[AngryD]

Originally Posted by davidfor

@AngryD: The problem with your argument, is that there are already people doing exactly what you say will not work.

Not really. There are very few people selling SERIAL EBOOKS on a mobile reading platform and making it work. There are some people writing serial fiction and posting to various blogging sites. I've even done it myself. Few are charging for it, because it's an unsustainable economic model. As content quality is simply not going to be there for the vast majority of the published works, consumers are going to stop risking money on fiction that sputters out four chapters in.

For the record, I read about a dozen articles on this before I posted in reply. Not one "author" who was positive about it was previously published as a novelist, or even well known.

One of my all time favorite shows is Red vs Blue. Even the developers of that web series, such as Bernie Burns, state outright that when they stopped trying to make one show every week and just "stay ahead of the audience" and started writing entire seasons as one larger arc, quality improved and so did sales. (My dogs are named Caboose and Doc after two characters from that show.)

We already live in a world where tradpubs would rather take Stephen King's WORST book than the best fiction written by a total unknown, because King's name sells. Trying to compete at a 50 cents per CHAPTER price point from Rando Calrissian when I can get an entire complete novel from King for $4.99 on the same electronic reader is not going to be marketable in the long run. The rollout was dismal, and sales are already suffering-- and I should point out that this is the "back to school period" where people buy tons of books. EBook sales typically RISE in August through January as people (students) get back into reading and give gifts to one another for the holidays. (We had this discussion in another thread.)

For this type of fiction to be seeing a sales decline at this time of year is a sign of its lack of long term profitability.

Originally Posted by davidfor

There are a plenty of sites out there that are publishing stories one chapter at a time. And some of these are for very long running stories. Some are free, some charge a membership fee, and I believe some charge by the chapter in some mechanism.

Yep. And a case can be made that some authors will, as you mentioned, plot out and plan an entire book, write it, and release it serially. However, a quick examination of Wattpad shows that some 90% of the books started there are unfinished and have not been updated in more than six months. The overwhelming majority of serial fiction is not completed.

As a consumer, this means 90% of the products I buy are not going to be properly ended. This is frustrating, and it is in direct competition with every full season of "American Horror Story", the upcoming release of "HALO 6", and every other fully-completed entertainment release.

Originally Posted by davidfor

The quality is there. Or at least the mix of qualities is no different than the mix of quality of more traditionally published ebooks.

In 2017 I bought the worst ebook I have ever read. The author literally changed verb tenses four times in the opening paragraph and I couldn't read three pages. Imagine the worst sixth grade science fiction story of which you have ever heard. "And then John closes his fist, and something happened that was not explainable, as the guns shooting at him suddenly explode, because of his awesome powers."

Dostoyevsky would have clawed out his own eyes.

I refunded the book and removed it in less than an hour. Amazon was compliant and helpful. However, when the serial novel you've been reading that updates one chapter per month has missed six updates because the author didn't get round to completing it... will Amazon refund your money for the three chapters you already own, six months after purchase?

This is called "reflected value." An ebook reader is useless without ebooks. A firearm is an unwieldy club without ammunition. The best gaming system on the market is worthless unless developers create quality games to go with it. (Looking at you, Sony PSP Vita.) I maintain-- and while I'm willing to be proven wrong, I'm not going to be, because I'm right-- that the reflected value of serial fiction isn't there, so consumers will be reluctant to spend money on it, so authors won't want to keep doing it (other than a few folks trying it for novelty or artistic reasons) and the program is going to end up being worthless.

Originally Posted by davidfor

So dismissing them a "BLOGGERS" is a disservice. Many are well planned with the authors writing chapters well ahead of time to make ensure they have continuity in the story and help them with the frequency of publishing. Sure, some are off-the-cuff things that should never see the light of day. But, that's the same with plenty of more traditionally published books.

See my comment above about Wattpad, the largest serialized fiction site currently on the web. The majority of the writers there are not authors. There is a significant difference.

I'd like to further point out that I am an author myself, with two published nonfiction books and six fiction novels currently in production (One is nearly complete, the sequel is outlined, and four others are outlined or in various notes.) The current standard for authoring software is Literature and Latte's Scrivener. (Incidentally, if anyone wants to plan out a novel and needs a good Scrivener template, please contact me. I have a fiction template I've designed that combines the 7-Step outlining method with the Snowflake method. I am happy to share it.)

Not one author in the Scrivener forums is discussing Vella or is even interested in the delivery method. While this is, of course, an informal poll and at best anecdotal, it does provide evidence that the most common author organization tool on the web is NOT being used in significant numbers by anyone writing serialized fiction.

Let me say that in a less confusing manner: Scrivener is a tool for organizing a novel. It is a such a good tool that it is the most widespread and taught tool currently used, and is as much an authoring standard as Final Draft is for screenplays-- but no one seems to be using it to write serialized fiction. I can extrapolate from there that it is unlikely that the majority of serial writers are using ANYTHING to plan out their novels, and are chapter writing. As an author myself, I need to make it clear that you can NOT write a book that way. In my current, martial arts fiction novel (which I will be making available for free to all Calibre users once it is finished), I have moved one critical scene nine times because it HAS to happen, but WHEN it happens is almost as critical. When you chapter write, you can't do that. Hell, "Lost" was more or less a failure at the end because people had stopped watching because every episode ended with either another damn mystery or another damn cliffhanger. It became obvious that the writers and editors had no idea where they wanted to go.

Look at the extensive criticism of the "Star Wars" sequels for not having a coherent plan across just three installments. Now magnify that across EVERY installment of a serial novel.

Originally Posted by davidfor

Serial fiction has been around for a long time in different forms. This is just another version. whether if works or fails is more to do with how Amazon handles it. That includes how they charge for it, and pay the authors. And how good the stories published through it are.

Absolutely. And that is why it is going to fail, and fail hard. Sherlock Holmes was serial fiction. Quick, name two other writers who competed with Conan Doyle! You can't, because Holmes was hogging all the sales.

Here is a quick reference of some classic serialized novels. Note that every author on this page had published at least one, and in some cases a large number, of traditional works prior to serially publishing the work listed here. Dumas, for example, had written seven books before "The Count of Monte Cristo." Verne had written twelve before "20,000 Leagues Under the Sea." But those works were both published in a time when newspapers were cheap (and carried the serial stories), and books were EXPENSIVE. Few of them competed with television or radio. None of the ones on the list competed with video games and interactive fiction of that nature (Not even "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas.") for sales.

At the time most of those works were published, they were mostly competing with each OTHER and those lesser works we no longer remember. In today's market, not only are serial writers competing with one another, but also with every single blockbuster movie, every completed work that can be delivered to the same reading device for just slightly more (It's not even a fair fight: pay 50 cents for one chapter or 99 cents for an entire book.), every video game (Elder Scrolls 5: Skyrim, Anniversary Edition was released yesterday. Two of my coworkers took vacation for today just for that reason.), and every Netflix show released as an ENTIRE SEASON. (Witcher Season two comes out December 17th!)

I posit that ONE OR TWO already known authors will be able to make this work FOR ONE OR TWO PIECES of their writing. Stephen King has already said he hated the serial format when he released "The Green Mile", and won't likely return to the delivery method. Piers Anthony hasn't commented much on his serial releases, which is odd because he's damned mouthy, but I don't see him coming back.

Let's also not forget that any author writing a SERIES, such as Jim Butcher's "Dresden Files" is already writing serial fiction. The best place to start reading the Harry Dresden books is the first one (Just power through the early installment weirdness until you get to book 4.) It serves little purpose to take a SERIES of novels like the "Belgariad", by David Eddings, which was written as one book and chopped into five, and chop it further into TEN books, just to serialize it. We expect each installement in a series of novels to be 50,000 to 90,000 words. Much more than that and we wonder why it's not its own series. Much less and we feel it should be a novella and included perhaps in an anthology, such as King's "Four Seasons" that included "Rita Hayworth and the Shawshank Redemption" as a 38,000 word novella.

So authors already writing a series of novels are unlikely to further break down their works into smaller pieces. Serial fiction works best for ONE story, such as the Flash Gordon shorts of the 1930s and 1940s. (Even those releases are called "Chapters" and are now released as one giant work.

Ultimately, the odds are significantly stacked against this format both as a consistent money maker for Amazon and as a method of delivering quality stories and content.