: Re: Self-Publishing Chapters Is selling individual chapters a valid marketing scheme? Is there anything against it or examples where it worked to sell a whole novel?

@Cugini967

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Most answers say "it's not a good idea" and that's what I'm going to say as well, but offer an example.

Besides commercial or professional work, I occasionally visit fan-fiction platforms as well. And there, serialising a full work like you are asking about doing is pretty standard - a precious few only start sharing after they are done with at least the first draft, but most write it as they go. It makes sense that this is popular, after all, it's a profitless work, you mostly do it when you have a free time and not concerned about saving that time for making money, so people just get their ideas out and get excited to share them.

Now, the reason I am talking about this seemingly unrelated topic is - even on a platform where people visit mostly for fun reading, and is legally completely free of charge, a lot of people avoid serialised work like this until they are complete. Reasons are simple: one, if the author is publishing chapters as they write, it may come a time where they can't write anymore, whether it be for personal reasons or a common writer's block, and the chapters will either come less frequently or stop coming entirely. This particular reason can be irrelevant to you if you have your work ethics and professionalism to be consistent with publishing. However, second reason is much more psychological and why I'm not fond of the idea: most people don't want their reading pace to be controlled by the lack of content.

Even if a person finishes a novel in a year, it's comforting to know that if they want to read more of that novel, it's right there, without having to wait. Memory factor is also persistent - if you are made to wait for a new chapter outside of your will, you may get emotionally disconnected from the story, forget some plot points, or both. Readers like to control their own pace when it comes to novels, they don't expect it to be like a TV series to wait for weekly.

But why wouldn't serialising work for novels if it works for comics and TV shows? I personally can think of many small reasons that wouldn't work alone but are strong combined, however, I suppose one big reason would be the company discipline. You are talking about self-publishing your novel, and for serial work, that's way less reliable for a customer than an established comic company like Marvel or Shounen Jump where the customers know they'll get what they want, except for the few occasions that has been announced and they know won't be an habit due to the company discipline. An individual has so much more to prove while they are in the process of getting known, and that's one aspect of why serialising a self-published novel is a bad idea.

There is also a culture aspect to this. Unlike comics or TV series, people don't expect to be able to access to a novel chapter by chapter - novel series sure are a thing but even then you can get your hands on a full novel instead of a single chapter. This is of course not impossible to break into normalising the idea of a serialised novel, but this idea needs to prove its reliability first. Basically you'd have to live a whole lifetime with little to no profit if you want to popularise this idea on your own. Even then, it's not guaranteed to success, since it's tough to break traditions alone.

And if you're going to get most significant amount of readers when you're done with the novel, you might as well go for publishing the novel when it's done as a whole.

TL;DR Demand for an incomplete work tends to be infinitesimal and a paid chapter is not the best way to advertise it. You could publish a free portion with the promise to get to the full thing with money, but a periodic publication is not very ideal in this age of impatience and lack of appropriate literature magazines.

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