Finding Success with Serialized Ebooks (by Gregory J. Downs)

In the world of e-publishing, you don’t have to worry about the economics of print where a book needs to be between such-and-such number of pages to keep publishing expenses down. It’s not surprising that we’re seeing more short stories and novellas coming out as ebooks, and I’m also seeing more authors trying serialization.

As with the old-style radio shows, and even with some of today’s tv shows (any Lost fans out there?), stories are broken into several pieces, often ending on cliffhangers, and they’re published as separate ebooks. When Gregory J. Downs offered to write a guest blog post sharing his experiences with serialization, I said yes right away. He’s had an Amazon sales ranking as low (lower is better, remember) as #900 (I shall not be bitter when I point out that I’ve only briefly reached those levels with my ebooks and only because of ads purchased on popular blogs!) and is closing on 10,000 sales overall.

So, let’s here from him, eh?

Serial Fantasy

I was talking to a friend one time. Funny how many interesting (and/or awkward) things start out that way.

Anyway, we were talking about writing. See, he’s this incredible short story writer who wins just about every contest he enters. I had just finished a few novels during high school, and had self-published one of them. It was doing… not so well. Anyway, we were thinking how cool it would be to build an ongoing short story series, sort of like the old serial novels people like Charles Dickens wrote, publishing chapter-by-chapter in a newspaper. I even hear that Tolkien guy sent serials of his book to his son during WWII.

Our idea (okay, it was my idea, I’ll be humble about it) was to use the new indie e-book market, graciously pioneered by Amazon, to re-vitalize the old serial formula. Basically, we’d write a story every week, e-publish it for cheap, and see what happened. It could be a series of short adventures, or bits of a bigger story, or both.

Well, as so many things go in life, it never ended up happening. But I swear there’s a reason for telling you about it. Really.

This past September, I made ready to self publish my second novel. It was something like 600 pages/ 150,000 words. When I showed it to my mother, she read the first third, turned to me and said, “This could be the whole book right here.”

Oh.

Here’s where I actually get to my point. The thing about serialization is that generally, you’re taking an 80,000 word-or-so story and splitting it into 8-or-so sections. I follow a Facebook page called Timeslingers that does serialized podcasts in the thriller/time-travel genres. That’s what you normally think of when you think ‘serial.’ Action/adventure. Thriller. Horror.

I propose two things to you. One, that serials are not dead. If you’ve got a good story and you’re willing to try something new and unproven, serialize it. Sections of 10k or 20k work, and I’ve seen it done in other genres than Action. Look up B.V. Larson (and I actually have Lindsay Buroker herself to thank for this), and you’ll find that he serialized one of his fantasies into like 6 parts. And it worked!

The second thing is about fantasy itself. Usually, your average fantasy novel will be way, WAY longer than your average thriller. The genre doesn’t exactly lend itself to serializing- especially if the book in question is a George R.R. Martin or Stephen Erikson wannabe. But think about it… you have options.

This is where this long ramble ties back into my own adventures. I ended up publishing my second novel in three 50,000 word sections. Luckily it’s plot already split along those lines (almost exactly), so there wasn’t much re-writing needed. The novels have done much better than I expected, though I believe some people read past the first book only because I ended it on a nasty cliffhanger…

Do you see what I mean? Fantasy isn’t the easiest genre to serialize. But it can be done, just in larger fragments. As long as you have something in the first installment- something to get the reader ‘hooked’ as it were- they’ll keep reading. Oh, and price that first one cheap, say $2.99 or even $.99. Then the rest can get more expensive, but the reader will (theoretically) already like you enough to pony up the cash.

Now, granted, technically my stories were still individually long enough to be considered novels. But that’s a bonus! If you go into a long writing project, say the next fantasy-political-epic of the century, plan on writing it in segments. 30k, 40k, 50k… big enough chunks to count as a full story, but small enough to keep the reader wanting the next installment. Have an idea of where you’re going, so that you can create believable ‘hooks’ every time.

I’m not saying I know everything about this (obviously) untried method. And yes, people will complain sometimes that your story’s ‘too short.’ But you know what? It gets mentioned a whole lot less than you’d expect. Through trial and error, I’ve deduced that when a person reads your first ‘episode,’ one of two things will happen.

A: They will dislike your story. This will prompt them to leave you a crappy review on Amazon or Goodreads, saying how it was too short and bland and la la la.

B: They will like your story. They will proceed to buy the next episode, even if it is priced significantly higher. They will probably not leave a review. Silence = approval.

Those are results I can live with… especially when 97% of my sales result in option B. Speaking of which, I’m not doing too badly with this new method. I’ve got 5 installments out so far of my epic fantasy, Song of the Aura. The 6^th and final installment comes out next month, bringing my total words in the project up to 320,000 or so.

If a kid like me can do it… so can you.

Bio:

Gregory J. Downs is a not-quite-college student currently enjoying life as a self-employed author. He wrote and published 6 books during high school, and when they started selling he started telling people how he did it. Gregory lives in Number 3 Bagshot Row, Hobbiton, The Shire, where he is working on the final book in his fantasy series. He can be found tweeting on Twitter, blogging at Epic Blog, and you can check out his nasty cliffhanger novel at Amazon.

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Thanks for stopping by, Gregory! Authors, have any of you tried serializing your novels? Readers, do you enjoy stories that are broken up, so long as they’re a good value, or does it drive you crazy?