This is actually how I imagine the format working in Substack — more as a bullpen of talent for established presses to draw from (and where, indeed, the entire book might not be serialized by the time it gets picked up). I’m curious: as an editor, how do you view publishers who don’t want to touch something that’s been published in full elsewhere? Is that just lingering ick about self-publishing in general? Or is there a rational economic calculation being made? And (in Pistelli’s case) do you think other publishers would have insisted the subscriber-only serialization be taken down?
The model for serialized fiction on Substack exists, and it's sustainable, because it's been popular since the dawn of the phenomenon that engendered it: fanfiction.
The concept of Internet serialization stems directly from print serialization in the form of fan magazines and zines of mid-century Trekdom. Its re-birth online and subsequent assimilation into mainstream consumption of popular media has meant that it is often THE only way some people read long form writing at all (I know, from being on the front lines and meeting people who said they haven't picked up a book in years in favor of the easy access to their favorite characters). I come from an intersection of two worlds, and though I'm integrating myself into a more pluralistic, intellectually oriented sphere, fanfiction was where I cut my teeth in everything I'm practicing now.
I'm not sure what the popular view of fanfiction is to Substackers writ large, but I know for a fact people would pay top dollar for fanfiction if fanfiction wasn't an inherently free enterprise due to its origins in copyrighted material. And of course, that's the problem in gaining an audience for serialized original fiction: fanfiction exists on the backs of existing IP. Even when that IP is little more than an obscure literary text that's fallen out of copyright (fandoms do exist for small niches, despite the popular view of fandom nerds falling into about ten different accepted camps; hi, I'm a recovering former Superwholockian! Commiserate with me?) it still technically creates that connection automatically, which is something I actually criticized in my recent piece Three Cheers for Sweet Reluctance. The further away a story veers from the "canonical" story and characters, the less reads it generally receives.
There are exceptions to that rule, of course, but I am speaking from experience. My most popular fanfictions for my fandom were ones that played directly into popular fandom tropes and pairings. When I tried to be experimental and create original characters interacting with the story I loved, or tried to do something artistic with the material, it was always crickets.
And fanfiction itself is often derided for being that derivative, even though (if you're canonical enough) some of the best writing I've ever had the pleasure of reading has been from fanfiction authors. At the beginning of this century, when Anne Rice discovered how her fans had "taken" her beloved Lestat and put him in situations she never dreamed about, she very publicly denounced fanfiction and pursued legal action against their writers (as a fan of her work, I'm honestly glad she's finally passed; The Vampire Chronicles are having a new renaissance in the AMC series, and it's basically everything she would have HATED in an adaptation; vindication for the fandom!!!)
I think there are two sides to this equation that seem mutually opposed to each other, but actually could work together if one reframed this way: fanfiction is considered derivative and only for juvenile "fandoms," and yet the popularity of fanfiction itself proves that the model for serialized fiction works; original fiction is considered unique, but harder to find an audience for-- but lets be honest here... is anyone of us NOT influenced by what we consume and, more importantly, think critically on? Some of the most celebrated works of literature are, in essence, fanfictions where someone saw so much potential in a story that they had to play around in that universe. One of the best-selling books of this year (and one of the best contemporary books I've read in some time), James, is essentially fanfiction on its basest level. That it was elevated by the author's prolific reputation and his recent bump due to the film American Fiction is beside the point. David Copperfield, as retold by Barbara Kingsolver, won the Pulitzer Prize last year. There is a market for literary fanfiction, and it's honestly one of my favorite genres to read.
Perhaps the way into this whole field of serialized fiction is to EMBRACE the model that already works. Can we serialize "fanfiction" based on our favorite classic texts that inspire us, and make us want to expound on their themes in a critical and literary way? Can that help build the audience that we need for future, more original endeavors? There are several ideas for novels I've had based on my old fandom that I wish I could publish traditionally. We can't necessarily write paid-for fanfiction for things still in copyright, but who's to say a fictional retelling/retooling of Gatsby wouldn't do absolute GANGBUSTERS on this platform (especially taking into account criticism of the actual book that has been floating around; why not improve upon it in this Substackian playground?)?
I don’t know if this is a “Yes, and…” and “Yes, but…” Fandoms are *engaged*. I’m seeing this in @S.E. Reid’s “Freelance and Fishmaids”. She’s in season 2 of her serial and we are going NUTS. She has written characters we care about and I think that is key. Fandoms also are insular (this is my but). In today’s streaming world, it’s rare that everyone watches the same thing (Bridgerton might be an exception?) and even then it seems like the fandom floats by and doesn’t really engage beyond the online equivalent of water cooler debriefing. I could be wrong about this and I’m not finding the fandom circles. But we can create fandoms of our own.
I’m releasing my novel, THE GOLD FISH, in serialized form on Substack, and (so far) am making it available to free subscribers. I’m not trying to make money; rather, I’m trying to build and engage an interested audience. In other words, build a real time feedback loop which will hopefully tell me, directly or indirectly, whether my writing is shit or not. BUT something else kind of magical has been happening along the way. As I’ve broken my novel into episodes (which in my mind, are different to chapters) and polished them for release, it’s forced me to edit differently. To engage a serial reader, I figure I’ve really got to focus on pace more and ensure the end of each episode builds interest in the next episode. Maybe I should have always been thinking that way, but I’m pushing myself harder now. And even if my experiment fails and my work isn’t well received, I know in my heart the process of sharing it on Substack has made my writing stronger. And that will make the whole experience worth it.
I wondered about that, but if so where are the success stories? I figured comments are much the same as the old forums etc and fan fiction sites. Maybe it already exists?
Eleanor Anstruther's novel "in Judgement of Others" had an active comments section. And I'll definitely buy a copy when it comes out next year in book form. I thought it was terrific and really looked forward to each chapter.
I've found that reading traditionally published fiction in serialized chunks with commentary by an expert is a terrific experience.
So far, all the authors have been deceased. I don't know how to do that effectively for a contemporary novel. It's a lot of effort to do that well.
Wolf Hal is a great example. And yes, a high quality completed contemporary work is what I’m thinking about. Serialization with commentary could be a powerful adjunct to a published book.
I would guess that, on the whole, this will come from different people. So many a bundle of a novelist plus critic/guide would be a good idea for a Substack?
This is a great comment, David, and agree in regards to Eleanor's work especially.
I do think that for me with my fiction, the comments become almost a workshop experience. Many - though not all - come from other fiction writers whose work I read as well. I serialize after having completed a full draft, but I do edit some as I go based on comments or how I respond to what someone restacks, for example. The book is then compiled and indie published at the end (at least this is how I've organized the first two).
I guess I see my other sections - podcast and articles - as the more 'marketable' aspect and do agree with you - Henry - in that regard. It's a good reminder about Dickens and his work with journalism and editing. I think the joy of Substack is that each newsletter is unique not just be voice but by offer, and this can take many forms. You offer some very cool solutions! Also, there are a lot of us experimenting with embedded multimedia which is a nice feature (Ben Wakeman especially). I think that a lot of fiction writers here are perhaps more interested in building the audience to then sell books (or find an agent/publisher). Most of the fiction writing I see (and my own) is free with the option to upgrade payment for other features. So I would disagree that most is packaged as a very expensive book, although it can be difficult, with that in mind, for fiction writers to offer something worth paying for if they don't have the interest or time to add other features or types of articles.
Thank you for this article, Henry, and your comments, David. I think you both give fiction writers here a lot to consider.
Thanks for the interesting discussion! A couple of writers during Covid retold 'Pride and Prejudice' from the social media accounts of its characters - like Mrs. Bennet and @CharlieB. It was collected into a book called Pride and Prejudice on Social Media. I don't know much about it and don't know how unique it is actually but it's an interesting concept.
So, I have been publishing mine of my novels on substack. I have about seventy readers (started with 20) and only one paid subscription. However, my plan for Substack is to use it to leverage into a more traditional publishing contract. Frankly, I have found it incredibly frustrating to try to get attention from publishers and agents. So, I started writing essays on line (I have a base of readers for those) then used that account too bring readers into the novel. Then, to use the readers of the novel as a proof of concept. My current stage is publishing on Amazon and advertising.
I have some advantages. I have written about Nantucket for about 18 years as an essayist. I know the two independent bookstore owners on island. So, substack is part of the process.
Substack allows two other advantages for me. I can include as much as art as I want and I can record the chapters and embed the audio.
I don't know if this will work. I know that I wanted to get an audience and I wanted a reason to keep writing. The old way of publishing wasn't working, so I thought I would try this.
I think you have pointed to an important innovation yet to be implemented by the @Substack team that they may want to consider. I like the magazine concept as a new format. Cooperating authors could form an online magazine to be published weekly or monthly. Like minds would assemble cooperative identities under each group banner. A magazine of science fiction ( sign me up!), a magazine on poetry, the sciences, experimental literature, political commentary and deeper analysis’. It would give extra value for the readers and, although it might mean a trade between unit price and volume of subscribers, I imagine a balance could be found that satisfied value for money for the reader and income for the writer. Collaborating writers could submit what they thought appropriate according to their own work rate, standards could be agreed amongst contributors, income could be shared equitably. Technically It would require a destination for writers in the cooperative to post to, and the sharing of email lists, and a single ‘banner’ address and Substack website to mail out each edition. These are topics for the Substack coders to consider.
This post is an excellent example of how digital media can learn from (literary) history without drowning in nostalgia. Henry reminds us that it’s not „content“ that makes the difference but the experience.
I think it’s just too early for it to really catch on. I’m trying. It makes sense that readers would want a bundle - not just fiction, so I write essays, too.
I might try the epistolary thing. I’ve been doing short stories and serialized novellas, but an epistolary serial might be perfect for Substack, especially set in the modern era (pretending to be emails or blog posts or something).
Hmm. I'm on here for my fiction, but I'm not so sure about this. Shall we try a test?
If you want to read more, click the like. If I get ten likes, I'll post this full novel in serial on my page.
NO WINTER LASTS FOREVER - A Vigilante Thriller
Franklin, Missouri. Monday, 8:47 a.m.:
Normal day; perfect weather. April: relative present. Franklin-Betty High School is near full capacity. Three college-aged men in masks—one Frankenstein, one ski, one latex—approach in the mild air of the sunny day, guns jammed in their waistbands, rifles cocked in hand. They split up. The bell rings to change class from first period to homeroom. Students chat casually in the busy halls. Frankenstein, positioned at the primary administrative building, fires into the air, into the dirt. Ski, on the opposite side, fires into the brick wall, the windows of the main entrance. Security is frayed. Latex bursts into the back wing, filled with students, and fires indiscriminately. Dozens fall. Blood splatters lockers, the hallway floor, other students. Survivors whimper in heaps on the floor. Then, silence. Latex steps outside and fires three times rapidly into the air, lodges the handgun into his mouth, fires. Frankenstein and Ski, hearing the successive shots, fire bullets at the backs of their throats. All three fall dead.
When the shots have ceased beyond a few minutes, the principal and all administrators creep out of their offices and into the halls. They look around, wide-eyed and fearful. It’s quieter than on a Sunday. The teachers have done their jobs. All doors are closed and locked; any and all glass is covered. The resident officer comes rushing in from the main entrance.
“Shooters are down, shooters are down!”
“Dead?” someone yells.
“Yes.”
One of the vice principals turns to his boss and says, “I think you should get on the PA and make an announcement.”
The principal nods his head. Behind him, approaching sirens wail in the distance.
Yes. It's not going to work to ask 'why isn't Substack dominating serialized fiction' if you don't look at where serialized fiction works online. Look at Chinese wuxia novels, Wattpad, Royal Road, J-Novel, Amazon Kindle Unlimited, or serialized fiction success stories like Wildbow. (Or in more nonprofit veins, the wide world of fanfiction, like Fanfiction.net or Archive of Our Own. Since fiction has never been terribly profitable to begin with, requiring money changing hands may limit one's understanding of the dynamics.)
It's also worth pointing out the serialized fiction examples given like Dickens are in a very different publishing context: the magazines that made Dickens or Fitzgerald wealthy and created whole fields like science fiction by publishing serialized novels & short stories no longer exist, and the entire sector of short stories is basically just gone, lingering as a ritualized exercise for would-be English professors.
I’ve made a few solid edits thanks to the comments section of my novel on Substack. So releasing the novel in chunks has improved it (a titch). As well, Substack has to find a way to better price novels. I can’t, in good conscience, ask someone to pay $50 or more (for a year which is the lowest Substack will let me go) for a book that would cost them maybe $10 somewhere else.
Mills Baker talked here about fake accounts as writer “characters”? I'd like to read that. I did this decades ago—and while yes there are some technical challenges to pulling it off right and yes it’s truly a new form of Internet “fiction,” the perils are as numerous as the promises. The big problem is that the reader has no willing suspension of disbelief (they don’t know they’re reading or liking or interacting with fictitious characters, unless you label it as such, which is then kind of lame), so while some of these characters made names for themselves (and even eventually built publishing credits in the “real” world), there are definite issues and limits and I haven’t done any of this type of writing in a very long time.
But I recently realized that Substack is just about the perfect place to document and write about these old experiments in creating an online narrative, and the often hilarious things that happened when these “characters” were let loose on the net …
There are currently other examples of successful modern serialization. You see this mostly with more image based media like webtoons that updates comics one a week, many people who enjoy manga read it as monthly serials, and on the Japanese style many people read “light novels” on services like J-novel in weekly installments.
But as you said the cost difference is these services offer many different stories not just one. I think in order for a Substack to do successful, new, fiction at a cost would be if multiple authors combined their content in order to have a broader appeal and make it seem more worth the money.
We know people don’t hate the format as the read alongs of classic literature remain popular. I know people who are on their 3rd round of Dracula Daily.
I recently acquired a novel serialized on Substack and it will be reissued by Belt Publishing in April https://notesfromasmallpress.substack.com/p/substack-and-acquisition
Oh very cool!
This is actually how I imagine the format working in Substack — more as a bullpen of talent for established presses to draw from (and where, indeed, the entire book might not be serialized by the time it gets picked up). I’m curious: as an editor, how do you view publishers who don’t want to touch something that’s been published in full elsewhere? Is that just lingering ick about self-publishing in general? Or is there a rational economic calculation being made? And (in Pistelli’s case) do you think other publishers would have insisted the subscriber-only serialization be taken down?
The model for serialized fiction on Substack exists, and it's sustainable, because it's been popular since the dawn of the phenomenon that engendered it: fanfiction.
The concept of Internet serialization stems directly from print serialization in the form of fan magazines and zines of mid-century Trekdom. Its re-birth online and subsequent assimilation into mainstream consumption of popular media has meant that it is often THE only way some people read long form writing at all (I know, from being on the front lines and meeting people who said they haven't picked up a book in years in favor of the easy access to their favorite characters). I come from an intersection of two worlds, and though I'm integrating myself into a more pluralistic, intellectually oriented sphere, fanfiction was where I cut my teeth in everything I'm practicing now.
I'm not sure what the popular view of fanfiction is to Substackers writ large, but I know for a fact people would pay top dollar for fanfiction if fanfiction wasn't an inherently free enterprise due to its origins in copyrighted material. And of course, that's the problem in gaining an audience for serialized original fiction: fanfiction exists on the backs of existing IP. Even when that IP is little more than an obscure literary text that's fallen out of copyright (fandoms do exist for small niches, despite the popular view of fandom nerds falling into about ten different accepted camps; hi, I'm a recovering former Superwholockian! Commiserate with me?) it still technically creates that connection automatically, which is something I actually criticized in my recent piece Three Cheers for Sweet Reluctance. The further away a story veers from the "canonical" story and characters, the less reads it generally receives.
There are exceptions to that rule, of course, but I am speaking from experience. My most popular fanfictions for my fandom were ones that played directly into popular fandom tropes and pairings. When I tried to be experimental and create original characters interacting with the story I loved, or tried to do something artistic with the material, it was always crickets.
And fanfiction itself is often derided for being that derivative, even though (if you're canonical enough) some of the best writing I've ever had the pleasure of reading has been from fanfiction authors. At the beginning of this century, when Anne Rice discovered how her fans had "taken" her beloved Lestat and put him in situations she never dreamed about, she very publicly denounced fanfiction and pursued legal action against their writers (as a fan of her work, I'm honestly glad she's finally passed; The Vampire Chronicles are having a new renaissance in the AMC series, and it's basically everything she would have HATED in an adaptation; vindication for the fandom!!!)
I think there are two sides to this equation that seem mutually opposed to each other, but actually could work together if one reframed this way: fanfiction is considered derivative and only for juvenile "fandoms," and yet the popularity of fanfiction itself proves that the model for serialized fiction works; original fiction is considered unique, but harder to find an audience for-- but lets be honest here... is anyone of us NOT influenced by what we consume and, more importantly, think critically on? Some of the most celebrated works of literature are, in essence, fanfictions where someone saw so much potential in a story that they had to play around in that universe. One of the best-selling books of this year (and one of the best contemporary books I've read in some time), James, is essentially fanfiction on its basest level. That it was elevated by the author's prolific reputation and his recent bump due to the film American Fiction is beside the point. David Copperfield, as retold by Barbara Kingsolver, won the Pulitzer Prize last year. There is a market for literary fanfiction, and it's honestly one of my favorite genres to read.
Perhaps the way into this whole field of serialized fiction is to EMBRACE the model that already works. Can we serialize "fanfiction" based on our favorite classic texts that inspire us, and make us want to expound on their themes in a critical and literary way? Can that help build the audience that we need for future, more original endeavors? There are several ideas for novels I've had based on my old fandom that I wish I could publish traditionally. We can't necessarily write paid-for fanfiction for things still in copyright, but who's to say a fictional retelling/retooling of Gatsby wouldn't do absolute GANGBUSTERS on this platform (especially taking into account criticism of the actual book that has been floating around; why not improve upon it in this Substackian playground?)?
I don’t know if this is a “Yes, and…” and “Yes, but…” Fandoms are *engaged*. I’m seeing this in @S.E. Reid’s “Freelance and Fishmaids”. She’s in season 2 of her serial and we are going NUTS. She has written characters we care about and I think that is key. Fandoms also are insular (this is my but). In today’s streaming world, it’s rare that everyone watches the same thing (Bridgerton might be an exception?) and even then it seems like the fandom floats by and doesn’t really engage beyond the online equivalent of water cooler debriefing. I could be wrong about this and I’m not finding the fandom circles. But we can create fandoms of our own.
i have nothing to add because you said it so well, just wanted to say holy shit thanks for articulating this!!!
I’m releasing my novel, THE GOLD FISH, in serialized form on Substack, and (so far) am making it available to free subscribers. I’m not trying to make money; rather, I’m trying to build and engage an interested audience. In other words, build a real time feedback loop which will hopefully tell me, directly or indirectly, whether my writing is shit or not. BUT something else kind of magical has been happening along the way. As I’ve broken my novel into episodes (which in my mind, are different to chapters) and polished them for release, it’s forced me to edit differently. To engage a serial reader, I figure I’ve really got to focus on pace more and ensure the end of each episode builds interest in the next episode. Maybe I should have always been thinking that way, but I’m pushing myself harder now. And even if my experiment fails and my work isn’t well received, I know in my heart the process of sharing it on Substack has made my writing stronger. And that will make the whole experience worth it.
The advantages of serialization on Substack are in the comments.
(1) through the comments section it becomes a community activity; you are reading other readers' comments and they yours.
(2) If I know I'm going to comment, I read more closely. I want my comments to be valuable.
(3) You are "speaking" to the author through your comments, and there is mutual satisfaction in that.
I wondered about that, but if so where are the success stories? I figured comments are much the same as the old forums etc and fan fiction sites. Maybe it already exists?
Eleanor Anstruther's novel "in Judgement of Others" had an active comments section. And I'll definitely buy a copy when it comes out next year in book form. I thought it was terrific and really looked forward to each chapter.
I've found that reading traditionally published fiction in serialized chunks with commentary by an expert is a terrific experience.
So far, all the authors have been deceased. I don't know how to do that effectively for a contemporary novel. It's a lot of effort to do that well.
You mean like the Wolf Hall read along etc? Those look good. Presumably only works for competed high quality stuff
Wolf Hal is a great example. And yes, a high quality completed contemporary work is what I’m thinking about. Serialization with commentary could be a powerful adjunct to a published book.
I would guess that, on the whole, this will come from different people. So many a bundle of a novelist plus critic/guide would be a good idea for a Substack?
This is a great comment, David, and agree in regards to Eleanor's work especially.
I do think that for me with my fiction, the comments become almost a workshop experience. Many - though not all - come from other fiction writers whose work I read as well. I serialize after having completed a full draft, but I do edit some as I go based on comments or how I respond to what someone restacks, for example. The book is then compiled and indie published at the end (at least this is how I've organized the first two).
I guess I see my other sections - podcast and articles - as the more 'marketable' aspect and do agree with you - Henry - in that regard. It's a good reminder about Dickens and his work with journalism and editing. I think the joy of Substack is that each newsletter is unique not just be voice but by offer, and this can take many forms. You offer some very cool solutions! Also, there are a lot of us experimenting with embedded multimedia which is a nice feature (Ben Wakeman especially). I think that a lot of fiction writers here are perhaps more interested in building the audience to then sell books (or find an agent/publisher). Most of the fiction writing I see (and my own) is free with the option to upgrade payment for other features. So I would disagree that most is packaged as a very expensive book, although it can be difficult, with that in mind, for fiction writers to offer something worth paying for if they don't have the interest or time to add other features or types of articles.
Thank you for this article, Henry, and your comments, David. I think you both give fiction writers here a lot to consider.
Thanks for the interesting discussion! A couple of writers during Covid retold 'Pride and Prejudice' from the social media accounts of its characters - like Mrs. Bennet and @CharlieB. It was collected into a book called Pride and Prejudice on Social Media. I don't know much about it and don't know how unique it is actually but it's an interesting concept.
Oh I didn’t know about that sounds fascinating thanks!
So, I have been publishing mine of my novels on substack. I have about seventy readers (started with 20) and only one paid subscription. However, my plan for Substack is to use it to leverage into a more traditional publishing contract. Frankly, I have found it incredibly frustrating to try to get attention from publishers and agents. So, I started writing essays on line (I have a base of readers for those) then used that account too bring readers into the novel. Then, to use the readers of the novel as a proof of concept. My current stage is publishing on Amazon and advertising.
I have some advantages. I have written about Nantucket for about 18 years as an essayist. I know the two independent bookstore owners on island. So, substack is part of the process.
Substack allows two other advantages for me. I can include as much as art as I want and I can record the chapters and embed the audio.
I don't know if this will work. I know that I wanted to get an audience and I wanted a reason to keep writing. The old way of publishing wasn't working, so I thought I would try this.
https://theboatattheendofloverslane.substack.com
Bob Barsanti
I think you have pointed to an important innovation yet to be implemented by the @Substack team that they may want to consider. I like the magazine concept as a new format. Cooperating authors could form an online magazine to be published weekly or monthly. Like minds would assemble cooperative identities under each group banner. A magazine of science fiction ( sign me up!), a magazine on poetry, the sciences, experimental literature, political commentary and deeper analysis’. It would give extra value for the readers and, although it might mean a trade between unit price and volume of subscribers, I imagine a balance could be found that satisfied value for money for the reader and income for the writer. Collaborating writers could submit what they thought appropriate according to their own work rate, standards could be agreed amongst contributors, income could be shared equitably. Technically It would require a destination for writers in the cooperative to post to, and the sharing of email lists, and a single ‘banner’ address and Substack website to mail out each edition. These are topics for the Substack coders to consider.
This post is an excellent example of how digital media can learn from (literary) history without drowning in nostalgia. Henry reminds us that it’s not „content“ that makes the difference but the experience.
Great article. Thank you.
I think it’s just too early for it to really catch on. I’m trying. It makes sense that readers would want a bundle - not just fiction, so I write essays, too.
I might try the epistolary thing. I’ve been doing short stories and serialized novellas, but an epistolary serial might be perfect for Substack, especially set in the modern era (pretending to be emails or blog posts or something).
Hmm. I'm on here for my fiction, but I'm not so sure about this. Shall we try a test?
If you want to read more, click the like. If I get ten likes, I'll post this full novel in serial on my page.
NO WINTER LASTS FOREVER - A Vigilante Thriller
Franklin, Missouri. Monday, 8:47 a.m.:
Normal day; perfect weather. April: relative present. Franklin-Betty High School is near full capacity. Three college-aged men in masks—one Frankenstein, one ski, one latex—approach in the mild air of the sunny day, guns jammed in their waistbands, rifles cocked in hand. They split up. The bell rings to change class from first period to homeroom. Students chat casually in the busy halls. Frankenstein, positioned at the primary administrative building, fires into the air, into the dirt. Ski, on the opposite side, fires into the brick wall, the windows of the main entrance. Security is frayed. Latex bursts into the back wing, filled with students, and fires indiscriminately. Dozens fall. Blood splatters lockers, the hallway floor, other students. Survivors whimper in heaps on the floor. Then, silence. Latex steps outside and fires three times rapidly into the air, lodges the handgun into his mouth, fires. Frankenstein and Ski, hearing the successive shots, fire bullets at the backs of their throats. All three fall dead.
When the shots have ceased beyond a few minutes, the principal and all administrators creep out of their offices and into the halls. They look around, wide-eyed and fearful. It’s quieter than on a Sunday. The teachers have done their jobs. All doors are closed and locked; any and all glass is covered. The resident officer comes rushing in from the main entrance.
“Shooters are down, shooters are down!”
“Dead?” someone yells.
“Yes.”
One of the vice principals turns to his boss and says, “I think you should get on the PA and make an announcement.”
The principal nods his head. Behind him, approaching sirens wail in the distance.
Also you can’t indent. The return-only formatting isn’t good for fiction.
Also, serial fiction is thriving, just not here. For example the 26 book extremely popular series—Ice Planet Barbarians.
Yes. It's not going to work to ask 'why isn't Substack dominating serialized fiction' if you don't look at where serialized fiction works online. Look at Chinese wuxia novels, Wattpad, Royal Road, J-Novel, Amazon Kindle Unlimited, or serialized fiction success stories like Wildbow. (Or in more nonprofit veins, the wide world of fanfiction, like Fanfiction.net or Archive of Our Own. Since fiction has never been terribly profitable to begin with, requiring money changing hands may limit one's understanding of the dynamics.)
It's also worth pointing out the serialized fiction examples given like Dickens are in a very different publishing context: the magazines that made Dickens or Fitzgerald wealthy and created whole fields like science fiction by publishing serialized novels & short stories no longer exist, and the entire sector of short stories is basically just gone, lingering as a ritualized exercise for would-be English professors.
That’s sort of my point. Serialisation for major profitable authors was a weird phenomenon that it will be very hard to replicate.
Ooh never heard of Wildbow, need to look this up.
I’ve made a few solid edits thanks to the comments section of my novel on Substack. So releasing the novel in chunks has improved it (a titch). As well, Substack has to find a way to better price novels. I can’t, in good conscience, ask someone to pay $50 or more (for a year which is the lowest Substack will let me go) for a book that would cost them maybe $10 somewhere else.
Thanks for the write-up.
Terry Fries.
Mills Baker talked here about fake accounts as writer “characters”? I'd like to read that. I did this decades ago—and while yes there are some technical challenges to pulling it off right and yes it’s truly a new form of Internet “fiction,” the perils are as numerous as the promises. The big problem is that the reader has no willing suspension of disbelief (they don’t know they’re reading or liking or interacting with fictitious characters, unless you label it as such, which is then kind of lame), so while some of these characters made names for themselves (and even eventually built publishing credits in the “real” world), there are definite issues and limits and I haven’t done any of this type of writing in a very long time.
But I recently realized that Substack is just about the perfect place to document and write about these old experiments in creating an online narrative, and the often hilarious things that happened when these “characters” were let loose on the net …
There are currently other examples of successful modern serialization. You see this mostly with more image based media like webtoons that updates comics one a week, many people who enjoy manga read it as monthly serials, and on the Japanese style many people read “light novels” on services like J-novel in weekly installments.
But as you said the cost difference is these services offer many different stories not just one. I think in order for a Substack to do successful, new, fiction at a cost would be if multiple authors combined their content in order to have a broader appeal and make it seem more worth the money.
We know people don’t hate the format as the read alongs of classic literature remain popular. I know people who are on their 3rd round of Dracula Daily.
Yes! Non fiction but Justin Murphy might offer a good example?
https://letter.otherlife.co/upgrade
Enjoy his work! Emailed him today in fact
His rumination on Dr Johnson by any chance?
How did you guess!?