Meredith Mansfield, Author

It’s a topic in e-publishing right now, in a couple of different contexts.

I know a couple of writers who are either serializing stories for e-publication or thinking about it. Actually it’s a very attractive concept.

You take a 100,000-word novel and break it down into, say, five pieces. Hopefully, of course, each installment ends with some sort of hook that will make the reader want to purchase the next installment. Then you release installments a week to a month or so apart.

It’s something that e-publishing is very well suited for and something that wasn’t even remotely possible with traditional paper publishing. That is, unless you count the endless series that extend to a dozen or more books. But in those cases, readers had to wait years between installments. This is much less painful.

Another interesting thought that I read about earlier this week is the idea of e-publishing segments of your work in process. Not for free, but on some sort of arrangement where readers pay for the finished work, but get to read the story as it progresses. This potentially allows the writer to get feedback from a much wider audience than a writers’ group and lets the readers see some of their ideas or comments incorporated into the story.

Both are intriguing thoughts that I’m going to have to research more. I even know where I can find an online course on the subject.