Serialised Novels, Engagement, and Extribulum

[copperbadge.livejournal.com]

Hi! I'm Sam. I'm here at the kind invitation of ysabetwordsmith to talk a little bit about my experiences in combining crowdfunding, serialised web novels, and traditional bookselling.

There's a lot of talk in indy media circles about the importance of your audience, or in my case my readership, since most of my output is literary. Some of you have probably heard of The Technium's excellent article, One Thousand True Fans, about the power of "true fans" in your online community. But there's not a lot out there about how to build your audience -- not much more than there is about how to publicise a book and, believe me, there's not much of that at all. Publicity, donor relations, audience building, they're all pretty similar: you draw people in, engage with them, and convince them you're putting out a product worth their money.

Which is hard to do, 'cause we're mostly all broke these days.

( So how do you engage donors, and what is this 'extribulum' thing anyway? )

Let's discuss what makes a serial!

[chrysoula.livejournal.com]

 Hi there!

Last week, I posted on my blog about serials and series and serialized novels. I thought it might be fun this week to see if any of the people drawn by the spotlight had opinions on this topic!

So far, it seems like a continuum to me: at one end, you have old-fashioned serials, which encompass many, many plotlines and have no anticipated ending. These show up in soap operas, and comics, and quite a bit of web and newspaper fiction. Ongoing personal blogs are basically serial memoirs, by the way, although usually with less drama than your average old-fashioned serial.

Somewhere in the middle, you have series stories. Each story has a beginning, middle and an end, but the characters and setting carry over between stories, usually growing as the series progresses.

Then at the far end are serialized novels: novels written in advance and published one chapter at a time, in order to delight, torment or otherwise utilize an audience. They've got a beginning and an end, and when they're done, they're done. 

What I've found out through digging around on the web is that a lot of people have a lot of opinions about what works best as webfiction. Of course, tastes vary, but I'm curious what Crowdfunding's new (and old) readers think. What kind of stories do you prefer in your web reading?

For myself, while I find the ongoing drama of a serial addictive, it doesn't satisfy me as much as a finished story. I probably fall somewhere in the middle, because I place a lot of weight on solid endings to stories. But I also like to return to the settings and characters I love.

 

How about you?

What's So Great About Writing Webfiction? :-)

[aldersprig.livejournal.com]

Hi! My name is Lyn, and I’m creator and co-writer of the webserial Addergoole. I've been posting it two or three times weekly since January of 2009, so I'm still a junior member compared to many around here.

Credit where credit is due: I started Addergoole. because a friend pointed me at Alexandra Erin's (ae_stories) Tales of Mu back in 2007. I went from that to meilin_miranda's Intimate History, and thought, hey, I can do this.

I was already a rather prolific writer, so the process for me involved picking a story I thought I could stick with - it ended up being a combination-adaptation of two different settings of mine - and writing what I thought was enough backlog.

Lesson one. There's never enough backlog.

The friend who pointed me to Mu is an avid webcomic reader, and had one piece of advice: pick a posting schedule you can stick to, and stick to it. It's a good place to start with any sort of serial - if people can stop by your page once a week or once a month and get an update, it can be routine for them.

Expanding out from there, I found Twitter, and from twitter, found at least a segment of the giant web-fiction community. The community out there is big enough that you can spend all your time talking to other writers and readers and forget to write anything - that's happened to me before. There's crowdfunding, here and on Dreamwidth,
Web Fiction Guide, Epiguide, Muse's Success, and weblit.us, to name a few - and then there's the forums on other author's sites. We've had a lot of fun on mine, and on AM Harte's, and I know MeiLin Miranda has a large community on hers a well.

So what’s so great about writing webfiction?

I was lucky enough to catch haikujaguar on twitter Sunday afternoon. She's just recently wrapped up Spots the Space Marine, and even more recently begun A Rosary of Stones and Thorns and Black Blossom as ongoing series. She started in 2003 with Flight of the Godkin Griffin and publishes on Livejournal, as well as on stardancer.org.

Asked what the best part of writing webfiction was, she answered "Best part is making money, consistently for something I get to do regularly. Plus, it's fun to watch people's reactions. :)" I have to agree, the reactions are one of the best parts for me as well. Immediate, visceral feedback.

Deirdre Murphy, wyld_dandelyon had a similar comment: "My favorite part is hearing from people so soon after I write something! So much better than waiting weeks 4 rejection slip!" Her writing can be found here.

Becka Sutton, of Firebird Fiction, says she most likes: "comments, of course, and that fact I can't give in to writer's block because I have readers waiting for the next installment and I can't let them down." It seems to be a common theme; Irkdesu of The Peacock King said "...Simple things like 'I can tell whether the readers like my story as I am writing it, and not long after I want to be done with it' are what make me post online. So, the fact that I can get comments and emails from readers, and interact with them as I write, keep me excited enough to keep writing my story, and give me motivation to stick it out when I hit a slump. It's that simple for me."

I've found that the crowd-sourcing is as much a reward as the crowd-funding, if not more: Addergoole. changes, for me, with the audience's desires, and I try to make sure there's lots of opportunities for that - bonus stories, questions, feedback on the forums and on Twitter. It’s a constantly interactive experience.

I close with another quote from Irkdesu: "I think people should know that there are some gems out there. They may never 'make it big' but they are worth reading."

A retrospective on "Tin Man", and a look forward at "Hiraeth"

[robling-t.livejournal.com]

Hi, I'm Sam (a Samantha, not a copperbadge ;) ), and I'm The Artist Currently Posting As robling_t here on LJ and over on DW. ysabetwordsmith suggested I come in on "Webserials Day" of Crowdfunding's turn in the LJ Spotlight to say a few words about both my current project, "Hiraeth", which has recently updated with installments seventeen and eighteen, and my previously serialized novel, Tin Man, so here goes nothing...

( In which I ramble on at some length, profoundly grateful for not having been the first serialist to show up to post today )