Quote:
Originally Posted by BillSmithBooks
I'm not saying that YOU have to embrace serialized storytelling...but I'm really, really, really offended that some people are trying to deny ME my right to choose that work on Smashwords.
...
It's really out of tune with the corporate spirit that Mark has done such an admirable job of fostering since he opened the company.
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He asked people if they would be willing to buy books chopped into short serials. The people responding are overwhelmingly saying "no." That is
1.) not "denying your right" to anything-- we are not obligated to buy something we don't want so that you can have it
and
2.) the very
heart of the "corporate spirit"-- a business determines what it's customers want, and if it finds that most customers don't want it (i.e. they won't make money off it) they won't offer it. A business is a business, not a charity.
You keep trying to redefine a serial to mean "any novel that has any form of sequel, ever" and "any episode of a TV series." I don't know why you want that straw man, but it continues to be not true. A "serial" as in discussion in this thread/poll is a small segment of a much longer work that will, in the end, be collected into a single volume. Novels in a series of novels and episodes in a TV series are intended to always remain as individual novels and as individual episodes, not to be collected into a single thousands-page tome or dozens-hours video at the end, so they are
not the same thing and nobody (but you) is trying to claim that they are.
(And, FWIW, modern comic story arcs
are now collected into single volumes which many people wait for rather than read the issues as they come out each month. Two examples out of many
here and
here.)