chapters or all-at-once?

rtailor

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I just joined Literotica in search of a home for a novella I recently wrote. How are such things usually published on this site, in their entirety or chapter by chapter? Which form is best received by readers? My inclination is to toward all-at-once to avoid the administrative hassle of multiple submissions, tag selection, etc. But serial publication also has advantages.
 
You will find it done both ways, a single very long story (the longest I know of was about 80 Lit pages - about 250,000 words), or multi-chapter.

How long is your work? A "good" stand-alone story length - and a good chapter length - seems to be around 10,000 words (a Lit page is approx 3,750 words) - so 2 to 3 Lit pages.
 
I have published chapter by chapter as I’ve gone along. I think you’d get the maximum appreciative readership if you published by chapter, spaced out weekly
 
There are advocates for both ways, and there are examples of very long stories that have been very successful and long series that have been successful too. A few general considerations:

1. I think if your story is done then the default should be to publish it as a single story, unless there's some particular reason you want to stretch it out in separately published chapters. The reasons are twofold: first, long stories do unusually well here. You can find very long stories that have gazillions of views and votes and high scores. There's a large readership here for long, involved erotic stories. Second, the downside of chaptered stories is that the readership falls off with each chapter, and especially after the first chapter. I found that to be true even when the chapters were published fairly close together. That's counteracted somewhat by the fact that each time you publish you stir interest in some new readers.

2. Another reason to publish as a single story than as a series of chapters is if the chapters do not all provide whatever it is readers are looking for in the category in which the series is published. I know there are authors who think it works fine if you publish different chapters in different categories, but my review of stories that do this indicates that there is significant reader fall-off when you do this. If the first five chapters are in the exhibitionism category and the sixth is in anal, you'll lose exhibitionism readers after chapter six, even if you go back to exhibitionism.

3. If the story is really, super long, then maybe it makes sense to publish it in chapters. But long by Lit standards is really long. There are plenty of successful 10-20 page stories here, and 10 pages is about 37,500 words. That's over 100 pages of a standard paperback book.

4. I personally think that chapter stories make the most sense if the chapters are like episodes of a TV show, where each chapter provides what the reader presumably wants each time the chapter appears. That way you can publish all chapters in the same category and keep your readers more successfully. My chapter stories fit this mold; every single chapter easily fits into the same category as all the others. I find as a reader that I like stories this way too, because it makes it easier to quit the story at a discrete place and come back to the next chapter later knowing it will provide a similar erotic punch.
 
Thanks for your thoughtful response. It confirms my suspicion that a single post is best. The work is complete and not really all that long. Now I have only to type the silly thing. I wrote it out longhand while travelling. How primitive, huh?
 
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Very useful replies. One additional observation: it seems like posting separate chapters makes it easier to have high ratings on your subsequent chapters. It is as if the readers that have “hung on” from earlier to later chapters are truly fans of the story and so tend to rate the later chapters higher, whereas the critically readers that might otherwise have given lower ratings have abandoned ship already in the earlier chapters. If you look at the hall of fame for each category the top rated stories are to a large degree sequel chapters. IMHO it distorts the picture and I would never post separate chapters for this reason. IMHO I also get very much turned of by a story named bla-bla Ch. 99. Who has the stamina to read through the previous 98 chapters to make sense of chapter 99? I’d say 5 chapters max. Ideally, as mentioned already, chapters should be like episodes in a television series. Each self-contained, but building on the same characters etc. But hey, no rules without exception in art.
 
Very useful replies. One additional observation: it seems like posting separate chapters makes it easier to have high ratings on your subsequent chapters. It is as if the readers that have “hung on” from earlier to later chapters are truly fans of the story and so tend to rate the later chapters higher, whereas the critically readers that might otherwise have given lower ratings have abandoned ship already in the earlier chapters.
That's exactly what happens. First chapter views are always far higher than subsequent chapters and yes, scores increase as the story progresses. Chapter stories can be useful as a guide to actual reader behaviour, as the view numbers over time are true reads, whereas for a single story, there is no way of knowing how many click out at the end of the first paragraph. I've got a 23 chapter shaggy dog story in EH - I reckon I can tell how many people read which chapter twice, and which chapters they didn't like so much.

Five chapters max? I'd say 10 - 15 means a story with meat. I'd probably publish five chapters as one long thing - depends on total length, though.
 
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Very useful replies. One additional observation: it seems like posting separate chapters makes it easier to have high ratings on your subsequent chapters. It is as if the readers that have “hung on” from earlier to later chapters are truly fans of the story and so tend to rate the later chapters higher, whereas the critically readers that might otherwise have given lower ratings have abandoned ship already in the earlier chapters. If you look at the hall of fame for each category the top rated stories are to a large degree sequel chapters. IMHO it distorts the picture and I would never post separate chapters for this reason. IMHO I also get very much turned of by a story named bla-bla Ch. 99. Who has the stamina to read through the previous 98 chapters to make sense of chapter 99? I’d say 5 chapters max. Ideally, as mentioned already, chapters should be like episodes in a television series. Each self-contained, but building on the same characters etc. But hey, no rules without exception in art.

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There are advocates for both ways, and there are examples of very long stories that have been very successful and long series that have been successful too. A few general considerations:

1. I think if your story is done then the default should be to publish it as a single story, unless there's some particular reason you want to stretch it out in separately published chapters. The reasons are twofold: first, long stories do unusually well here. You can find very long stories that have gazillions of views and votes and high scores. There's a large readership here for long, involved erotic stories. Second, the downside of chaptered stories is that the readership falls off with each chapter, and especially after the first chapter. I found that to be true even when the chapters were published fairly close together. That's counteracted somewhat by the fact that each time you publish you stir interest in some new readers.

2. Another reason to publish as a single story than as a series of chapters is if the chapters do not all provide whatever it is readers are looking for in the category in which the series is published. I know there are authors who think it works fine if you publish different chapters in different categories, but my review of stories that do this indicates that there is significant reader fall-off when you do this. If the first five chapters are in the exhibitionism category and the sixth is in anal, you'll lose exhibitionism readers after chapter six, even if you go back to exhibitionism.

3. If the story is really, super long, then maybe it makes sense to publish it in chapters. But long by Lit standards is really long. There are plenty of successful 10-20 page stories here, and 10 pages is about 37,500 words. That's over 100 pages of a standard paperback book.

4. I personally think that chapter stories make the most sense if the chapters are like episodes of a TV show, where each chapter provides what the reader presumably wants each time the chapter appears. That way you can publish all chapters in the same category and keep your readers more successfully. My chapter stories fit this mold; every single chapter easily fits into the same category as all the others. I find as a reader that I like stories this way too, because it makes it easier to quit the story at a discrete place and come back to the next chapter later knowing it will provide a similar erotic punch.
All good points. Also, some categories are more chapter friendly than others.
 
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