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I agree with you, Steve: I think there's lot of potential to hook readers on daily serials -- it has worked for comics, soap operas, many TV series, serials in movies in the 1930s-50s...and in print, serialization was a major method of publication until about 50 years ago.
And I agree that the challenge is convincing the customer to ante-up regularly.
I was thinking of publishing my ebooks in shorter (15,000 word segments), serialized, much like a comic book...a new issue every few weeks as it were.
I also wonder if authors might want to band together to jointly publish works, much like the manga "phone books" in Japan. The phone books combine many, many serials (sometimes 20-30 or more) into mammoth print editions (black and white newsprint) with a relatively cheap cover cost of $10 or so...the idea is that while you won't enjoy all of the stories, you will most likely follow at least 5-6 and pick up each new weekly edition. The publishers are always ending one story and starting all new serials every issue to hook and keep readers. Sales stay high, buoyed by popular anchor titles (manga equivalent of Batman or X-Men) but new titles are always added to see if they can generate another hit...readers figure they'll really enjoy *something* so they are more likely to pick up these "grab bag" volumes.
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