Webnovel's New Biased Fixed Tag System and How You Could Maximise Them
Updated: May 9, 2022
On this fateful day, we the contracted authors of webnovel received this discord notification.
Many of us thought it was a good thing with a more standardised tag system. However, little did we know how wrong we were.
Patreons to credit: Dame Butterfly. -This could be you. Join now.-
Some things to note before choosing your tags, they are categorised now and while the more mainstream tags can apply to both ML and FL genres in your book creation, the more niche tags are only available based on your book's target audience type.
Webnovel doesn't support niche novel genres too well as well as neutral gender audiences. It's either Male readers or Female readers because they're very old fashioned and don't see the rainbow between.
What classifies as ML (Male lead) genres?
What classifies as FL (Female lead) genres?
A rule of thumb is this. If your target audience are not romance readers, put them under the ML genre. You have more selection.
After deciding on your book's genre, a list of tags would appear for you depending on your book's genre choices.
I will not go through the tags available, you can explore them in your time. However, I will let you know what I think is the best kind of tags to choose from the list of fixed tags. After all, you only have a maximum of 10 tags to add to your book, all regulated by Webnovel.
**For existing authors of Webnovel, I'm sorry but you should not change your genres from FL to ML or vice versa just to find particular tags as it would be troublesome to put you back on features routine. If you have not removed or replaced your tags, leave them there. Once you remove them, they won't be coming back again.**
Similar to the rule of thumb about my tags rule in this blog post, I would say to put a 3:7 ratio weightage on mainstream to niche tags. Granted, with this new standardisation of tags, you won't be able to do niche tags as much. However, I would urge you to find at least 1 best fit for all the categories above where it is applicable.
**The omegaverse tag is under fanfiction for some reason and some miscellaneous tags can fall under All Categories so you want to check everything carefully!**
In case you're unsure why selecting one of each kind is important, I will explain below. If you're not interested feel free to skip.
Character helps a reader find the kind of personality they want for the protagonist of your story. Mainstream readers for ML often find things like antihero, genius, vampire, werewolf, nonhuman etc just to name a few. However, there could also be some tags that aren't literally about your character. They could let the reader know if the story has harem or single female lead for those interested in a side romance type of story. If your story has no romance, try to search for that tag. If you don't find it in FL and that is your story's selling point, move the genre over to ML.
Plot is the driving focus of your story that will not change. It is what you covered in your synopsis. Eg: Adventure, evolution, faceslapping etc. This is important to guide your readers of other people's similar works to check yours out.
Setting is about your world building although I don't think some of the tags in it should be in this category. Maybe Webnovel will change it after a while but for now, you should fill in more tags here if you are doing quick transmigration themes to entice people to check it out. For everyone else with only one world, choose one or two at most and move on.
Tone could be optional to most people. It's just more of an author's disclaimer to the reader's expectations. Eg: comedy, fast-paced, mysterious etc. Yet again, many of the tags in this category do not make sense so I would urge you to glance through it. If you don't find anything useful here, move on. It's the same with the fanfic tag category.
In conclusion...
I think every book should maximise 10 tags as much as possible with more from plot and setting (7 tags if possible) and the remaining 3 from character, tone and others. Once again, this is a guide. It really depends on the selling point of your book. Aim to include tags that would SELL instead of look good. Tags exist to pull readers over from other similar books to your book much like how Youtube recommends based on your watch history.