Releasing a Novel/Novella

A

Angela_Ivy_Bloom

Guest
Just a question. Hope this is the right forum. I'm writing a novella that may turn into a short novel. I'm going to polish it before I release it. Is it better to release it in chapters on Literotica or should I go ahead and release the whole thing at once? Right now it looks like I'll be upwards of 50,000 words by the time I finish it.

Thank you!
 
Just a question. Hope this is the right forum. I'm writing a novella that may turn into a short novel. I'm going to polish it before I release it. Is it better to release it in chapters on Literotica or should I go ahead and release the whole thing at once? Right now it looks like I'll be upwards of 50,000 words by the time I finish it.

Thank you!

I'd release it in chapters so that it can be conveniently read. I don't think there are many who are willing to read 50,000 words at one sitting, and if they have to leave it they have to figure out how to go back to the place they left it when they come back.
 
That's what I figured. Thank you so much for your feedback! :)
 
The only real advantage to releasing something that big as a single submission is the likelihood that your score will be higher than most of the chapters will generate.

You get more exposure by breaking it up into chapters and releasing them on a regular schedule. There's been a reasonably consistent 2 days from submission to approval lag for quite some time now, so you can time it fairly well.

Wait until each chapter is approved before submitting the next, and try to avoid Sunday releases, because they suck.

Every time you release a new chapter, you put your name and your work in front of new people. Releasing it as one big submission only gets you one shot at catching people's eyes.

The views, votes, etc. are likely to diminish with each chapter. The score will typically rise the farther you go along. That's a product of the people who enjoy it sticking with it, while those who aren't as enamored don't open the next chapter. It's the same reason really long submissions score higher, but spread out over multiple submission.

Try to keep the chapters at least 6000 words or more, if possible. If you've broken something up into chapters already, and they're well short of this, you can always post multiple chapters per submission. ( My Story Ch. 01-03 for the title line, for example )

The readership tends to frown on chapters that don't go a decent distance into a second Lit page. Once you break beyond 3 Lit pages, some of the convenience of an easy stopping point for readers fades away, so between the two is your sweet spot.

You don't have to use the Novels and Novellas category for long stories. If there's an overarching theme that fits the whole story, go with that category. You're almost certain to attract more readers that way. I only recommend Novels and Novellas when your story contains a variety of strong kinks.

Non-con + Incest + GM, for example. No matter where you put a story like that, it's likely to get ravaged by readers in the narrower categories. N&N readers are conditioned to expect a wider variety of kink.
 
The only real advantage to releasing something that big as a single submission is the likelihood that your score will be higher than most of the chapters will generate.

IF it's well written *and* complete.

I've seen 19 Lit page crap scoring below 4.00 - poorly written, full of airheaded, horny wives and stupid narrative. No wonder the readers voted low after slugging through it.


You get more exposure by breaking it up into chapters and releasing them on a regular schedule. There's been a reasonably consistent 2 days from submission to approval lag for quite some time now, so you can time it fairly well.

Wait until each chapter is approved before submitting the next, and try to avoid Sunday releases, because they suck.

Every time you release a new chapter, you put your name and your work in front of new people. Releasing it as one big submission only gets you one shot at catching people's eyes.

The views, votes, etc. are likely to diminish with each chapter. The score will typically rise the farther you go along. That's a product of the people who enjoy it sticking with it, while those who aren't as enamored don't open the next chapter. It's the same reason really long submissions score higher, but spread out over multiple submission.

Try to keep the chapters at least 6000 words or more, if possible. If you've broken something up into chapters already, and they're well short of this, you can always post multiple chapters per submission. ( My Story Ch. 01-03 for the title line, for example )

The readership tends to frown on chapters that don't go a decent distance into a second Lit page. Once you break beyond 3 Lit pages, some of the convenience of an easy stopping point for readers fades away, so between the two is your sweet spot.

You don't have to use the Novels and Novellas category for long stories. If there's an overarching theme that fits the whole story, go with that category. You're almost certain to attract more readers that way. I only recommend Novels and Novellas when your story contains a variety of strong kinks.

Non-con + Incest + GM, for example. No matter where you put a story like that, it's likely to get ravaged by readers in the narrower categories. N&N readers are conditioned to expect a wider variety of kink.

Well said.

Non-Con readers can read from a variety of categories like mofos. They don't ick out at the sight of Anal sex or Non-Human. Putting a Gay Male part is like testing their limits, but I haven't seen anyone including it or any reader commenting on it.
 
Thank you so much, Reject Reality and Soulful Bard. I feel like I should have released my last story in two parts, 7k words each. I'll definitely try and keep the word count down to 6k per release. That release schedule will give me lots of time to work on the sequels to my other two stories I've already published. :)
 
I'd release it in chapters so that it can be conveniently read. I don't think there are many who are willing to read 50,000 words at one sitting, and if they have to leave it they have to figure out how to go back to the place they left it when they come back.

Amen.
 
Thank you so much, Reject Reality and Soulful Bard. I feel like I should have released my last story in two parts, 7k words each. I'll definitely try and keep the word count down to 6k per release. That release schedule will give me lots of time to work on the sequels to my other two stories I've already published. :)

Releasing 14,000 words (4 Lit. pages) in one entry doesn't seem to be problem with Literotica readers.
 
First off, I concur with what Reject Reality wrote.

I feel like I should have released my last story in two parts, 7k words each.
I disagree with this. My feeling is that you should never release a story in two parts. I rarely read a multi-chapter story. I don't even click on the link. I don't spend my time reading stories that are incomplete and may never be complete. If there was a series that for some reason interested me but I saw only two chapters, then I wouldn't start reading it as I would guess that there were more chapters to come. If your story isn't so big that it has to split into several chapters, publish it as one piece.
 
First off, I concur with what Reject Reality wrote.


I disagree with this. My feeling is that you should never release a story in two parts. I rarely read a multi-chapter story. I don't even click on the link. I don't spend my time reading stories that are incomplete and may never be complete. If there was a series that for some reason interested me but I saw only two chapters, then I wouldn't start reading it as I would guess that there were more chapters to come. If your story isn't so big that it has to split into several chapters, publish it as one piece.

Isn't that a contradiction? Reject Reality posted to submit long stories in chapters. Your subsequent posting doesn't concur with what Reject reality posted.

I noted that 14,000 words would be accepted at Lit. at one go, though.

You don't even check the start of multichapter stories? I, like many others here, don't start posting a multichapter work until it's all finished being written. And I, like some others, put a slug on the front of the first chapter assuring that it's all written and giving an approximate date in which posting will be finished. You'd be assuming a lot and possibly missing something interesting by not even looking at the first chapter to see if a roadmap is provided.
 
Just to toss this out there. Top all time incest story on lit

https://www.literotica.com/s/threads-the-island

42 pages...so over 140k or so words. close to 16k votes and 1193 comments faved 200+ times.

The Halloween contest winner this year 19 lit pages and finished with close to four hundred votes and that was after the sweep cut more than two hundred from it as the contest went on.

If your goal is building a following and getting your name out there individual chapters will work because as RR said its more shots on the new story list to catch attention, but if you care just about the story and not the numbers there is no factual evidence of what people will sit through and what the won't. the readership is to diversified for that.

And 8 letters does not speak for everyone, plenty of people will read a series that is not complete yet not everyone has a pathological fear of a story on a free site not finishing and giving them their money's worth:rolleyes:

My last part one to a two part incest series received over 1500 votes before the second one posted.
 
I thought there was a rule that you couldn't post part of a story if you were trying to sell the entire story somewhere else. Which makes sense, because at times you would see blow ins posting teaser chapter(s) of books they were trying to flog on Amazon and elsewhere. However, if you're posting the entire story, I suppose that wouldn't be a problem.

Of course you expose your work to piracy if you post the entire story here for free. I've had one of my short stories show up elsewhere without attribution, which bothers me, but I wasn't planning on selling it anyway.

Re: Chapters -- one thing about breaking up a long story up into chapters is that you can gauge how many people are actually reading it, which isn't true if you post it as one lump some -- where you only know how many wankers clicked on it and not how many read it to the end.
 
I thought there was a rule that you couldn't post part of a story if you were trying to sell the entire story somewhere else.

Nope, no such rules. Or reason to have them from Literotica's standpoint. Why should Literotica, posting it for free, care where else you've put it? All they require in copyright use is nonexclusive use, which doesn't preclude doing anything else with it that you want. What you can't do is link the story here directly to anywhere else outside Lit., and doing so, with only a partial story posted here that you want the Lit. reader to pay for to get the whole thing would in particularly troublesome. What Lit. evidently doesn't want is to be is part of a bait and switch for author-only profit, with an incomplete version here.
 
My feeling is that you should never release a story in two parts. I rarely read a multi-chapter story. I don't even click on the link. I don't spend my time reading stories that are incomplete and may never be complete. If there was a series that for some reason interested me but I saw only two chapters, then I wouldn't start reading it as I would guess that there were more chapters to come. If your story isn't so big that it has to split into several chapters, publish it as one piece.

What about if it's actually finished, all chapters are present and accounted for? Do you give those a chance or do you just assume they aren't done?

I know that a lot of authors write a chapter, post it up, and might not have the next one ready for months. But some of us purposefully have the entire story written out before posting anything, which enables a sensible release schedule (weekly, bi-weekly, etc.) Once the last chapter is up, to anybody coming upon it for the first time there's no difference to if it had been posted all in one shot.
 
What about if it's actually finished, all chapters are present and accounted for? Do you give those a chance or do you just assume they aren't done?

I know that a lot of authors write a chapter, post it up, and might not have the next one ready for months. But some of us purposefully have the entire story written out before posting anything, which enables a sensible release schedule (weekly, bi-weekly, etc.) Once the last chapter is up, to anybody coming upon it for the first time there's no difference to if it had been posted all in one shot.

I'm doing that with my current story. I'm planning to put a note at the top of each submission telling the reader that the story is complete and edited and that I'll be releasing it in x-number of parts on a set schedule. I'm going to submit each section as the previous one is approved. I'm hoping that keeps readers coming back for more.
 
Isn't that a contradiction? Reject Reality posted to submit long stories in chapters. Your subsequent posting doesn't concur with what Reject reality posted.
What I said is that if you are thinking of posting a story as two chapters, it's probably not too long to post as a complete story. If it is so long that it will be posted as many chapters, then post it as many chapters. Cruise Doubledate With My Sister is 34K words (9 full LitE pages) and I was sorely tempted to split it as working with a story of that size was very difficult for me, but it has done very well as a complete story.

And 8 letters does not speak for everyone, plenty of people will read a series that is not complete yet not everyone has a pathological fear of a story on a free site not finishing and giving them their money's worth:rolleyes:
Agreed that I don't speak for everyone.

Let me expand on what I said. I don't read LitE every day and when I do read LitE, I typically read one story. When I am looking for a story, I scan the list of my category (Incest) for non-chapter stories with a high rating and then I look at the title and description. If it sounds interesting, that's what I read and am done for the day.

If you publish chapter one of your series on a day when I don't read LitE, I'm never going to read it as I'm not going to jump in on a later chapter. If I read chapter one today and like it, you may publish your other chapters on days when I'm not reading LitE so I'll never find out what happens next. I also don't have the patience to wait a week for the next chapter in a story.

My very first submission was an incest story split over two chapters that I now wish I had published as a complete story.
Heather and Michael Ch 01
Heather and Michael Ch 02

They got good scores (4.40 and 4.61), some comments (10 and 18) and a good number of views (98702 and 84232 since 7/23/13).

All of my complete stories have or will pass those chapters in terms of views. Over the last three weeks, H&M Ch's 1-3 have gotten 755, 772 and 451 views. Cycling Weekends with Sis, published a month after H&M Chapters 1&2 and has a similar score (4.54), got 1449 views over the last three weeks. So apparently I am not the only one who prefers complete stories to chapter stories.

BTW LC, did you ever read "Cruise"? You will probably hate it as a main character is a devout Christian, but if you don't, I would be interested in your feedback.

What about if it's actually finished, all chapters are present and accounted for? Do you give those a chance or do you just assume they aren't done?

I know that a lot of authors write a chapter, post it up, and might not have the next one ready for months. But some of us purposefully have the entire story written out before posting anything, which enables a sensible release schedule (weekly, bi-weekly, etc.) Once the last chapter is up, to anybody coming upon it for the first time there's no difference to if it had been posted all in one shot.
I'm one of those bad authors. I started an expansion of H&M, published chapter 3 and then abandon the expansion. If you make self-imposed deadline for publishing your chapters, I'm not likely to read your story, but that's just me.
 
Would it detract from this discussion if I expanded the original question ... which would be ... I have several novel length stories. All of them are exceptionally long (as in the first one is 240k+ words alone, and the rest run at about 130k words each). To complicate this further, the first three stories are a trilogy, and the others are an ongoing series.

What suggestions do any of you have for me?
 
The only real advantage to releasing something that big as a single submission is the likelihood that your score will be higher than most of the chapters will generate.

You get more exposure by breaking it up into chapters and releasing them on a regular schedule. There's been a reasonably consistent 2 days from submission to approval lag for quite some time now, so you can time it fairly well.

Wait until each chapter is approved before submitting the next, and try to avoid Sunday releases, because they suck.

Every time you release a new chapter, you put your name and your work in front of new people. Releasing it as one big submission only gets you one shot at catching people's eyes.

The views, votes, etc. are likely to diminish with each chapter. The score will typically rise the farther you go along. That's a product of the people who enjoy it sticking with it, while those who aren't as enamored don't open the next chapter. It's the same reason really long submissions score higher, but spread out over multiple submission.

Try to keep the chapters at least 6000 words or more, if possible. If you've broken something up into chapters already, and they're well short of this, you can always post multiple chapters per submission. ( My Story Ch. 01-03 for the title line, for example )

The readership tends to frown on chapters that don't go a decent distance into a second Lit page. Once you break beyond 3 Lit pages, some of the convenience of an easy stopping point for readers fades away, so between the two is your sweet spot.

You don't have to use the Novels and Novellas category for long stories. If there's an overarching theme that fits the whole story, go with that category. You're almost certain to attract more readers that way. I only recommend Novels and Novellas when your story contains a variety of strong kinks.

Non-con + Incest + GM, for example. No matter where you put a story like that, it's likely to get ravaged by readers in the narrower categories. N&N readers are conditioned to expect a wider variety of kink.

I agree with most of what is said in this post. The one place I would disagree is regarding chapter length. For me, each chapter is the length it needs to be. A shorter chapter is better than one that is padded to add length. The story needs to dictate the form. The chapters in my "novel", My Fall And Rise all generally ran around 4,000 words each.The first chapter, which is more or less a prologue, is less than a Lit page long. My readers seemed pleased. I received high scores throughout the work. (Which I published as I finished them, 13 chapters over four months.)
 
Would it detract from this discussion if I expanded the original question ... which would be ... I have several novel length stories. All of them are exceptionally long (as in the first one is 240k+ words alone, and the rest run at about 130k words each). To complicate this further, the first three stories are a trilogy, and the others are an ongoing series.

What suggestions do any of you have for me?
Read RejectReality's post and if you still have questions, ask them.
 
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