Even today, comic books are effectively serialized narrative stories that are pretty reliably published on schedule and have writers who have to keep up for months at a time.
> Authors tend to have phases of inspiration, and lulls in between.
Different writers have different approaches to work. Some writers work in highly productive sprints with long fallow periods, and you're right this model probably wouldn't work well for them. But some novelists do work steadily (Stephen King I believe still tries to write for a couple hours every single day and only takes relatively short breaks between novels), and the fact that this model used to work for a number of books that are now considered classics seems to indicate it can still work in at least some cases.
I'd actually be more worried about the consumer side - the death of magazines makes this model tougher. A given author can reliably produce a novel over the course of a year or two, perhaps, but probably not indefinitely (comic books solve this problem by having writing teams do arcs and then swap out the writer). Magazines used to bundle multiple authors, so subscribers weren't affected by the break period of a single author. In a world where people subscribe to individual authors on Substack and there's no bundling of many authors writing, yeah, it's a tougher sell.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Dickens
> His novels, most of them published in monthly or weekly instalments, pioneered the serial publication of narrative fiction, which became the dominant Victorian mode for novel publication.[4][5] Cliffhanger endings in his serial publications kept readers in suspense.[6] The instalment format allowed Dickens to evaluate his audience's reaction, and he often modified his plot and character development based on such feedback.[5] For example, when his wife's chiropodist expressed distress at the way Miss Mowcher in David Copperfield seemed to reflect her disabilities, Dickens improved the character with positive features.[7] His plots were carefully constructed and he often wove elements from topical events into his narratives.[8] Masses of the illiterate poor would individually pay a halfpenny to have each new monthly episode read to them, opening up and inspiring a new class of readers.
With that being said, in Japan web-novels are quite common among teenagers - which later on might get a publishing deal to get a print version. BUT, the authors are not professionals and write as a hobby, and making money with their stories happens when they get the print deal, and not publishing online.
Also, sites like Royalroad and Scribblehub have a fair few authors who make a significant amount of money through Patreon and the like.
Not just from the author's side. From a reader's perspective this would also not work. I don't want to start reading a book a chapter at a time. I don't even like reading books that are part of an unfinished series.
For me, as someone who reads quite a lot of books, there is nothing more satisfying than finding a new series that you are interested in and discovering the entire series is already finished. You can then just binge through the whole thing.
The worst is when a series is 5-6 books in, you binge through them in a couple of days and when the next part is released you can't be bothered because you have forgotten what it was about.
I wish authors would take the Netflix approach and just finish the entire series before releasing it.
While I know that feeling somewhat…
> I wish authors would take the Netflix approach and just finish the entire series before releasing it.
… how would that work when series of books (at least the ones I'm familiar with) are often written and published over the course of several years, or perhaps in some cases even decades, i.e. much slower than your typical Netflix series?
At those timescales, that means authors would be getting neither feedback nor payments for a very long time, and it also increases the risk that in the end, the whole thing might not be published at all.
While unfinished series of books (or unfinished books themselves for that matter) can indeed be frustrating from a certain point of view, I still think the world is mostly a better place for them having already been published even in that unfinished state.
At that many chapters it's like you're reading multiple books.
It seems sort of overly complicated to me in that Amazon will sell "tokens" to readers in batches with discounts for volume. The tokens can then be spent on episodes on Vella at the rate of 1 token per 100 words in the episode.
Apparently this is a thing they're copying from elsewhere, and it's supposedly huge in China.
The series is fantastic and the latest book was great, but £8 for something that I finished in less than an hour felt a bit steep. Especially for an ebook with literally 0 marginal cost.
[1] https://www.amazon.co.uk/Martha-Wells/e/B000APZA1O?ref=sr_nt...
And if the larger books are artificially padded, I actually enjoy them less.
- I've paid $50 for an e-book with content that I thought was really valuable (and it was worth every penny).
- In the 2020s the book could be accompanied by supporting material (webcasts etc) which would increase the perceived value.
- Some people would be prepared to pay more for early access and to support an author they really like.
I think that part of it is a change in focus of the book's content: rather than being accessible to as wide a range of readers as possible make it really valuable to a subset.
Frankly too many (non fiction) books are essays spun out to book length. A series of chapters with more dense content would be, in my view, be much more valuable (counting the cost of my time).
And of course as others have noted that many great books have been published as serials (albeit in magazines and newspapers).
I think by the time you took your scalpel to a typical business book, you might be left with 50-100 pages. The core idea is probably a magazine article but there are usually useful examples, context, etc.
The problem is that publishing industry economics demand something more like 250 to 300 pages (and truth be told a lot of readers would feel a bit ripped off if they paid a typical book price for a 75 page book).
I think that there are some potentially conflicting forces:
- a short exposition is probably better for the reader
- less than 200 pages is seen as poor value for money
- people generally expect to read from start to finish
For me I'd much prefer books which fail the read from start to finish test but have clearly signposted sections that I can choose to read and sample from.
Getting inspired is a part of a job. Here's an example:
"Someone once asked Mr. Faulkner if he wrote by inspiration or habit and he said he wrote by inspiration, but luckily inspiration arrived at 9 every morning."
That being said, is there a model for a group of authors/publishers that is $8-9/month for a growing large selection novels (a la Netflix catalog)? If there is, it probably won't 'solve' any of the issues the article and others are bringing up here.
Word is that people on average don't read more or less than in the past. If that's true I wonder what's responsible for disparity. Are there more authors than before?
She's basically proposing an episodic model for books, with each chapter being released individually.
I don't think this'll work. Authors tend to have phases of inspiration, and lulls in between. The pressure of the next episode would lead to 'phoned in' chapters. Or long delays. Episodic gaming was a big hype in the game industry for a while but it suffered really heavily from these issues and it's now pretty much defunct. A few companies like telltale made it work but even telltale is now out of business. The 'early access' model was also tried there but is failing for similar reasons: There is no incentive to ever finishing a game, in fact the incentive is to never finish it.
It also means you'd be spending $100 on a single book. In this model you pay $8-$9 a chapter, normally this is the price you'd pay for an entire book. I also wouldn't want to wait for the next chapter every time. I don't see this working out at all.
I don't know what the answer is. But I don't think this is it.
Edit: As many people have pointed out this model has been around much longer, even before the internet... I didn't know that and thanks for pointing it out! I still don't think it will work for me as a reader though. I view a book as a unit, and having reading sprints of a few hours per month will dilute the story for me.