Writing Serial Fiction on Your Blog

Should You Publish Serialized Fiction on Your Blog?

Using serial fiction on your blog can be a great way to drum up interest in your work. It can draw a dedicated audience who eagerly anticipates each publication. But what are some of the pros and cons of putting fiction on your website?

There are a lot of ways you can utilize serial stories, especially if you’re planning the release of a book. It could lead to more interest, more exposure, and more sales.

But is it something that fits your needs and wants?

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What is Serialized Fiction?

Serial fiction is a work that is released in an episodic fashion over time. Similar to television shows and some streaming services, each “episode” is published at a set time to keep the reader’s interest.

For example, you could part out your 85,000-word novel into shorter, 2000-word blog posts once per week. If the plot is captivating enough, visitors will subscribe and keep coming back to read the rest of the story.

In some cases, serial fiction can be self-contained stories but then connect to an overall plot. In other words, they can be read as a standalone novella or as a whole book.

A good example of this is when Stephen King released The Green Mile. Originally, The Green Mile was released in six volumes before it was combined into a single book.

Pros and Cons of Serial Fiction on Your Blog

PROS

  • Easier to Write for Busy People
  • Monetizing in Many Ways
  • Building Up a Dedicated Audience
  • Building Your Reputation
  • Easy to Repurpose Afterward
  • Promoting Your Name

CONS

  • Harder to Market
  • Dealing with Plagiarism
  • Maintaining a Strict Schedule
  • Lack of Proper Editing – ish
  • Upfront Monetary Investment

Easier to Write for Busy People

A serial fiction is much easier to manage on a blog for those who don’t have a lot of time in the week. Writing a full-length novel takes a great deal of time. And if you want to publish it sooner rather than later, you need to schedule large blocks of time to write.

With serial fiction, you can write a single blog post throughout the week and publish it on specific days. For instance, it only takes about two hours for me to write more than 2000 words. I could crank it out on a Monday morning and schedule it for Fridays.

Monetizing in Many ways

If you can draw an audience, you can monetize a blog in a variety of ways. Ad revenue, affiliate links, or even books that you’ve published in the past will generate income from your stories.

The caveat is that you’ll need quite a few visitors to make enough money to quit a full-time job. We’re talking thousands and thousands of visitors each month. It’s possible, especially if you market your blog right.

Building Up a Dedicated Audience

Blogging gives you a chance to build an audience who are adamant about reading everything you write. These are your core fans and will help you reach some amazing goals as an author.

By getting people hooked on your stories, they’ll be waiting with bated breath until the next episode is released. Well, that is as long as you can write a good story. Nothing is ever a guarantee as a writer.

Building Your Reputation

One of the main reasons why I suggest every author has a blog is to build on his or her reputation. As a writer, your name is your brand, and becoming synonymous with your genre can do wonders for book sales and general interest.

When you type in “horror authors” in Google, you’ll get a list of some of the greatest writers in that genre. This is the power of a reputation, and starting with a blog and a handful of ideas will contribute to building up your name.

Easy to Repurpose Afterward

Once your serial fiction is complete, you can then move it from the blog and publish a full-length book for sale. Or, you can combine it and sell copies as short novellas, as I pointed out with The Green Mile.

That way, your story can generate interest, readers, and income from two separate avenues. All it takes is a bit of marketing prowess and both methods could be quite beneficial. But as I said earlier, there are no guarantees.

Promoting Your Name

One of the reasons why I dominate Google search for my name is because I create a lot of content. I have my name in a variety of places online, which helped me kick the lawyer and doctor who shared my name off of the first two pages of Google.

When you submit a sitemap and register your site with Google, your name is tied to the content as the author. The more you write and publish, the more Google associates you with certain search criteria.

Harder to Market

Generating interest in a story is more difficult to market than something like SEO-focused content on a blog. Instead of relying on search terms for traffic, it’ll mostly be from what you share on social media and word-of-mouth.

That is unless you already have a blog with a growing number of visitors each week.

From a beginner’s viewpoint, however, you’ll have to put in a lot of hours to market your serial properly. But once you get that ball rolling and readers begin sharing your work in their circles, you can quickly pick up momentum.

Dealing with Plagiarism

Regardless if you’re a blogger or an author, there will always be people who will try to steal your work. That’s just one of the many facets of doing anything online. Luckily, there are protections for bloggers and their stories.

For instance, you can file a DMCA claim in Google against another website if they steal your content. Never let scrapers get away with copying your work to post on their websites.

Also, keep in mind that blogs are protected as intellectual property. This means you can lawyer up if the offending party doesn’t take down your work or has published your story as their own.

Maintaining a Strict Schedule

If you’re publishing a serial fiction on your blog, you need to make sure it comes out in a timely manner. If people are expecting content at a specific time and day, you could lose some of them if you’re not adhering to the schedule.

Think of why shows on television and streaming services have specific time slots and how people rely on them. Releasing anything in an episodic fashion centers around that schedule.

Lack of Proper Editing – ish

Not everyone has the money to hire an editor to go over every single blog post. The end result could be those “special” people who give you crap in the comment section of a post.

Even when I use the Grammarly Chrome extension, I’ll have the occasional basement-dwelling expert pointing out something in a post. All we can do is write the best content we can.

Luckily, there are plenty of editing tools out there for bloggers. Then, it just comes down to picking the best one that works for your needs and wants.

Upfront Monetary Investment

Unless you plan on using one of many free blogging platforms, you’ll need a few bucks to get started. Personally, I don’t suggest using free platforms if you’re working to build your name as an author. Mostly because the rest of the URL could take away from the name.

For instance, my site is MichaelBrockbank.com, not michaelbrockbank.blogger.com. See the difference?

Now, I’m not saying that you shouldn’t use a free blog to get started. But when things start picking up, you’ll definitely want to move it to your own domain name. And that can run about $106 for the next three years when using something like GreenGeeks Web Hosting.

It’s cheaper than a cup of coffee each month when you pay three years in advance.

5 Ideas for Using Serial Fiction on Your Blog

Aside from just writing a story, there are several things you can do to promote yourself further as an author. It all comes down to your imagination and what you’re willing to produce.

In fact, I had a few stories on this website that I was writing as serialized fiction back in the day. And some of them are still being read almost 10 years later.

So, what are some ways you can use serial fiction on your blog?

1. As a Standalone Story

First, you can simply write the story just for something to do on your blog. There’s nothing saying that you have to turn it into a book or even care if anyone reads it.

I often use writing as a form of therapy for relaxing and de-stressing. Writing a series on your blog may have a similar effect, such as helping you deflate.

If you happen to get a few avid readers, then great. But you don’t necessarily have to promote yourself as an author or blogger to be a writer. You can do it simply because you want to express your thoughts.

2. Origins of Characters or Plot Devices

One idea I’ve had in the past for writing serial fiction for my main blog is to publish the origins of certain elements in my books.

I’ve been asked a few times for novels centering around origin stories for certain characters. Some of those would be better written as full-length novels. Still, there are quite a few things I could go into further detail regarding the storylines.

What if there are minor plot devices or characters that might be fun to explore? It’ll give your readers something extra in between books or as a supplement for the world of which you’re building.

3. In Between Each Published Book in a Series

Another idea I’ve been toying with as of late is creating short serials of events that happen in between the published books. For instance, there is a three-month gap between the events of Kingmaker and Fury.

What happens in that gap that may add extra to the overall story for fans of the series?

You may have seen something similar to this with popular shows in the past. Usually, they’re called “webisodes.” It’s merely extra content for fans to enjoy while the main series is being filmed or planned.

Or, they’re added after the fact to keep the interest in the story going.

4. Audience Testing

Never underestimate the power of testing new ideas on an audience. It’s one of the reasons why I started my Wattpad account. I wanted to see if people enjoyed my writing or the story ideas I wanted to create.

When you create serial fiction on your blog, you’re using your visitors to test the waters of your idea. Turning on comments will let people praise your work or even properly critique it.

Just remember that you can’t please 100% of the people 100% of the time. Don’t internalize any hate that is thrown your way. People who hate something without a proper critique are merely trolls.

5. Getting More Practice

One of the biggest reasons why I started WriterSanctuary.com was to give myself practice as a professional writer. Everything I learned, I put into practice in each post. This made me a much stronger writer overall.

I’m a big supporter of putting what you learn into practice. I did it when writing Shadows of Atlantic City, I did it when creating this blog, and I plan on doing it in the future when I start experimenting with screenplays.

As the saying goes, practice makes perfect. Although I don’t believe anything is perfect, practice will help you become a much stronger writer with every post you publish on a blog.

Other Methods for Publishing Serial Fiction

What if you don’t have a blog but still want to publish serial fiction? After all, not everyone has the money for web hosting or wants to set up a website to publish stories.

Luckily, there are plenty of places where you can publish serialized fiction on the Internet.

You can publish serial fiction using:

  • Wattpad.
    Wattpad has a special place in my heart as it is the site where I started writing as an author. It’s also home to my serial Despair, which I hope to finish soon.
  • Inkitt.
    Inkitt is a site similar to Wattpad but has a more professional layout and feel. For one thing, you can’t just publish anything you write. It still has to be verified by Inkitt that you’re not violating terms of use.
  • Medium.
    Medium is a very popular platform for bloggers and authors alike. A lot of people will use it to create serial fiction while generating a bit of revenue.
    Vocal Media.
    Vocal is a site similar to Medium, only less popular. You can make a bit of money using Vocal, but it depends greatly on how you market your stories. In any case, you can write fiction on Vocal with no problem.
  • Archive of Our Own.
    If you like writing fan fiction, Archive of Our Own may be the best place for you. AO3 was created by fans and is a nonprofit archive of things from fan fiction to fan art.
  • Kindle Vella.
    Kindle Vella is more for those who are ready to start writing serial fiction professionally. It is Amazon’s episodic-based publication system where readers can purchase tokens to unlock your work.
  • YouTube.
    Yep, that’s right. If you’re creative enough and have a voice people like to listen to, you can create serial fiction on YouTube as voiceovers. I’ve done it while writing Despair as an audiobook of sorts and look forward to finishing the series.

What Serials Would You Write?

Writing serials isn’t for everyone. Some authors would prefer to just write the book and publish it. However, a lot of authors find it fun to release episodes of their stories and generate interest.

There’s really no right or wrong answer here. It just depends on what you want out of your writing.

As an author, I plan on doing all of the above. Not only does it give me a chance to offer additional backstory and whatnot, but I love to write. I have plenty of stories sitting in a folder that would love to see the light of day.

Plus, I could easily manage an episode a week.

Michael Brockbank
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