You're right. It doesn't HAVE to be a marketing trick. But for a big amount of what passes for the serial format (be the installments short story- or novel-length), it is. From the biggest names to the never-heard-ofs, it's about franchising.
I find one book chopped willy-nilly into fragments (with no regard for a natural story arc in each installment) to be sucky. Regardless if that one "book" was the length of a single novel or the length of six novels. But if someone held a gun to my head and made me choose, I'd pick the one that puts the whole story in my hand in months instead of decades. *shrug*
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