I use a lot of email subscriptions to keep up to date on stories, and I've noticed that when I use the Get Story URLs from Email option, it seems to take significantly longer to parse RoyalRoad notifications than any other. It'll speed through 10-15 emails in as many seconds, then sit at a single Royal Road email notification for upwards of 30 seconds.
I had let my notifications build up for quite a while, and had a few hundred for it to go through, and watching as messages ticked over to Read in my mailbox as FFF scanned through them it was very consistent (and fascinating, in a nerdish sort of way). 1-2 seconds per email (at most), until it hits an RR email, then it would hang for a relatively long time.
I'm happy to pack some of the emails up and/or forward to you if it'll help.
Potentially useful info:
- Using dedicated gmail mailbox for notifications.
- Incoming stories are tagged with the "Story Updates" label by gmail rules on receipt.
- Other sites that I get notification for that do not have this issue include: StoriesOnline (via feedrabbit.com rss-to-email service), AO3, fanfiction.net, and hentaifoundry.
Screenshot of my FFF email settings
This is minor, as I usually just work on other stuff while it pulls emails, so low priority/impact (for me anyway).
edit: I dug into the email and I see RR is using custom links that have to be translated/resolved to actual story urls. That would explain the delay and I can't think of any obvious way to get around it. I think I'll start shuffling those off to a different folder/label and manually calling for updates directly from the existing stories in Calibre. I don't have too many of those anyway.