The Defier Paradox: When the Author Who Wrote the Book on Monetization Became the Cautionary Tale

In 2021, an author calling himself TheFirstDefier published what would become one of the most influential guides in the serial fiction community: "Running your story like the business it is."

The guide's core message was elegant: passion and business aren't opposites. You can treat your writing professionally while still loving what you create. "The most important part of writing a long-running webnovel," he wrote, "is a passion for your work."

TheFirstDefier wasn't just theorizing. His series Defiance of the Fall had already become a phenomenon—millions of readers, thousands of Patreon supporters, and a Kindle Unlimited presence that dominated the charts. He was the success story other authors wanted to become.

Four years and fifteen books later, the narrative has shifted.

"This author seems to care more about the money than he does about telling a good story." — Dark Lord Potter Forums

"90% internal exposition and 10% actually doing anything... 50 plus book series with horrible pacing." — Book 13 Goodreads review, 1★

"Patreon success can be a killer to the authors' creativity." — Goodreads reviewer

The same author praised for his business acumen is now cited as the cautionary tale. The same guide that helped hundreds of authors monetize is invoked as evidence of what happens when you follow the money too far.

This is the Defier Paradox: How can an author who wrote the definitive guide on balancing business with passion become the example readers point to for prioritizing money over story?

We analyzed four years of data to find out.

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The Data: A Story in Two Acts

We collected Goodreads ratings for all 15 Defiance of the Fall books, sampled 80+ reviews across key inflection points, and tracked sentiment patterns from Book 1 to Book 15.

Act 1: The Rise (Books 1-5)

Book	Avg Rating	Publication Date
1	4.35	May 2021
2	4.52	Jul 2021
3	4.49	Nov 2021
4	4.48	Feb 2022
5	4.49	May 2022

The early books established Defiance of the Fall as one of the premier LitRPG series. Reviews from this era glow:

"World building of the highest order." — Book 1, 4★

"Almost always a sense of adventure and discovery." — Book 1, 5★

"Characters have so much depth... stakes keep getting better." — Book 4, 4★

Ratings peaked at 4.52 with Book 2 and stayed stable through Book 5. The series was firing on all cylinders.

Act 2: The Shift (Books 6-15)

Book	Avg Rating	Change from Peak
6	4.37	-0.15
7	4.40	-0.12
8	4.48	-0.04
9	4.46	-0.06
10	4.49	-0.03
11	4.51	-0.01
12	4.46	-0.06
13	4.35	-0.17
14	4.26	-0.26
15	4.24	-0.28

Book 6 marked the first notable dip. Books 7-11 showed recovery and stability. But starting with Book 13, ratings entered accelerating decline—dropping from 4.35 to 4.26 to 4.24.

Total decline: 0.28 points from peak. That might sound small until you consider what it represents: a systematic shift in reader perception of a once-beloved series.

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The Sentiment Shift: From "Couldn't Put It Down" to "Cultivation Cliff"

Numbers tell part of the story. Reviews tell the rest.

We coded reviews across Books 1, 4, 7, 10, and 13 for four sentiment categories: filler/padding complaints, cultivation/dao complaints, pacing/slow complaints, and positive momentum mentions.

Sentiment Trajectory by Book

Category	Book 1	Book 4	Book 7	Book 10	Book 13
Filler/Padding	20%	25%	38%	67%	67%
Cultivation/Dao	10%	19%	25%	44%	80%
Pacing/Slow	27%	25%	63%	78%	80%
Positive Momentum	40%	44%	25%	28%	20%

Three patterns leap out:

1. Book 7 is the tipping point. Pacing complaints jump from 25% to 63%. This is when readers started noticing something had changed.

2. Books 10-13 show the "Cultivation Cliff." Complaints about cultivation content explode from 44% to 80%. What was once a minor gripe becomes the dominant criticism.

3. Positive momentum collapses. Reviews mentioning excitement, engagement, and "couldn't put it down" energy fall from 44% (Book 4) to 20% (Book 13).

The Voice of the Shift

Book 7 (October 2022)—when readers started noticing:

"The first 40%? Slow as molasses." — Book 7, 2.5★

"Mired in useless and confusing detail and losing the narrative." — Book 7, 1★

"Entire book felt like filler, and not very good filler." — Book 7, 3★

Book 10 (August 2023)—filler dominates:

"A lot of book 10 was filler... felt like a long transition piece." — Book 10, 3.5★

"Endless pages of him consolidating gains which is just... booooooring." — Book 10, 2★

Book 13 (June 2024)—the cultivation cliff:

"Every other page was another explanation of cultivation. Very little storytelling." — Book 13, 2★

"90% internal exposition and 10% actually doing anything." — Book 13, 1★

"75% of run time explaining nonsense that doesn't matter... 87,000th time contemplating insane depths." — Book 13, 2★

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The Timeline: When Did It Happen?

To understand the paradox, we need to overlay the quality data with the business data.

Financial Timeline

Period	Est. Monthly Income	Corresponding Books	Notes
2019-2021	Building	Web novel on RR	Patreon launched
May 2021	~$5-10k	Book 1	Amazon debut
2022	$20k+/mo	Books 4-7	Peak Patreon era
Jun 2023	$20k+	Books 8-10	~5,000 patrons (peak)
2024	Declining	Books 12-14	Patron count drops
Jan 2026	$8-22k/mo	Book 15	2,808 paid patrons

TheFirstDefier himself wrote in 2022:

"When I started, the blockbusters in the genre were making $5-7,000/month on Patreon... Now, there are a bunch of us making over $20,000/month on Patreon alone, in addition to the piles of cash coming from Amazon."

The correlation is striking. Book 6's quality dip (August 2022) coincides almost exactly with the series reaching peak financial success. The "cultivation cliff" of Books 13-15 follows Patreon's patron decline—suggesting readers voted with their wallets.

The 100-Chapter Problem

Multiple reviews reference a revealing detail: the series was originally planned for approximately 100 chapters.

"The author even said that the story was only planned for a hundred chapters, which kind of explains the drop in quality and significance." — Goodreads reviewer

Defiance of the Fall is now at 3,000+ chapters. What was once a contained story has become something very different.

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What Readers Attribute It To

We're not the first to notice this pattern. The community has been discussing it for years—and they've reached their own conclusions.

Direct Attribution to Financial Incentives

"This boringness is probably caused by the inability to end the story due to Patreon and the difficulty of creating actual story content, compounded by the author's ambitious 5 chapters a week." — Goodreads reviewer

"Patreon success can be a killer to the authors' creativity, when they start releasing meaningless dragged out chapters... Sadly, this is an example of the former." — Goodreads reviewer

"He's pretty clear in the Patreon discord about how everything he does is to get more subscribers and more money. I don't have anything against an author trying to make money; however, this author seems to care more about the money than he does about telling a good story." — Dark Lord Potter Forums

"This is caused by the trap of patreon, where the author feels the need to keep putting out content to keep the money coming." — Goodreads reviewer

The pattern in these quotes is consistent: readers perceive a shift from story-driven writing to business-driven writing.

The Paradox Named

The most striking aspect is how readers explicitly connect the guide to its author's outcome:

The same author who wrote "the most important part of writing a long-running webnovel is a passion for your work" is now cited as evidence that financial success can erode that passion.

Both things are true. The guide helped hundreds of authors. The series that funded the guide's credibility has become a cautionary tale. That's the paradox.

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The Control Group: Authors Who Avoided the Trap

Is declining quality inevitable for long-running series? The data says no.

We compared Defiance of the Fall to three other major series: Cradle, Beware of Chicken, and Dungeon Crawler Carl.

Rating Trajectories

Series	Start	Peak	Latest	Change
Cradle	4.14	4.68	4.62	+0.48
Dungeon Crawler Carl	4.49	4.69	4.68	+0.19
Beware of Chicken	4.48	4.66	4.56	+0.08
Defiance of the Fall	4.35	4.52	4.24	-0.28

Defiance of the Fall is the only series in our comparison with a declining trajectory. The others maintained or improved their ratings.

What do they do differently?

1. They Planned the Ending

Cradle was structured as 12 books in three acts from the start. Will Wight executed that plan and ended the series at its peak, despite the commercial pressure to continue.

Dungeon Crawler Carl has a stated 10-book plan. The author knows where it's going.

Defiance of the Fall was planned for ~100 chapters. That plan was abandoned somewhere around the 200-chapter mark. Three thousand chapters later, there's no end in sight.

2. The MC Has Goals Beyond Power

This distinction matters more than it might seem.

Cradle: Lindon wants to protect his homeland and the people he loves. Power is a means to an end.

Beware of Chicken: Jin Rou explicitly rejects the cultivation rat race. He wants to farm, build community, and be a good father figure. One reader put it perfectly:

"Its comfort. Man wakes up with memories of the body he is reborn into, sees cultivators and nopes the fuck out. He just wants to live his best farm life." — Reddit, 17 upvotes

Dungeon Crawler Carl: Carl wants to survive and save his friends. The emotional stakes remain high because they're about people, not power levels.

Defiance of the Fall: Zac's primary goal is getting stronger. That's the whole point. Which means every cultivation chapter is, in theory, plot-relevant—but in practice, readers experience it as:

"87,000th time contemplating insane depths"

When power is the only goal, every power-related tangent feels like main plot. But to readers, it's filler.

3. Visibility Into Reader Behavior

Here's where it gets structural—but perhaps not in the way you'd expect.

Cradle uses a book-first model (Kindle Unlimited). Will Wight gets detailed KDP reports showing read-through rates, where readers stop, and which books retain audiences. He can see problems forming and course-correct.

Beware of Chicken maintains an active Discord community where Casualfarmer gets constant qualitative feedback. When pacing feels off, readers say so immediately—not in Goodreads reviews months later.

Dungeon Crawler Carl's author Matt Dinniman is famous for engaging with reader feedback and adjusting based on what's working. He has visibility into audience sentiment in real-time.

Defiance of the Fall used Patreon—a platform built for podcasters and YouTubers that provides zero fiction-specific analytics. No reader progression data. No drop-off tracking. No way to see the "cultivation cliff" forming until it showed up in Amazon reviews months after the chapters were written.

The pattern isn't about which monetization model is "correct." It's about whether the author has visibility into reader behavior before problems become permanent.

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The Visibility Gap

Here's the thesis: TheFirstDefier's guide is correct, and his series demonstrates what happens when you follow good advice with bad tools.

Passion matters. Business acumen matters. But without visibility into how readers are actually experiencing your story, you're flying blind.

The Patreon Problem (For Fiction)

Patreon was built for creators who ship discrete pieces of content—podcast episodes, YouTube videos, art pieces. Each piece stands alone. Audience feedback is immediate and obvious.

Serial fiction is different:

• Reader satisfaction compounds over arcs, not chapters
• Quality problems take months to surface in reviews
• A "cultivation cliff" builds invisibly across 50 chapters before anyone notices
• By the time Goodreads ratings drop, the problematic content was written a year ago

When you're managing a 50-chapter advance buffer with zero reader progression analytics, you have no early warning system. You can't see:

• Where readers are actually stopping
• Which chapters cause subscription cancellations
• Whether your latest arc is landing or losing people

You find out when Amazon reviews tank—months after you could have course-corrected.

The 50-Chapter Blind Spot

At peak, TheFirstDefier maintained a 50-chapter advance buffer while publishing 5 chapters per week. That's 10 weeks of content sitting between him and reader feedback.

The "cultivation cliff" that readers identified in Books 10-13? Those chapters were written and locked into the Patreon pipeline long before any quality signal could reach the author. By the time reviews called out the problem, the content was ancient history.

This isn't a flaw in chapter-advance monetization. It's a flaw in using tools that give you no visibility into fiction-specific reader behavior.

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What This Means for Serial Authors

We're not here to attack TheFirstDefier. He built something remarkable, helped countless authors, and produced 3,000+ chapters of fiction that millions have enjoyed. That's an achievement regardless of how later books were received.

But the data tells a story that matters for every web serial author.

The Guide's Advice Is Still Sound

Passion matters. Consistency matters. Professional approach matters. Everything in "Running your story like the business it is" remains true.

One author reported:

"Listening to Defier in the RR discord way back like a year and a half ago was what got me to take writing seriously and go from 200 followers to 5,000 followers 6 months later."

The advice works. It just doesn't immunize you against flying blind—using platforms that give you zero visibility into how readers experience your story.

But Tools Matter Too

Consider what visibility you'll have into reader behavior before you need it:

If you use chapter-advance monetization:

• You need reader progression analytics—where are readers actually stopping?
• You need conversion data by chapter—which chapters drive subscriptions vs. cancellations?
• You need early warning signals before quality problems show up in reviews months later

Questions to ask about any platform:

• Can I see where readers drop off in my story?
• Will I know if my latest arc is losing people before it's too late to adjust?
• Do I have visibility into the 50-chapter pipeline, or am I flying blind?

The authors who maintain quality across long series aren't necessarily better writers. They often have better feedback loops—whether through engaged Discord communities, KDP read-through analytics, or platforms built specifically for serial fiction.

Plan Your Ending

The single biggest predictor of quality maintenance in our data: having a planned ending.

Cradle planned 12 books and delivered 12 books. Dungeon Crawler Carl is planned for 10. Series with endpoints maintain quality because every book serves a larger structure.

Defiance of the Fall planned 100 chapters. That plan is long gone. Without an endpoint, every arc becomes a potential extension point, and the story loses direction.

Plan your ending before you need income. Once you're earning $20k/month from continuation, the ending becomes harder to write.

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The Defenders

In fairness, the series still has passionate fans. Even Book 13 has 20% positive reviews in our sample.

"Key to enjoying this series is patience." — Book 13, 5★

"With such a long series, there are bound to be pacing issues as some ARCs may not be as action oriented as others. I've read all books out till now and RR chapters too and overall, I find this a worthy read." — Goodreads reviewer

"As to DOTF, yes the later books are rather slow, but I personally think that makes them better." — Reddit

For readers who love cultivation content, the later books deliver exactly what they want. The series hasn't "declined" for everyone—it's specialized toward a particular audience.

But the Goodreads data shows that audience is shrinking. The rating trajectory doesn't lie.

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Conclusion: Good Advice ≠ Immunity

The Defier Paradox resolves into something instructive:

Good advice about balancing passion and business is necessary but not sufficient. Without tools that give you visibility into reader behavior, even the best intentions can drift off course.

TheFirstDefier's guide remains one of the best resources on serial fiction monetization. Defiance of the Fall remains a cautionary tale about what happens when you're flying blind—using tools built for podcasters to manage a 3,000-chapter novel.

Both things are true. That's the paradox—and the lesson.

For authors: demand better tools. You need visibility into reader progression, drop-off points, and chapter-level conversion data. The structure you build in year one will shape your creative options in year five—but only if you can actually see what's happening.

For readers: understanding these dynamics can help you appreciate what your favorite authors are navigating. The ones whose series stay good often have better feedback loops, not just better discipline.

And for the industry: the problem isn't chapter-advance monetization—it's that the dominant platform has zero understanding of serial fiction. Platforms built specifically for fiction writers, with fiction-specific analytics, will produce better outcomes for everyone.

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Methodology

This analysis draws on:

• Goodreads ratings for all 15 Defiance of the Fall books (collected January 2026)
• Sentiment analysis of 80+ reviews sampled across Books 1, 4, 7, 10, and 13
• Comparative data for Cradle (12 books), Beware of Chicken (5 books), and Dungeon Crawler Carl (7 books)
• Patreon data from Graphtreon and direct observation
• Community discussion from Reddit (r/ProgressionFantasy, r/LitRPG), Goodreads, Royal Road forums, and other sources

We attempted to locate a specific quote where TheFirstDefier discussed his creative approach after achieving financial success. This quote was referenced in community discussions but could not be verified in publicly accessible sources (it may exist in Patreon-only or Discord content). Our analysis focuses on publicly documented reader perceptions rather than unverified author statements.

Related reading: Our previous analysis, "Why Do Great LitRPG Series Fall Off?", examines broader patterns across 1,147 Reddit comments about series quality decline.

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At Chapter Chronicles, we're building the analytics that Patreon should have had from the start—reader progression tracking, chapter-level conversion data, and drop-off analytics. If you want visibility into how readers actually experience your story, learn more about how we're approaching serial fiction differently.