New rules for promotion posts
Hello RFM community! We are making some changes to promotion posts in our community. You can find the full rules over on the promotion rules wiki page. The main changes are:
- Removal of the participation requirement
- Promotion limited to 6 books per account per year (mods will make exceptions for authors engaged in the community beyond promoting their own work)
- Books must meaningfully center romance (Co-plot or higher) and include a HEA
- Authors must complete a one-time submission form before posting. That form can be found here.
Why change the rules?
We are limiting promotion to create a fairer and less crowded front page that is, at the same time, more open to new writers.
The front page is a shared space. Promotion posts need to share space with discussion posts, and author's promotion posts need to share space with each other. Some authors were posting upwards of twenty-five books a year, while others maybe one or two. A six-book-per-year limit creates a more level promotional field. Exceptions will be made for authors who are positively engaged in the community outside of their own works.
Originally the participation rule served two purposes, to reward active authors, and to serve as an informal onboarding process for authors new to the genre. It sounded great in theory, but in practice it encouraged vapid comments, enforcement was uneven, and it mostly acted as a barrier to new authors. Books that fit within our community were being rejected, while a small number of authors were getting a lot of front page visibility. My hope is that by removing the participation requirement, all authors can focus on writing, and more authors will get a chance to promote.
The form ensures that all promoted books meet our core genre requirements (HEA and romance focus) before reaching the front page. This allows us to apply rules consistently and avoid back-and-forth moderation. It is a regular occurrence (particularly on the Discord) for writers to join wanting to share their story, not realizing there is a difference between a love story (with a tragic ending) and genre romance. Authors who have already participated in our community are grandfathered; please reach out to via modmail so we can add an exception to the automod rule for you.
At minimum, romance must be a co-plot, meaning the relationship materially affects the story’s direction and outcome. That means the primary relationship(s) should not just exist in the story, the story should be, to some degree, about the relationship.
The mod team will continue to make adjustments as need arises.