How would you feel about slower (but bigger) updates?
Added 2021-02-20 19:35:22 +0000 UTCSo far, I’ve been posting URGY at a rate of one chapter per week—because that’s how fast I’ve been writing it, and imo the cardinal rule in web serial publishing is to never outpace your backlog.
This has, perhaps unsurprisingly, led to some unpleasant reader experiences. Oops.
I get it—one chapter at a time, a week apart, makes it harder to enjoy the story as a whole. I’m not satisfied by it either. So, I’d like to float the idea of changing the update schedule to something like, monthly(ish) batches of 3 to 5 chapters instead. Grouping them together with the serial reading experience in mind so we no longer get stuck with transitional chapters where not “enough” happens.
(Side note: I didn’t design these early chapters with the serial experience in mind at all, because I didn’t expect to have any readers for months hahahahaha oops again!)
I’m asking here first to gauge feedback from the closest thing I have to shareholders, but I’m making this post public in case anyone else has feedback too. (Non-patrons can comment on the URGY website here.)
Comments
Personally, I'm not too concerned either way. I read in batches of chapters anyway. I would say that you should section (and release) chapters however you think creates a better story, without overly considering the reader experience. It can be nice to have clean breaks after every release, but the quality of the story is much more important. I wouldn't mind monthly releases, inconsistent schedules or hourly paragraphs. From my experience in following other stories, however, I think larger chapters would do better . You have to balance a few factors. First bigger chapters mostly feel better because they let you better immerse yourself in the story . Also, when a chapter hasn't been posted recently, people don't think about the story. A week vs 10 days wait doesn't change much if you avoid cliff hangers. Of course, that also makes people more likely to forget your story in the down time. Longer, less frequent chapters also give an illusion of greater quality, since it seems like you're taking longer to write a chapter. It also means a 'dud' chapter (every webnovel has them) stings even more. Overall, I think if you aren't doing daily or every second day posts to keep people checking and thinking about you, you might as well just go big. Especially if you have a varied story, where one chapter might be lots of character building and another lots of action; each of those chapters would seem like a 'dud' to some readers, but combined chapters have something for everyone.
Three Piranhas
2021-02-21 07:16:37 +0000 UTC
