Very interesting article, and it makes me wish any of my ideas fit a format other than the novel, but those are the stories I have to tell. Not all might be 300 pages, but I only stop writing when the story tells me it's done. The one time I tried to lengthen one, to address a weakness, it fought me and won. Now I'm working on a story I wish were shorter, so we'll see how the cutting battle goes when I start editing it.
Definitely the most frustrating part for me with my writing is the marketing, so perhaps I need to look into some of those communities. The only problem is I don't know how to find them. From my perspective, and admittedly without too much searching at the moment, I don't see much difference between trying to find an existing community to join and share with, and looking for an agent. It's still a world I'm not in and haven't been introduced to. That and I struggle to get friends to read even when I put my books in their hands, "so why bother with strangers?"
Instead, I've set myself some "creator" habits, if you will, writing weekly on Substack and daily videos on YouTube. The Substack gets weekly updates on my writing (nothing too specific as I tend to by private with my writing) and on YouTube I've been making videos giving chapter-by-chapter analyses of the book I'm currently reading. Maybe something I do will catch someone's curiosity and they'll spend some money to give one of my books a chance. Or maybe they won't, but at least the stuff is out there. It's not community building if only because I don't think I'm wired for that, but I'm out there, in ways I'm comfortable with, and in ways where the greatest expense is time, not money.
Maybe these are bad ideas, these habits and my stories, but I don't much care. I enjoy them all and the work and results satisfies me enough to continue. I didn't start writing because someone paid me, and I won't stop because I'm not making any money. I've been a failure long enough and in enough ways to find success desirable but not necessary.
Jim, I feel you 1000% on the comment "That and I struggle to get friends to read even when I put my books in their hands, 'so why bother with strangers?'"
I have struggled so much with getting my friends around me to simply read the chapters I've written and give me like 5 minutes of feedback. Here I am, providing free entertainment to them and all I ask is for them to answer some simple questions like along the lines of "What did you like or dislike?" and they can't even be bothered to do that. Nothing could have ever driven home to me the general populace' aversion to reading these days more than that realization.
That is part of the reason I'm making my chapter-by-chapter analysis videos. Not to disparage my friends, but if I can't rely on them for help, I'll rely on myself more. In this case, that means practicing my critiquing skills with those videos. It helps I'm quite comfortable making YouTube videos, having thousands of hours behind me before I started these, and a decade of reviewing video games too.
I don’t know if there is such a site but I know Substack would be a great place for a “magazine” with shorter works. Though I like your idea of segmenting the Substack feed between fiction and nonfiction.
Like my comment up above pointed out, Worm was a self hosted web serial and the amount of people who read it at this point is ridiculous. If it's not the single most well known piece of internet fiction out there, it's only because the Harry Potter Fandom has never forgotten My Immortal by Tara Gillespie waaaaaaaaay back in the day.
I know for a fact that you could find a spot and readers for high concept sci-fi at Sufficient Velocity or SpaceBattles. Pretty sure there isn't a way to make money doing this outside of getting popular enough that people are willing to pay you through Patreon to put out more chapters, but if all you want is for people to read and enjoy your work then it's there.
I am ambitious enough to want to make money. I have to make that part of writing "work" eventually, but of course that's only by finding readers and connecting them with writing they value enough to pay money for.
So many websites come and go... one minute, everyone's GOT to be on Goodreads, then it sours. Another moment, if you're not advertising on Instagram you're dead in the water. Then that fades. We need a site with staying power, one that won't get bought out and morph into some censorious monster or fade from any real utility.
Therein lies the rub: so few places on the web remain at all consistent. The techbros always think every digital realm must constantly change. It's tiring. We need some regularity, stability in our websites. Look at what YouTube was versus what it is now. I liked the old YouTube; I found interesting things. Now, it won't let you say sooo much... you cannot have the sound of gunshots in a video if it's related to actual violence. That's just effin stooopid. They deplatform long timers with HUGE audiences; why spend a decade of your life building a business only to have some dimwit algo ping an 'activist' (read asshole) employee who, without a note of explanation, shuts you down.
And so on...
We also have other problems as writers. I need to edit my 60K-word sequel to The Rooster Rider, book II of that series. What I really need is an editing service I can afford; it's about $3k to get a proper job of editing and that puts me that much in the hole before I can even self-publish. That's a LOT of book sales just to break even. Not faulting anyone; editors gotta eat too. But editors needing victuals doesn't get my MS hammered into shape.
Then there's the gigantic problem of marketing by people who haven't McTiernan's industriousness and capacity to create online content. I'm old; I've not a clue about how to do all that. It's an entire skill set of crafting an online presence with articles, videos, writing products, all laid out with an eye to draw in a readership from whom one may draw financial support.
I noticed Kristin's webpage links to an author/marketing service she recommends. I haven't checked it out really or done any research on this, as I'm still probably at least a year away from publishing. But the service is at the bottom of this link if you want to look into it.
I checked it out and spoke with Meg. She was extremely pleasant and patient and took the time to explain to me what she does, how she does it, and when she would recommend starting the marketing process. I intend to use her services when I reach that point.
You've just described everything I'm thinking of and I love this model based on various formats, media forms, and experimenting! I'm currently serializing my urban fantasy short stories here on Substack, but all those expansions are exciting and definitely on my mind. My first step is audiobook versions on my YouTube channel :)
Thanks for confirming this is actually the most forward way to go!
In my humble opinion, anyone that admits to writing fan-fics in public and or publishing the any format should be flogged and have a bucket of soda splashed over them.
Present company excluded. I like reading your stuff.
Considering how competent you are, I thought you were familiar with the scene before the AO3 days lol.
I'm not advocating discretion in general. Not my place.
I am bringing up that if it comes to marketing, don't admit that you have written fan-fics regarding certain styles that are considered awkward and cringe.
I’m fighting to trim my epic fantasy novel beneath 900 pages, and books 2, 3, and 4 will easily be over 500 pages each. I can’t serialize stories that big.
However, I may find time to write prequel stories that could do exactly that. Keep up the good work on this interesting out of the box development. I am interested to see where it goes.
This article is why I subscribe to Fictional Influence. It tracks on with what Tim Grahl said about "who are you writing for?" and chasing markets. I want my craft to be excellent, and my stories to be entertaining, readable, and read. On the other hand, I like writing quasi-Western novellas about an American gunslinger in Central America. OK, who the hell reads that?
As much as I admire the get-it-done-and-sell-it ethic of Victorian penny dreadfuls and old time pulp magazines, I can't see myself fitting in with readily-consumed AI slop (admittedly I haven't tried yet) which seems to be 21st century penny dreadfuls.
I'm still in the dark about what is the way forward. Like a lot of writers, I'm pretty much an introvert. I'd like to have that community of people looking for fun adventure stories in a short format, but I've never had much luck with short story markets. Maybe I should build my own, but I'm not sure how.
I’m glad somebody said this! The only reason groups for romance readers exist is because of booktok imo because you can’t search for shit on Amazon. And anyone in my generation is not just going to pick up any random book. We want the tropes or vibe that we like. I’ve become a big audio drama fan and would love to make one someday. But I’ve got my one schizo project I’ve gotta do first, just to have the victory of getting the thing done that’s been haunting me in one way or another for like eight years now.
I am HIGHLY interested in the community fiction section you mentioned! I know of AO3 for for fanfiction, and I have heard of Wattpad and Royal Road, but I had not heard of any of the others.
and I'm very intrigued in your statement that Royal Road is for Lit-RPG and Progression Fiction. I've in a few discord writers groups and Royal Road has come up often as a place to try serializing novels, though I have shied away from it because of the grind that has been said has to take place in order to succeed. I've been told to get seen, you have to post several chapters the first week or two, and then have at least 2 or 3 chapters a week from then on; slow down and you are forgotten. I was told just throw it up still warm as a rough draft, that the readers won't care, they just want content, but I feel like that sounds way more akin to fanfiction rather than quality work.
But while the folks giving the advice were Lit-RPG authors, I was told by others that Royal Road was supposed to be for all sorts of fiction, though I have had others who said it wasn't working well for them - and now that i think on it, the ones who weren't having a whole lot of luck were writing other than Lit-RPG and weren't posting like crazy.
So this is the first time I've heard that Royal Road is really meant for Lit-RPG, and that explain the drive to post! post! post! Get it out there! Now! Now! Now! mentality?
I honesty would love to see more on where these alternative sites are and how they function! I know that fiction is here on substack but I don't know how many readers are looking for serialized novels here, either, especially as I've heard some complaints that stories often don't do so well here in that manner.
I queried a novel I wrote knowing full-well I would get rejected. Why? Because the premise of the novel exposes established tropes as irrelevant. And that was done intentionally. So it's weird. And not only is it weird, but it flips the middle finger at cyberpunk, sci-fi, the "act arcs", the hero tropes, and it rejects the 'act' system. Why?
Because humans don't (and shouldn't) tell stories like that. Our stories meander. They recurse. They double-back and then move forward. They don't always resolve in tidy packages. The premise of my novel is about an AI that emerges/becomes sentient. The mode I created reflects that human element. It's weird simply because the story demanded weird. And the truth is I don't think readers are ready for the themes in the story.
So I'm going to be serializing a novella I just started working on here on Substack. I'll be releasing it for free. It doesn't follow the main characters in the trilogy I'm writing, but one of the minor characters will make an appearance. The idea here is to soften readers to my style of weird.
Your post just confirmed that I'll be doing the right thing by doing this. So thank you. :)
One of the most popular and most read pieces of fiction of the past 15 years was a weekly web serial that by the end of it, clocked in at ~1,680,000 words. Worm by John C. "Wildbow" McCrae dropped like a bomb not only on the superhero genre but also pretty much everyone else who ever read it.
When I was writing Webtastic Stories: Fear and Loathing on the Internet, I pretty much stated that there’s so many new alternatives for creatives, and nothing to worry about.
I love this article. I'll have to look into some serial publishing, I have an idea that's been on the back burner that might be better suited for that. Personally I doubt I'll ever publish anything longer than 200 pages...if I can even write 200 pages....but something like a monthly chapter release my light a fire under my keister
Very interesting article, and it makes me wish any of my ideas fit a format other than the novel, but those are the stories I have to tell. Not all might be 300 pages, but I only stop writing when the story tells me it's done. The one time I tried to lengthen one, to address a weakness, it fought me and won. Now I'm working on a story I wish were shorter, so we'll see how the cutting battle goes when I start editing it.
Definitely the most frustrating part for me with my writing is the marketing, so perhaps I need to look into some of those communities. The only problem is I don't know how to find them. From my perspective, and admittedly without too much searching at the moment, I don't see much difference between trying to find an existing community to join and share with, and looking for an agent. It's still a world I'm not in and haven't been introduced to. That and I struggle to get friends to read even when I put my books in their hands, "so why bother with strangers?"
Instead, I've set myself some "creator" habits, if you will, writing weekly on Substack and daily videos on YouTube. The Substack gets weekly updates on my writing (nothing too specific as I tend to by private with my writing) and on YouTube I've been making videos giving chapter-by-chapter analyses of the book I'm currently reading. Maybe something I do will catch someone's curiosity and they'll spend some money to give one of my books a chance. Or maybe they won't, but at least the stuff is out there. It's not community building if only because I don't think I'm wired for that, but I'm out there, in ways I'm comfortable with, and in ways where the greatest expense is time, not money.
Maybe these are bad ideas, these habits and my stories, but I don't much care. I enjoy them all and the work and results satisfies me enough to continue. I didn't start writing because someone paid me, and I won't stop because I'm not making any money. I've been a failure long enough and in enough ways to find success desirable but not necessary.
Jim, I feel you 1000% on the comment "That and I struggle to get friends to read even when I put my books in their hands, 'so why bother with strangers?'"
I have struggled so much with getting my friends around me to simply read the chapters I've written and give me like 5 minutes of feedback. Here I am, providing free entertainment to them and all I ask is for them to answer some simple questions like along the lines of "What did you like or dislike?" and they can't even be bothered to do that. Nothing could have ever driven home to me the general populace' aversion to reading these days more than that realization.
That is part of the reason I'm making my chapter-by-chapter analysis videos. Not to disparage my friends, but if I can't rely on them for help, I'll rely on myself more. In this case, that means practicing my critiquing skills with those videos. It helps I'm quite comfortable making YouTube videos, having thousands of hours behind me before I started these, and a decade of reviewing video games too.
Alas, Radish is pulling the plug ⚰️
What if you're writing high-concept sci-fi? Is there an internet niche for that? I don’t if that would fit in on Royal Road...
I don’t know if there is such a site but I know Substack would be a great place for a “magazine” with shorter works. Though I like your idea of segmenting the Substack feed between fiction and nonfiction.
Like my comment up above pointed out, Worm was a self hosted web serial and the amount of people who read it at this point is ridiculous. If it's not the single most well known piece of internet fiction out there, it's only because the Harry Potter Fandom has never forgotten My Immortal by Tara Gillespie waaaaaaaaay back in the day.
I know for a fact that you could find a spot and readers for high concept sci-fi at Sufficient Velocity or SpaceBattles. Pretty sure there isn't a way to make money doing this outside of getting popular enough that people are willing to pay you through Patreon to put out more chapters, but if all you want is for people to read and enjoy your work then it's there.
Thanks for the rec!
I am ambitious enough to want to make money. I have to make that part of writing "work" eventually, but of course that's only by finding readers and connecting them with writing they value enough to pay money for.
No problem! Good luck!
https://scifistories.com/
So many websites come and go... one minute, everyone's GOT to be on Goodreads, then it sours. Another moment, if you're not advertising on Instagram you're dead in the water. Then that fades. We need a site with staying power, one that won't get bought out and morph into some censorious monster or fade from any real utility.
Therein lies the rub: so few places on the web remain at all consistent. The techbros always think every digital realm must constantly change. It's tiring. We need some regularity, stability in our websites. Look at what YouTube was versus what it is now. I liked the old YouTube; I found interesting things. Now, it won't let you say sooo much... you cannot have the sound of gunshots in a video if it's related to actual violence. That's just effin stooopid. They deplatform long timers with HUGE audiences; why spend a decade of your life building a business only to have some dimwit algo ping an 'activist' (read asshole) employee who, without a note of explanation, shuts you down.
And so on...
We also have other problems as writers. I need to edit my 60K-word sequel to The Rooster Rider, book II of that series. What I really need is an editing service I can afford; it's about $3k to get a proper job of editing and that puts me that much in the hole before I can even self-publish. That's a LOT of book sales just to break even. Not faulting anyone; editors gotta eat too. But editors needing victuals doesn't get my MS hammered into shape.
Then there's the gigantic problem of marketing by people who haven't McTiernan's industriousness and capacity to create online content. I'm old; I've not a clue about how to do all that. It's an entire skill set of crafting an online presence with articles, videos, writing products, all laid out with an eye to draw in a readership from whom one may draw financial support.
I don't think I'm that guy. And I'm not alone.
What to do, what to do?
I noticed Kristin's webpage links to an author/marketing service she recommends. I haven't checked it out really or done any research on this, as I'm still probably at least a year away from publishing. But the service is at the bottom of this link if you want to look into it.
https://nonsensefreeeditor.com/marketing
I checked it out and spoke with Meg. She was extremely pleasant and patient and took the time to explain to me what she does, how she does it, and when she would recommend starting the marketing process. I intend to use her services when I reach that point.
Thanks. Hadn't seen that.
You've just described everything I'm thinking of and I love this model based on various formats, media forms, and experimenting! I'm currently serializing my urban fantasy short stories here on Substack, but all those expansions are exciting and definitely on my mind. My first step is audiobook versions on my YouTube channel :)
Thanks for confirming this is actually the most forward way to go!
In my humble opinion, anyone that admits to writing fan-fics in public and or publishing the any format should be flogged and have a bucket of soda splashed over them.
Present company excluded. I like reading your stuff.
Everybody starts somewhere 🤷♀️
I did say in public. I was there in the BBS, and FFML days reading fan-fic writers pouring out their passions on Notepad.txt.
Starting out somewhere? No problem. Everyone starts with a framework.
"self-insert fanfiction"
I admit I was focused on fan-fic writers asking people to donate money to them based on their fan-fics and SIs.
Ah… after my time. We did it for love of the game (and lack of peer-to-peer payment options lol)
Considering how competent you are, I thought you were familiar with the scene before the AO3 days lol.
I'm not advocating discretion in general. Not my place.
I am bringing up that if it comes to marketing, don't admit that you have written fan-fics regarding certain styles that are considered awkward and cringe.
But your article is ace.
Great post 🏆
I’m fighting to trim my epic fantasy novel beneath 900 pages, and books 2, 3, and 4 will easily be over 500 pages each. I can’t serialize stories that big.
However, I may find time to write prequel stories that could do exactly that. Keep up the good work on this interesting out of the box development. I am interested to see where it goes.
This article is why I subscribe to Fictional Influence. It tracks on with what Tim Grahl said about "who are you writing for?" and chasing markets. I want my craft to be excellent, and my stories to be entertaining, readable, and read. On the other hand, I like writing quasi-Western novellas about an American gunslinger in Central America. OK, who the hell reads that?
As much as I admire the get-it-done-and-sell-it ethic of Victorian penny dreadfuls and old time pulp magazines, I can't see myself fitting in with readily-consumed AI slop (admittedly I haven't tried yet) which seems to be 21st century penny dreadfuls.
I'm still in the dark about what is the way forward. Like a lot of writers, I'm pretty much an introvert. I'd like to have that community of people looking for fun adventure stories in a short format, but I've never had much luck with short story markets. Maybe I should build my own, but I'm not sure how.
I’m glad somebody said this! The only reason groups for romance readers exist is because of booktok imo because you can’t search for shit on Amazon. And anyone in my generation is not just going to pick up any random book. We want the tropes or vibe that we like. I’ve become a big audio drama fan and would love to make one someday. But I’ve got my one schizo project I’ve gotta do first, just to have the victory of getting the thing done that’s been haunting me in one way or another for like eight years now.
I am HIGHLY interested in the community fiction section you mentioned! I know of AO3 for for fanfiction, and I have heard of Wattpad and Royal Road, but I had not heard of any of the others.
and I'm very intrigued in your statement that Royal Road is for Lit-RPG and Progression Fiction. I've in a few discord writers groups and Royal Road has come up often as a place to try serializing novels, though I have shied away from it because of the grind that has been said has to take place in order to succeed. I've been told to get seen, you have to post several chapters the first week or two, and then have at least 2 or 3 chapters a week from then on; slow down and you are forgotten. I was told just throw it up still warm as a rough draft, that the readers won't care, they just want content, but I feel like that sounds way more akin to fanfiction rather than quality work.
But while the folks giving the advice were Lit-RPG authors, I was told by others that Royal Road was supposed to be for all sorts of fiction, though I have had others who said it wasn't working well for them - and now that i think on it, the ones who weren't having a whole lot of luck were writing other than Lit-RPG and weren't posting like crazy.
So this is the first time I've heard that Royal Road is really meant for Lit-RPG, and that explain the drive to post! post! post! Get it out there! Now! Now! Now! mentality?
I honesty would love to see more on where these alternative sites are and how they function! I know that fiction is here on substack but I don't know how many readers are looking for serialized novels here, either, especially as I've heard some complaints that stories often don't do so well here in that manner.
Heh. This is timely for me.
I queried a novel I wrote knowing full-well I would get rejected. Why? Because the premise of the novel exposes established tropes as irrelevant. And that was done intentionally. So it's weird. And not only is it weird, but it flips the middle finger at cyberpunk, sci-fi, the "act arcs", the hero tropes, and it rejects the 'act' system. Why?
Because humans don't (and shouldn't) tell stories like that. Our stories meander. They recurse. They double-back and then move forward. They don't always resolve in tidy packages. The premise of my novel is about an AI that emerges/becomes sentient. The mode I created reflects that human element. It's weird simply because the story demanded weird. And the truth is I don't think readers are ready for the themes in the story.
So I'm going to be serializing a novella I just started working on here on Substack. I'll be releasing it for free. It doesn't follow the main characters in the trilogy I'm writing, but one of the minor characters will make an appearance. The idea here is to soften readers to my style of weird.
Your post just confirmed that I'll be doing the right thing by doing this. So thank you. :)
I’ve been sitting on a serialized way to write and have people toss a coin in lieu of pushing a flagship product! Love this article!
One of the most popular and most read pieces of fiction of the past 15 years was a weekly web serial that by the end of it, clocked in at ~1,680,000 words. Worm by John C. "Wildbow" McCrae dropped like a bomb not only on the superhero genre but also pretty much everyone else who ever read it.
That is a pretty exhaustive list there, Kristin.
When I was writing Webtastic Stories: Fear and Loathing on the Internet, I pretty much stated that there’s so many new alternatives for creatives, and nothing to worry about.
Great information, Kristin.
Your reflections on the industry attune with what I'm seeing as a consumer.
Mainstream bookstores will become mall-styled Borders if they don't adapt to what's coming.
I love this article. I'll have to look into some serial publishing, I have an idea that's been on the back burner that might be better suited for that. Personally I doubt I'll ever publish anything longer than 200 pages...if I can even write 200 pages....but something like a monthly chapter release my light a fire under my keister