Serial fiction has been a staple of the medium for centuries. Weekly installments captured a reader’s attention and kept them coming back to the newsstands for the next chapter. From Charles Dickens to Arthur Conan Doyle, some of the greatest fiction writers of all time offered their masterpieces piecemeal to the public.
Serialized fiction today…
There is a growing trend in the digital book market to split books into installments. Three parts or ten, these serial novels give the reader a small taste of the greater whole. But does it offer a satisfying read?
Benefits exist for this model. An author can surely capitalize more on one book broken down into multiple parts rather than sell only one product on the digital stands. They are able to charge less, though make more in the long run with the full narrative split between chapters.
This model also allows an author to be a perpetual publisher, constantly launching a new product to the market for their readers to lap up. Readers are constantly looking for their next book and staggering the full story in an installment model keeps them coming back. There is always another pre-order, always another chapter to offer until the story is done, keeping them locked on the series rather than stray while it takes six to ten months for another full-length novel to be produced and launched.
How to make it a better experience for readers?
That’s the key, isn’t it? Rather than make them feel obligated to get the next chapter in order to complete the story, maybe the solution is a more episodic nature.
Taking a page from television, each piece of the serial should tell a full-length story within its pages but continue driving the overarching narrative forward to draw readers to the next chapter. They don’t have to be 90,000 word chapters but enough to satisfy the casual reader as well as the devout follower.
The same pitfalls exist, however, as any series. How to make the third book to a series as easy to enter as the first? Or even the fifteenth as the first? It’s not an easy task. Maybe it isn’t even warranted any longer, now that readers are able to go back and download the first book with the click of a button instead of scrounging through old paperback bins at the flea market.
What’s coming in 2019?
Yeah, there’s a reason I’ve been thinking about this argument. Next year I’m launching a new series, one with an episodic structure and a rapid fire launch schedule. There are quite a few different directions I’ve toyed with, different tactics to use and how best to make them work within the structure of the series.
Serialized fiction, episodic story-telling, I believe is the future of the medium. What do you think?
Thanks for reading.
