The Value of eSerials for Self Promotion? - An Experiment

PeteDutcher · Oct 6, 2011

Terry Brooks once said that his first novel was never published.

I myself have the same issue. When I look back at my own first novel, I can see how much I have improved in my writing since.

But I have this story that, with a bit of tweaking, I think could be very well received.

So I have this idea. Since the book is complete, I was considering publishing it in eBook format as an eSerial...a series of smaller eBooks for $0.99-$1.99 per edition.

My thinking is this...it might help develop a stronger following. Each edition could have a page promoting one of my other books.

It would place more products out there with my name on them. This will help in searches.

My other thought is could this be a way to addapt to the growing eBook market? Are there other advantages?

Old Hack · Oct 6, 2011

Why would people pay that much for a chapter of your work when they can buy a whole novel for the same price?

Not that I'm being rude or anything, but I wanted to point out that problem which you will have to address before you go ahead.

Captcha · Oct 6, 2011

If it's not good enough to be published on its own, you may not want it published at all. If someone's interested in checking out your work, they will quite possibly chose the cheapest available story, and if that story is sub-par, they won't bother to read your other, better stuff...

PeteDutcher · Oct 7, 2011

@Old Hack
Would not only be one chapter. Would be 100-150 pages each.

And they cannot buy the novel for the same price...it's not available on the market at this point.

There have been cases where this has succeeded. I didn't come up with the idea, though I'd have to do some digging to refind the details. But in the cases I read of, beginning authors were able to build a successful following. But those cases I remember reading of were at least 10 years back.

@Captcha
The story is not subpar...the writing just needs a little tweaking here and there. Since the book is already written, those tweaks would take little effort and I would have enough story for several months...it's a big story.

My thoughts...
The story is good...actually really good. By tweaking I meant editting. I'm thinking of it sort of being an experiment.

The thing is, if I do this, it's unlikely that a traditional publish will desire to publish the book in the future, so I have to be willing to to make that sacrifice.

Or, it could be successful enough to gather traditional support in a collected form. It's a gamble...but what if it does work?

I can see several people here don't think it will, but has anyone actually tried it? People didn't think man could fly until two brothers did it.

The truth is...
I'm thinking the industry is changing. Right now, people like printed books. But the time will come when all books are electronic. I believe we need to find ways to addapt to that, or we will eventually perish.

Some people have to take chances now so that others can benefit later.

This is something I've been thinking about for over a year now. Still am thinking about it...but I think I'm nearly ready to take action.

A printed paperback is going for around $8.99 right now. This could be a some price of all the parts combined.

So if its 5 parts, it would be around $1.80 for each.

Again...
I'm just thinking this through. If you were conducting such an experiment, how would you approach it?

BenPanced · Oct 7, 2011

PeteDutcher said:
The story is good...actually really good. By tweaking I meant editting. I'm thinking of it sort of being an experiment.

The thing is, if I do this, it's unlikely that a traditional publish will desire to publish the book in the future, so I have to be willing to to make that sacrifice.

Have you tried going to a commercial publisher with this story? Don't rule it out entirely.

Or, it could be successful enough to gather traditional support in a collected form. It's a gamble...but what if it does work?

It's even a gamble with e-pub, so you're taking a chance no matter what format you use.

I can see several people here don't think it will, but has anyone actually tried it? People didn't think man could fly until two brothers did it.

It's not people think it won't work. It's people are cautioning you to look at your risks.

The truth is...
I'm thinking the industry is changing. Right now, people like printed books. But the time will come when all books are electronic. I believe we need to find ways to addapt to that, or we will eventually perish.

Yeah, but print has been around for several centuries. If ain't gone by now, it'll never leave.

Some people have to take chances now so that others can benefit later.

This is something I've been thinking about for over a year now. Still am thinking about it...but I think I'm nearly ready to take action.

A printed paperback is going for around $8.99 right now. This could be a some price of all the parts combined.

So if its 5 parts, it would be around $1.80 for each.

Again...
I'm just thinking this through. If you were conducting such an experiment, how would you approach it?

But people are expecting e-books for .99 - $1.99. Many are not willing to pay the same price as hardcopy, so you'll be hard pressed to sell an e-pubbed short story or chapter of a serial for the same price as a full novel.

veinglory · Oct 7, 2011

The thing is you are asking people to pay $1 for part of a book, when they can by a whole book for that amount. You know your book is astounding and great. They don't. They just see thousands of books by new authors most of which are not great, and some of which are great. Each purchase is a gamble and it makes more sense to gamble on a whole pie than a slice, if it is the same price.

elae · Oct 7, 2011

The final part of my 9-issue ebook serial was just released this week. It's a comic, so in a way my readers may be more used to serialized issues than the average novel reader, but I can say that our sales for issue 1 are probably 4 times as high as those for issue 2. For issues 2-9, the sales difference between each issue is much less.

A lot of people will try out the first issue/episode of a series. The ones who stick with you tend to be reliable (though you'll always lose some who forget to check for the next release).

We did release a collected edition of issues 1-4, and the sales on that are higher than the individual sales of issue 4. So I would recommend collections. In our case, we actually lowered the price, but made *more*, due to the higher-than-$2.99 royalty rate change. The individual issues are $0.99, for what it's worth.

We just released a complete collection (issues 1-9) through a number of our apps/distributors, so it will be interesting to see how the sales on that compare to the individual issues, and if many people will keep buying them individually.

Hope that helps!

edit: I will add, if you're serializing your story, it's IMPORTANT to keep a reliable schedule. We released every 6 weeks, with only one hiccup (I was in China for 2 weeks). We made sure our readers knew when they could expect a new issue, and that this wasn't some forever-going story that they would never see the end of. I find readers are a lot less likely to commit to a serial if they don't know how much they'll have paid by the finale.

Gatita · Oct 7, 2011

Wow, this is really interesting. Pete, let us know how the experiment goes!

elae, the comic looks beautiful. Just bought chapter 1.

elae · Oct 9, 2011

Thanks, Gatita!

uscgbyron · Oct 10, 2011

I say go for it. What can you hurt. To play devils advocate, the readers you *might* turn away with your serial *might* never see your other work.
What Elae said about scheduled releases sounds like excellent marketing/planning to me, and if it is already written, it won't be hard at all to do scheduled releases.
As far as price point, I price anything under 10kK at .99, from 10k - 50k I price at 2.99 and above 50k I price at 5.99.
I've heard arguments for whole novels at .99 to be competetive with others and so on but here's my take. What do magazines pay for stories? What I've seen is typically .01-.05 a word. If you have a 3000 word short story that is a $30-$150 for the story. At .99/story on Amazon, you have to sell 100 copies to make $35 in royalties... so if anything .99 for a 3000 story is one hell of a deal.
Other folks have different strategies from me and that's fine, they might work better. But don't hesitate to put it out there if you think it is fit for consumption. The worst that can happen is no one buys it and you re-release it down the line when you're famous :hooray:

Carradee · Oct 11, 2011

BenPanced said:
But people are expecting e-books for .99 - $1.99. Many are not willing to pay the same price as hardcopy, so you'll be hard pressed to sell an e-pubbed short story or chapter of a serial for the same price as a full novel.

Um, what? The "usual" indie price for e-books is all over the price. Overall, pricing (and readership) seems to fall in groups:

The "free novel" group, which have to face that they might never be read.
The "$0.99 novel" group, which are more likely to face stigmas and expectations of poor quality.
The $2.99-ish novel group, stemming from the cost of a specialty coffee and from Konrath previously calling that "the sweet spot".
The $4.99-ish novel group, stemming from the psychology of $5 and the advice of Dean Wesley Smith, who tend to be read shortly after purchase.

Lots of people price their short stories at $0.99; the crux is that it must be clearly marked, and it helps to list the word count and approximate page count.

Will folks who only want to pay $0.99 or $1.99 buy a more expensive story? No. But if you charge more, that's not the audience you're aiming for.

Personally, I'll sooner spend $0.99 on a short story from an author whose blog I like than drop that same $0.99 on a novel that sounds fantastic but is by an author whose writing I've never seen.

Serializations can work. Personally, I flunked mine. I wrote a post on that here, if you're interested. It's geared for web novels (on blogs), but you might find some pointers.

Definitely have a schedule, though.

SafetyDance · Oct 11, 2011

Serials can and do work if you post them for free on well-trafficked websites before you publish them as a whole. I know quite a few authors who published on said sites (fanfic sites and then changed character names; Literotica), took the story down, and then published. A lot of people went on to buy the book (in its full form) and they have made good money.

The novels I have coming out next year were originally online. I don't know what the response will be but it's nice to have the support of customers-in-waiting.

PeteDutcher · Oct 12, 2011

Thank you for the input, everyone. Opinions vary, so I'm considering doing this. I'm not concerned with it hurting future sales of other books. I know marketing fairly well and I understand you can always climb out of a hole like that by working through it.

Also, I was thinking of making each edition 23,250 words, which is equal to about 105 novel pages. That will give me 4 editions at present.

I'm thinking the advantage is this: It is in multiple parts, but only 4, so readers have less time to wait for a collected edition.

The problem I might be facing is that while looking over the manuscript, I got inspired for a second volume...and I'm not sure how I should approach it in regard to this experiement. It may be a year before I complete volume two (the second 90k word book) because I am currently working on a book that has a January deadline. (one I am very excited over!)

So...I'm still in the planning stages...when I do this, I want to market it as well. I have a background in marketing...so I have some ideas to drum up support for the project.

If it goes well...who knows? Maybe it will expand into other projects as well. My goal though is a big one...find a way to make it pay off for me the way a printed book would. That's currently next to impossible, I think, but I'm determined to find a method.

PeteDutcher · Oct 13, 2011

Okay...I have the individual books created. They each have around 31,000 words.

In addition, I have found a publisher that is willing to release the book in print after the eSerial is complete (it will be printed in collected form).

the only thing I'm waiting on now is to hear from Marisa A. Corvisiero as to whether she wants to present the book to a traditional publisher...if she does, I guess I have to come up with another book to experiment with.

On another topic, my eBook Victorious found a publisher! It's a small press one, but that's okay...I really didn't expect to get a publisher for a print version anyway. I'll let people know once the details are ironed out.

PeteDutcher · Oct 14, 2011

Well...plans delayed, lol.

Marisa's office requested a full today. No way am I self publishing it if I can get her as my agent!

tko · Oct 25, 2011

as a reader

I've got maybe 1000 books to choose from. I'm trying to make up my mind what to buy next. One of these 1000 books is sold in pieces and I have to assemble it myself. It's not discounted, and is more expensive than a complete novel.

See where this is going?

One other thought. Each section you sell had better have a dynamite, complete, and fulfilling ending. I haven't read one famous sci fi author to this day because 25 years year ago they left me in the lurch.

J. Tanner · Nov 1, 2011

Serialization has been plenty popular in comic books and television with the audience. While rare for prose fiction it can be done, and done successfully. King's Green Mile being the most high-profile example.

What will work in e-pub is anyone's guess at this time, but people are experimenting with serialization.

Platt & Wright's Yesterday's Gone is my favorite current example. Their branding and marketing are spot on, and they're having reasonable success selling it based on their Amazon ranking. If you're considering serialization, it really should be planned out and branded as well as these guys are doing it rather than just breaking up a novel into X parts of Y size randomly.

PeteDutcher · Nov 1, 2011

tko said:
I've got maybe 1000 books to choose from. I'm trying to make up my mind what to buy next. One of these 1000 books is sold in pieces and I have to assemble it myself. It's not discounted, and is more expensive than a complete novel.

See where this is going?

One other thought. Each section you sell had better have a dynamite, complete, and fulfilling ending. I haven't read one famous sci fi author to this day because 25 years year ago they left me in the lurch.

The fault in your logic is in the pricing. The eSerial is actually cheaper overall than the sold in completion. For example, If you look up a George R. R. Martin ebook, it will cost you between $8.99 and $9.99, depending on where you get it.

The eSerial is a complete novel broken down into 3 parts...each priced at just $1.99

That's a total of $5.97...much cheaper than the "complete" novels.

In addition...
I decided to try something else as well. I am now selling the Kindle ($79 model) on my website, and anyone that purchases it get all three eSerial editions in advance for only $4.00 (added into the price). Add in shipping and handling and it has a price of $89.99. (which is the same cost as Amazon+shipping with the $4.00 added).

The actual experiment has begun as of today (http://www.amazon.com/dp/B0061MRWBQ/?tag=absowrit-20).

Again...it doesn't really matter if we think it will work out...what matters is the sales figures. We shall see.

The Value of eSerials for Self Promotion? - An Experiment

PeteDutcher

Twitter: @petedutcherjr

Old Hack

Such a nasty woman

Captcha

PeteDutcher

Twitter: @petedutcherjr

BenPanced

THE BLUEBERRY QUEEN OF HADES (he/him)

veinglory

volitare nequeo

elae

time to draw

Gatita

Girl reporter

elae

time to draw

uscgbyron

figuring it all out

Carradee

practical experience, FTW

SafetyDance

L'Oreal. He's worth it.

PeteDutcher

Twitter: @petedutcherjr

PeteDutcher

Twitter: @petedutcherjr

PeteDutcher

Twitter: @petedutcherjr

tko

just thanks fore everything

J. Tanner

PeteDutcher

Twitter: @petedutcherjr