community, you can create a post telling people you'll launch your story soon. In the post, you'd say you're looking for shoutouts and ask people to reach out.
The last method of getting shoutout swaps is direct messaging.
You can use this method on Discord, Reddit, and on Royal Road itself. If you see an author and you wanna ask them for a shoutout, you can do so.
You can message them in Discord DM's, Reddit messages, or on Royal Road messages. However, I'd advise against spamming a bunch of authors. Instead, tailor each message to the author specifically.
This doesn't mean you can't use a base template, but you should know what kinda story the author is writing, and if it's a good fit for a shoutout swap with your story. Mass copying and pasting without changes makes you look bad.
This isn't a method that I've used because I don't wanna be annoying. But I have heard other authors report that this method has been successful for them.
It's best to strike up a conversation with someone first before asking for a shoutout if you're going through this method.
When you're using the other methods - people are already primed and ready to exchange shoutouts. That's why the previous methods are less intrusive and less likely to annoy.
Best strategies for shoutout swaps
The best shoutout swaps are the ones with stories similar to yours. Whether in genre, in trope, or in theme. The closer their stories are to yours - the higher conversion rate you can expect.
This analysis comes from my 12+ years experience in marketing, copywriting and common sense. But I have done no experiments to prove my stance.
Many authors aim to get shoutouts from authors who have big followings, regardless of genre. That is also a strategy, although I would expect those conversion rates to be lower.
This is because many readers - like myself - enjoy the genre and type of stories they read, and they want more of the same. But that's not all readers.
There are readers who are open to other genres and stories. So I expect you'll still get some click-throughs from stories that aren't similar to yours. Though I wouldn't recommend that as a main strategy.
It's also worth noting that having a bigger potential audience seeing your story can overwhelm the benefits of swapping shoutouts with a smaller story that matches yours.
If you're lucky enough to have the option between:
- A shoutout swap from a dissimilar 10,000 follower story
- A shoutout swap from a similar 1,000 follower story
You should choose the story with the bigger number. 10x more eyeballs will make up for the loss in conversion rate.
In Shawn Wilson's launch guide, he recommends not doing any shoutout swaps in your first launch week. Then ramping up your shoutouts throughout your first month of release.
For example, I launched my story on September 5th, but I'm getting my first shoutout from SerasStreams on September 12th.
My first scheduled return swap is September 12th. This both allows readers to get into my story before they start seeing advertisements, and it allows me to create a consistent growth curve over time.
Another benefit is I get to see my base stats. This functions as a control variable and allows me to understand how my story performs without shoutouts.
At the time of writing this (Sept 6th, one day post launch of 5 chapters) - I have:
- 2 favourites
- 14 followers
- 2 comments
- 197 total views
- 39 average views
- One 5 star rating (thank you, whoever you are)
These are launch day stats, so the data is a little skewed. But over the next week, I'll analyse my organic growth and understand my baseline stats. I can then extrapolate my first week's stats into monthly projections and so on.
This isn't an exact science, but it gives me the tools to predict my growth, and understand how shoutout swaps and ads are affecting my growth.
I've stacked shoutout swaps in September to give me the best chance of getting into the Rising stars list.
(If you don't know what Rising Stars is, I'm not gonna explain it here. But the basic knowledge you must understand is - getting onto this list gets your story more visibility.)
For example: on Sept 12th, I have one shoutout booked. Sept 13th, two shoutouts. Sept 14th, three shoutouts. And so on.
Stacking your shoutouts like this gives you the potential for constant growth - which is helpful for making it onto Rising Stars. Consistent growth is better than getting a growth boost in one day, then having no growth after that. (As far as the experienced authors recommend.)
Additional Notes From Authors:
Fiddlesoup says: "I don’t have time to go through data I collected but there are three factors more important than on genre swaps:
Front page ptw shout Top ten RS shout High daily reads shout. On genre swaps
On genre for any of the three is obviously better, however a lot of people get in their heads that they should neglect off genre shouts or reject shouts from bigger authors and that really isn’t the case."
Now you understand everything you need to know about shoutout swaps on Royal Road.
If you want to swap shoutouts with me:
1. Check out my story to see if we're a good fit here: https://jaycartere.com/deathrr
I'm prioritising shoutout swaps with authors writing dark fantasy, grimdark, villain MCs and political intrigue. I'm also prioritising stories with at least a few hundred followers and consistent posts while I'm aiming for Rising Stars.
After November 2025, I'll have more available slots for newer authors. However, if you're a new author and you don't mind waiting a while for a return shoutout - contact me anyway. Just be warned that I can't shout you out or help boost your story before then.
2. Join my Discord and post in the shoutouts channel, or send me a message:
https://jaycartere.com/discord
Give me some info about your story and send a link in the #shouts channel.
I've recently purged my Discord server, so it's currently peaceful inside. You could be the first to join if you act fast.
If you have any questions I didn't cover - leave a comment. I'm more than happy to help you bring your stories to more people.
And if your question is good, I'll update this post answering it in depth.
