SERIALIZING for FUN

By Kasie Whitener 

In this week’s episode of Write On SC, we talked about serialization. To “serialize” is to release your story in smaller chunks for the purpose of building an audience willing to purchase the entire work. It’s at once marketing and production.

Classics like The Count of Monte Cristo and Uncle Tom’s Cabin found readers through serialization. At the time, publishing a single volume was really expensive and many readers couldn’t afford to collect books by purchasing them. So, publishers used serials—magazines, journals, even newspapers—to reach a wider audience.

Additionally, authors building an audience didn’t have the advantages of social media and internet followers we have today. Publishing a taste of the work was a way to prove your skills not just to readers but to would-be publishers as well.

Authors like Hemingway and Capote leveraged serials to introduce work that had not found favor with their traditional publishers; work the publisher didn’t want to publish in its entirety, didn’t want to take the risk on, might appear in a magazine or other periodicals. Authors have used serials to try new styles, new genres, and other risky efforts that publishers worried might alienate the existing reader base. But it’s also a low-risk audition for the author. Readers who enjoy the periodical can find the author within its pages and decide to pursue additional work.

Recently, Amazon launched Vella, a serialized deviation of Kindle Unlimited. Its specifics are reader-friendly: subscribers receive a certain number of tokens, can audition the first few installments for “free” and then spend tokens for future installments. The specs are less friendly for writers. This article breaks it down.

First, you cannot publish anything there that’s already been published elsewhere. That self-pubb’d novel that hasn’t gotten any traction? Nope. Second, you can’t put up anything that is freely available elsewhere. That novel you put on your personal blog that’s gotten four visitors in the last 30 days? Nope. Third, you cannot publish the book elsewhere without first removing it from Vella. So, when a publisher falls madly in love with your characters and wants to traditionally publish your amazing work? Nope.

These rules aren’t that different from what we know of competing platform Wattpad. Publishers don’t want to see your work on a “free” platform like Wattpad before they get to revise, edit, pre-sale, and market the hell out of it. Most authors who have serialized work on Wattpad have done so knowing the piece would never be published elsewhere.

So why give your work away?

Maybe because you’re building an audience. Maybe because you’re not sure where the work is going. Maybe to get real-time feedback. Maybe to be part of a creator community. Or maybe, just maybe, because your pre-teen daughter loves Wattpad and can’t read your actual adults-only books. So, you put this up there for her. Like I did.

Check out The Full Moon in Neverland. My effort at serialization available now and free to a good home via Wattpad.