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May 4 question - It's the best of times; it's the worst of times. What are your writer highs (the good times)? And what are your writer lows (the crappy times)? I'm going to skip this month's question because it requires trying to remember things and I just don't feel like doing that right now. It's called being lazy. 😋 Instead, I want to share with you how my foray into serialized fiction went with my novel, Deep Curse. I have a few paying supporters and a handful of followers more. Not much of an audience, but I had hoped maybe the free chapters would grow my supporters and followers. In the beginning, it worked. I got a new supporter and some followers. As the story progressed, the supporter/follower count did not. Kinda-sorta a success. While I enjoyed the process of releasing the story chapter by chapter, unsurprisingly, I didn't much care for the promotion part. I felt like I was beating a dead horse saying, "A new chapter is out. Go read the free chapters." Another thing that makes me hesitant to continue with serial fiction is being told by others that they really don't care to read a book that way. I'd rather read as much as I want, when I want. Which, honestly, that's how I feel too. I have zero desire to read a chapter per week. Let me buy the whole thing and read it in one setting if I want. I don't think serialized fiction has quite caught on like some authors hoped. More than likely, if I had a bigger audience, it would be worth keeping at. Since I don't have that audience, my efforts are best placed elsewhere. Would I do it again? Maybe with a short story, but for now I'm reassessing and rearranging where my energy needs to go in hopes of finding those elusive readers everyone tells me I need. Have you tried serial fiction? Any success? What are you author highs and lows? Is saying, "I'm lazy" a good excuse for everything? 🙃
10 Comments
5/4/2022 09:40:27 am
I haven't had any interest in either reading or writing serialized fiction, for the reasons you listed above.
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5/4/2022 10:26:28 am
So, I like writing it part of the time - as long as it's not the only thing I'm writing. And, for reading serialized fiction, it's much the same. Sometimes I like it, sometimes I don't. I'm more likely to wait until 2-3 chapters are out before I read a segment. I'm not sure why or how 2-3 chapters is more significant than one, but it is for me.
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5/4/2022 11:37:27 am
I haven't tried it. You would think it would be like comic books. Those come out once a week or once a month and readers have to wait to continue the story, and comics are still very popular.
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5/4/2022 01:32:16 pm
I don't think I could do the serial thing either, to write or to read. On the other hand, Dickens made a living at it didn't he.
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5/4/2022 07:55:28 pm
In this day of instant gratification and binge watching TV series, it's possible that serialized fiction just isn't going to cut it. I'd probably just wait until the whole story is done and then binge read it.
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5/4/2022 10:21:45 pm
I haven't tried writing serialized fiction, and I don't much care reading it either. You forget what happened before, when you read a snippet once a week. Even when I post my fiction free on wattpad I only do it after the story is completed, so I can post the entire story.
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5/5/2022 11:21:34 am
I'm with the anti-serial crowd. I'm pretty sure it's good to publish on a little more vigorous schedule than I'm managing, but agree that chapter by chapter makes too many announcements for your followers to get excited for you, and readers may not remember they were reading it, or what they read.
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5/14/2022 08:23:31 pm
OK, I’ll preface this by saying I’m the titular head of #TuesdaySerial.
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