Publishing One Chapter at a Time?

Are they suggesting you publish while you're drafting, or wait until you've got a finished product, then publish it one chapter at a time?

In the latter situation, I could imagine some scenarios where that might work - publishing in stages via Patreon, for example, and then making an ebook of the whole thing available on Amazon once your patrons have seen the whole thing.

I can think of literally zero ways in which the former situation would not be a truly terrible idea.

I wouldn't buy a book a chapter at a time.

Period.

I wouldn't either. I read so quickly that I'd just forget what was going on in between chapters. It might work for fanfic, but for serious work, it's a terrible idea.

emnorth said:

Hey,

Has anyone had any success with this? A friend of mine mentioned I should do it, but not only do I feel bad, I don't intend on publishing just one chapter at a time when I could finish the book and self publish the whole thing.

Just wondering what other's thoughts were on this?

EM

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A friend of mine is doing this on Radish. e-publishing to the community, in installments, to build her presence and base. She started a few months ago and will have the final chapter up by year's end. She started down the query path, but the more she looked at the numbers, the more she felt she could reach her audience better this way.

Looks like she has 3000 views and 233 subscribers. Her story, "Prep goes Punk," is AWESOME. I know her through writer's club--she writes voicey and edgy and relatable characters. We all love her excerpts.

If you like YA fiction with a punk rock vibe and a ton of voice, look for "Prep goes Punk" on Radish.

She and I compare notes as we go since we're following different paths up the same mountain of publishing. She's definitely not sinking thousands of dollars into a cover artist, formatting, author copies, some forms of marketing, etc. So, she's out way less dough than me. On the other hand, she and I both feel there's something to holding a book and flipping through 'real pages.'

She looked at many options for publishing episodically like this--I think she's doing this to build her reach. Find her audience. She can query her next book if she chooses--she writes standalone.

I hope to build my audience through writing in series.

Her next book is starting off great and I would bet she will query it, but it might depend how Radish goes.

Do you mean on a site like Wattpad or Radish?

Patty said:

A friend of mine is doing this on Radish. e-publishing to the community, in installments, to build her presence and base. She started a few months ago and will have the final chapter up by year's end. She started down the query path, but the more she looked at the numbers, the more she felt she could reach her audience better this way.

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I hope this works really well for her!

But it's worth noting she won't be querying a debut novel, and although it's not straightforward, it can matter. If you've got a previously published book, how well it's done may indeed go into the calculus done by agents and acquiring editors.

It's not a reason not to do this, but it's worth being aware.

This is how Dickens did it, but that was a different time.

I certainly wouldn't release a chapter until I had the whole thing written. Too much of the time I find myself going back to an earlier chapter to stress (or downplay) a particular point or do more establishing of this or that or even adding a subplot. If the early chapter is already published, you lose that ability.

You know, not to derail the thread at all, but I've wondered if this 'debut thing' applies as much as it once did. I've wondered about it over the years. (me, for example, I doubt I will ever write the stories I see agents picking up. Or liking in the pit-mads, or the pitch wars. I see what they 'like,' and I don't write that. And, I see all the work to get there, and separately I hear the critiques on what needs to change in 'me' to 'get an agent' and then I see the grief that sometimes ensues when one has an agent. And then the steep climb/cliff of daunting getting-published numbers, and similarly, difficulties earning-out-an-advance numbers.)

But... my stories are the stories I have to tell.

Anyway. Diversity and all that, and I know, Liz, that you speak from experience and truth, and I hear it.

But, as far as my friend is concerned... the explosion of story-telling techniques lately is remarkable, and my sis (a medievalist who, in the past, has directed Clarion) muses with me about 'storytelling' as it evolves-through-the-ages kind of thing. She was one of my beta readers. Directing Clarion gave her access to another facet of how 'becoming a writer' evolves (and the guests! Oh my.)

My friend on radish -- she also spent a brief period of time sharing her work through a sort-of graphic-novel-phone-app approach. She's a big believer that people interact with media through their phone... more and more. (and looking back even ten years, yeah, it's very true things have changed.) Like, there's a whole swath of people who get 'story' in the checkout line at the supermarket or waiting for the parents to come pick them up or whatever. Best to meet readers where they read. In the end, the graphic-novel-phone approach was more effort than she was willing to invest. She looked at maybe half a dozen of these Radish-style approaches and settled on Radish because of the people using it. Sort of like how some people use instagram, and others use twitter.

She and I are checking the local scene. She does poetry slams and that sort of thing, and took a UCLA extension course with (some literary guy whose name escapes me). I want to find author opportunities for self-promotion. It's all good.

/end derail

No idea if the 'debut' thing will always be true, but she's happy.

Also apologies for the derail. This is the self-pub board, and I want to keep it on that topic if possible.

Patty said:

You know, not to derail the thread at all, but I've wondered if this 'debut thing' applies as much as it once did.

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It's never been a dealbreaker either way, AFAIK. It is, however, a big enticement in some situations. Every publisher wants to be the one on record for discovering the Next Big Thing. It's a marketing knob.

Patty said:

But, as far as my friend is concerned... the explosion of story-telling techniques lately is remarkable

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It is, and I love that. I publish shorts on my web site, and I'll be self-publishing my next series book. (Of course, self-publishing isn't new; what's new are the avenues, and the ease.)

When I post cautious statements, I'm specifically talking to people who are planning to have a trade publishing career. I will NEVER say someone shouldn't use Radish or Wattpad or Kindle to get their work out there before they get a trade deal. But it's true that once your work is published, it's published, and it's part of your work history. Agents will find it. Publishers will find it. And there's nothing wrong with that, but you should know it when you make the choice.

Yes, you may do one chapter at a time for a display site, it can help build an audience for your writing.

Here's the but:

HAVE THE WHOLE BOOK FINISHED, WORK-SHOPPED, TWEAKED, REWRITTEN, POLISHED, AND EDITED FIRST.

The reasons are many, but the main one is:

Reality/life interrupts your writing schedule. You may never finish the book because of some catastrophe, you hit a block, the idea fizzles and dies after a strong start, or you grow bored with it. Your readers get impatient, wondering what happened, then eventually figure things out and leave forever. You don't need that.

Posting what is essentially a first draft is a bad idea. You want the best of your best work out there, so avoid impatience, take the time to do it right. Go through the whole writing/editing process the same as you would if putting the whole book up on Kindle.

Most of us want feedback on our darlings 99% of the time. There's no better egoboo than having a pack of readers breathlessly signing on to read your words -- which may never happen if all that's up there is comparable to a plate of raw chicken.

For the sake of your career, take the time to cook it. I can suggest pulling back from all other distractions, focus on the one book and get the first draft done. It takes effort, but it's doable and you feel awesome when it's finished!

While it's in the hands of beta readers, start messing around on the next book. If it's a sequel, issues may surface that require making changes in the first book. If it's a wholly different story, you'll be glad of the break and chance to flex different writing muscles.

What you won't have is the pressure of a chapter deadline looming on that first book.

Dickens has been mentioned as an example, and I'll echo that it was a different time. He got paid a penny a word (one reason his books were so danged long), and if he didn't produce X-number of words, he didn't eat. It was no egoboo for him, but a matter of survival. He was also in competition with dozens of other chapter-a-week novelists in a very small market.

Be aware that the physical act of writing required large sheets of foolscap paper with no lines, a metal pen, and a bottle of ink to dip it in every few words. Trust me, he'd have killed to have our kind of tech equipment -- or even an old Bic!

Ultimately, your name goes on the finished (fully finished!) work. Make sure it is worth your readers' time. If it is, they WILL be back for more!

As a reader, I think the big thing is, as several others have said: I want assurance that the whole thing is finished before you do the 'chapter at a time' thing. If I have to get it in chunks, I want to have confidence that the next chunk is ready to go.
I especially don't want to be left hanging when the next bright shiny idea comes along, and you ditch the previous work part-way through, with glad cries of "I'll get back to it, but don't you just love this one?"

Consider the backlash against G.R.R. Martin - and he finished whole novels. We don't like to be left hanging.

frimble3 said:

Consider the backlash against G.R.R. Martin - and he finished whole novels. We don't like to be left hanging.

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Dude, I would love to have the backlash against G.R.R. Martin.

You mean in serial form? This is nothing new. Serials are very popular in indie publishing but be warned you could get bad reviews from those who don't like cliffhangers even if you let them know there is one.

I wouldn't publish just a chapter but if you make it longer and have a proper cliffhanger then it would be a serial installment. You won't get many readers who will be happy to buy a chapter. Something like 3-5 chapters an installment would be good. Or having each part be about 10,000 words in length at least.

I've heard horrible things about Radish lately. Apparently they started out okay and now authors aren't happy with the terms and the amount their making. There are other sites like Radish but I'd just put it on sale if I were you.

A friend of mine is doing a Christmas story in daily installments, to end on Christmas Eve. It's raw and mostly unedited work, and it certainly isn't all finished -- he's writing as he's going -- but it is a good exercise, I think.

You can begin reading the daily installments here: All is Bright