OK, first thing: Have you thought about offering little treats to the people reading if they do something arbitrary or just make progress in the book? Like little gold stars or something if they notice stuff or read the same paragraph five times or make it to page 20. It might seem really patronizing and infantilizing, sure, but trust me people go wild for these things!! You'll even sell books to people who aren't interested in what you wrote but just want to collect the little treats. They don't have to be anything real, just kind of pat them on the head with a little text or image or something. Like "Urine Luck! - Made it to the kidney breakfast in Ulysses. 200 ReaderPoints."
Second: There's a lot of forms of entertainment competing for people's attention these days, and no one wants to feel like a chump, so make sure you maximize the amount of time they get out of your book for the dollars spent. If you write your book and it's a skinny little thing, just add a bunch of extra words in there. It doesn't matter if they don't really advance the plot or even fit in, people will be happier if they spend at least 100 hours with your novel. If you have to repeat a scene four or five times that's fine. Or make them read through the chapter they just read, but backwards. That's a classic, and asset-cheap.
Third: Even better than a long book is one that never finishes! If you can just keep adding chapters so that there's never any sort of conclusion or fulfillment you can kind of drag people along forever. This works best if you charge a subscription for your book, but you could also make people pay for each chapter.
Fourth: Customization! People want to be able to decide things for themselves. "But I'm trying to say something very specific!" Nope, sorry. Say YES to the reader! "His hair was dark as the shadows of twilight, and upon it was set a circlet of silver; his eyes were grey as a clear evening, and in them was a light like the light of stars." But what if the reader could CHOOSE the hair color, and make it horrible turquoise? Or better yet, what if they could pay a dollar for the opportunity to make it whatever color they want? This is how you make money from art.
Fifth: Everything should be about combat. If there's not a battle happening right now, we should be gathering resources for the next one, or recovering from the last one, or trying to progress to the next time when there's a fight. You have a book without combat? Well... good luck selling THAT to the mass market.
- incredibly long
- mostly drawn-out combat
- main character does a bunch of side quests that don't advance the main plot at all
