Merge older Chapters? Change Series title mid-stream?

[MarkLivingston]

Hi, all. I find myself with a self-induced conundrum, searched here for a solution, didn't quite find it, so now I'm asking. (The easiest option is to just leave it all alone and keep chugging forward, but if I had my druthers...)

In February I had a silly idea for a story I planned to release in chapters (I only had one story here before, 4 years prior, 2.5 Lit pages.). So: 1) I started writing it and was putting out silly 1- and 2-page chapters (I didn't know better. And really, didn't know how Word pages translated to Lit pages. They seemed 'long enough' in Word, and were at natural breaking points). 2) I gave it a too-descriptive title that: a) I now can't stand, and b) the story has veered away from.

The Chapter lengths are embarrassing now, and they could be naturally stitched together like this:
Chapters 1-4: New Ch. 1
Chapters 5 & 6: New Ch. 2
Those could be under the old dumb title.

Chapters 7-11 should definitely be combined, and this is where the story turns away from the plot I'd started with, and has morphed into something that's going to be much longer. And I'd like it to have a different name.

As I'm writing this it occurs to me that the first 6 chapters could be combined under the old title (or similar, and would just be 10 pages long), but then what do you do at the end of that to link to the new lineage? Because it's all good stuff that tells you who the male MC is. I doubt those older bits would get any new readers, so that likely doesn't even matter. (And honestly, that's not what I'm looking for, combined earlier submissions getting New tags or anything.)

But I'll admit this, and this is at the root of my Chapter-collapsing question: I read here the other day someone saying that if they found a New story but it was Chapter 20-something of an ongoing series they wouldn't read it. And I have to admit I'm somewhat the same way, but if the title or byline or tags intrigue me, and the rating is high, then maybe I'd go back and start at Chapter 1.
And not an exact analogy, but if I didn't discover Harry Potter until say Book 4 was published, but everyone else was saying how good the series was, would I not start reading at Book 1?
My later chapters are averaging about 6 pages each, but maybe even that should be higher.

So yeah, thoughts? Thanks.

 

[Djmac1031]

It really depends. How solid is your readership on the series?

If you have a steady, loyal following, I'd leave it alone.

But if you're that unhappy with it and no one is reading it as is, then take the risk, scrap it all, delete the old stories and revamp it the way you want.

 

[ElectricBlue]

You're talking about one multi-chapter series. I wouldn't bother doing anything - it's obvious it's one long story, which has got some traction, so I'd leave it as is.

Leave it as is, but do the next story with longer chapters.

 

[Bamagan]

In all likelihood, whatever choice you make will attract certain readers and repel others. The people who don't want to get involved at all with a series that has 20+ parts seem like the kind of people who might well balk at a single story in 20 literotica pages, or even 10. They might be looking for the so-called 'stroke story' and prefer efficiency over artistry, if they can't find something that does both. Short- and long-form storytelling both find audiences here, and to some extent, long series where each chapter is one or a few scenes that fit on one or two Lit-pages can be an attempt at reaching both types of reader.
You could try creating a Series and give it an overarching name and its own descriptive introduction, then manually add the old chapters and your new ones under a different title. You could preface the new chapters to inform readers that they form a new volume that continues from the earlier works, dealing with different themes or whatever but the same characters. That way fans of the older ones can follow them to the new stuff or vice versa. People who don't like intricate storytelling for whatever reasons will probably balk and avoid, but they would probably have abandoned your story anyway.

 

[BobbyBrandt]

I recently had four of my multi-chapter stories replaced by Laurel with an edited single submission. These were not a series of stand-alone stories, but stories that were posted in multiple chapters. (I went from 79 submissions to 25)

I can't speak for others, but my loyal readers had overwhelmingly stated that they preferred single submission of a long story over breaking it into multiple post. So far the feedback and scores for the edited stories has proven this was the right move.

 

[Altissimus]

I had a similar situation in which I re-wrote the beginning of one of my old series and re-posted it with the new chapter 1 being a combination of the old 1 and 2. I simply asked for a removal of the old work and resubmitted the new. It went live in Feb and has since had 27k 'reads'. One or two people commented that they'd 'read it before' but I also explained in my author's note (probably skipped, but hey) what I'd done. I was also adding a bunch more content to that series (also explained in my author's note) and that seemed to go down well. So it can be done. You lose your original comments and votes, of course.

 

[BobbyBrandt]

I had a similar situation in which I re-wrote the beginning of one of my old series and re-posted it with the new chapter 1 being a combination of the old 1 and 2. I simply asked for a removal of the old work and resubmitted the new. It went live in Feb and has since had 27k 'reads'. One or two people commented that they'd 'read it before' but I also explained in my author's note (probably skipped, but hey) what I'd done. I was also adding a bunch more content to that series (also explained in my author's note) and that seemed to go down well. So it can be done. You lose your original comments and votes, of course.

Plus, the resubmitted story is not eligible for any contests since is was previously posted.

 

[MarkLivingston]

It really depends. How solid is your readership on the series? If you have a steady, loyal following, I'd leave it alone.

That's a great question: how solid IS my readership? I don't really know how to judge, relatively. It's in Interracial Love if that makes a difference, but the 1st chapter from February has 31k views. Ch2 only 17k, then 11k twice, and then it plummets to 6k for the next 4. But I like the consistency of those. Then they taper down into the 4k-5k range, though there's one at 3.2k (Ch17), even though it has an H.
Decent numbers?
Chapters 7-11 turned out to be a really tender First Time story that became the Romance that drives the rest of the series. I bundled those (and some of the backstory from earlier chapters) into a single Romance tale in April and it got 7.5k views. 3 months later I discovered the First Time category and put a backstory-less version of that there, which got 10k views. Both are Hot, which validated my feeling that it was a sweet segment.
(I was testing the readership among the different categories, and that part of the story was received about equally well in Romance & FT, but more than a tenth lower in IL (averaging the scores). Thought that was interesting.)

You could try creating a Series and give it an overarching name and its own descriptive introduction, then manually add the old chapters and your new ones under a different title. You could preface the new chapters to inform readers that they form a new volume that continues from the earlier works, dealing with different themes or whatever but the same characters.

Excellent suggestion! And after playing around in the "Series (Beta)" screen of the dashboard I know now what you mean (Manual Series Management). Because until now I didn't know you could do anything more than "Dick & Jane Ch. 01" ad infinitum, with only the Descriptions to distinguish.
But this idea fits my desire perfectly, because what I essentially have is:

Vol 1: 18yo white kid starts discovering sexual things with 2 black female friends
Vol 2: He meets a black girl and they get schooled in the ways of sex
Vol 3: They fall in love, but have sexcapades with friends
Vol 4: They're engaged, consummate their relationship, and are then monogamous

That kind of structure would also let me put each Volume in the appropriate Category, hopefully without confusing people too much:
1: Interracial Love, 2: First Time, 3: Back to IL (not EC though, because it's a love story and they won't interact with strangers), 4: Romance. That's where I want it to end up, because I think that trumps the interracial piece, and for the readership that maybe doesn't need sex all the time. I'd like to focus on them just living and being an IR couple with the special aspects that brings.

You're talking about one multi-chapter series. I wouldn't bother doing anything - it's obvious it's one long story, which has got some traction, so I'd leave it as is.

And then there's this, which is probably what I should do after all.

Thanks, all.

 

[theWollstonecraftWoman]

Millie got a strange review of her In the Arms of the Succubus story as being too intelligent for Erotica readers. He said she worked too hard at showing she was bright in the story. I don't know if I can copy it from my account. But I'll try.

 

[Djmac1031]

That's a great question: how solid IS my readership? I don't really know how to judge, relatively. It's in Interracial Love if that makes a difference, but the 1st chapter from February has 31k views. Ch2 only 17k, then 11k twice, and then it plummets to 6k for the next 4. But I like the consistency of those. Then they taper down into the 4k-5k range, though there's one at 3.2k (Ch17), even though it has an H.
Decent numbers?

Sounds much like my own long running series.

Part 27 currently sits at 2.5k views with 47 ratings votes.

Doing some quick averages on the past several chapters, my regular readership for the series is roughly somewhere between 50 to 80 confirmed reads.

Huge? Not at all. But it's consistent. The small crowd I've gathered has stayed with it.

And I'm perfectly fine with that.

 

[MarkLivingston]

...but my loyal readers had overwhelmingly stated that they preferred single submission of a long story over breaking it into multiple posts. So far the feedback and scores for the edited stories has proven this was the right move.

Thanks for this insight! It leans me toward doing the same thing with mine, and using the construct I outlined above for a Manual series with different Volume titles.

A question: were your 4 stories older and 'done,' or still in progress? With mine still living, I think I'd want to add a Note at the end of the current chapter about what I was doing, so readers would understand why it was taking me a while to produce new content.
And maybe a disclaimer at the beginning of each new story/volume: "Hey, if you've already read Dumb Title chapters 1 through 6, this is just that repackaged.
(There's a quote from Altissimus in your last post about contests, but I don't see their original post.)

How did you you handle those kinds of things, if you had to?

 

[MarkLivingston]

...my regular readership for the series is roughly somewhere between 50 to 80 confirmed reads.

You're right, number of votes is a better indicator of reads.
Mine started high just like the views, then dropped off commensurately as the views did.

The bottom was in at Ch16 with 64 votes, then 66, 67, & 71.

But here's maybe an interesting observation about number of chapters:

Ch20 published 4/19 has only 41. (3.95, and I hated that segment)
Ch21 published 7/9 also has 41. (4.63)

(Ch22 on 7/30 has 27, but might be too new to have stabilized yet.)

So do readers think, "20 chapters is too many!" and give up?

 

[Djmac1031]

So do readers think, "20 chapters is too many!" and give up?

That, I don't have an answer for.

I do know I'm planning on winding down my Jenna series by 30.

I never planned an ending for it, it's been more of a serialized kinda thing.

But yeah eventually I gotta wind it down.

 

[Bamagan]

I can't speak for other readers, but I've been lurking here off and on for 20ish years, and I've seen many a writer with epic ambitions who, for various reasons, ends up abandoning their series without ever winding things up. So I often hold off on reading such stories, especially if there are long gaps between chapters, until or unless I think the author has finished their tale. I've been burned too many times by starting in on a promising story and getting invested in the characters and setting and then... dial tone, static, dead air, silence, etc. That's not to say I blame the authors, I paint myself into a corner sometimes, too, or maybe they weren't getting enough positive feedback to keep the boiler hot. As a lurker, I may have contributed to the demise of stories I liked by not speaking up (although it's a little dubious that one nice remark more or less would tip the scales).
But yeah, multi-part tales can scare people off, unless maybe they're posted regularly enough to suggest the work is being doled out rather than churned out.

 

[Djmac1031]

I can't speak for other readers, but I've been lurking here off and on for 20ish years, and I've seen many a writer with epic ambitions who, for various reasons, ends up abandoning their series without ever winding things up. So I often hold off on reading such stories, especially if there are long gaps between chapters, until or unless I think the author has finished their tale. I've been burned too many times by starting in on a promising story and getting invested in the characters and setting and then... dial tone, static, dead air, silence, etc. That's not to say I blame the authors, I paint myself into a corner sometimes, too, or maybe they weren't getting enough positive feedback to keep the boiler hot. As a lurker, I may have contributed to the demise of stories I liked by not speaking up (although it's a little dubious that one nice remark more or less would tip the scales).
But yeah, multi-part tales can scare people off, unless maybe they're posted regularly enough to suggest the work is being doled out rather than churned out.

I'm guilty of three unfinished series, although technically one I can call done in that it's the story of events that take place over a single evening.

I call it New Writer Growing Pains.

I wrote a story, people liked it, asked for more, so I gave it to them.

Except I had no game plan, no road map.

I try not to do that anymore of course. Jenna was my only series that continued on a regular basis, each new chapter expanding their adventures.

The others I simply ran out of ideas for.

I try to focus on single stories now instead of trying to keep something going.

 

[ElectricBlue]

You're right, number of votes is a better indicator of reads.
Mine started high just like the views, then dropped off commensurately as the views did.

The bottom was in at Ch16 with 64 votes, then 66, 67, & 71.

But here's maybe an interesting observation about number of chapters:

Ch20 published 4/19 has only 41. (3.95, and I hated that segment)
Ch21 published 7/9 also has 41. (4.63)

(Ch22 on 7/30 has 27, but might be too new to have stabilized yet.)

So do readers think, "20 chapters is too many!" and give up?

Firstly, your drop in numbers from the first chapter into later chapters is typical. My rule of thumb, from my own series, is that the chapter three numbers are those who are going to stick with the story and read to the end. My other rule of thumb is that only one in five who open the first chapter will read the last.

I'd say your later chapters are dropping off because you're releasing as you're writing, and the gap between chapters is getting to be too long, or your story's no longer going anywhere. That's the downside of publishing on the run - you've got to keep up the pace.

Lit is chock full of long stories that lose their puff and quietly fade away, because the readers lose interest, the writer loses interest, or life gets in the way, or all three.

The downside of not publishing until the story's complete, is no readers until you're done.

There are pros and cons with both approaches, neither is "better than the other" but they do have different dynamics.

 

[MarkLivingston]

That, I don't have an answer for. I do know I'm planning on winding down my Jenna series by 30.

I looked at the Views for Jenna 17-22 (3 before 20, and three after), and that same sort of trend I think shows up. (I can't see the number of reads the Ratings are based on.)

Then I wondered about a possible drop-off at 10 chapters, but didn't really see that in yours.
In mine however it's pretty prominent, whether I look at Views or Reads. (I evaluated the 8 & 9 average against 10 & 11. And all four are Hot, so I don't think it's a quality issue. Sorry, I'm kind of a data geek.)

I've seen many a writer with epic ambitions who, for various reasons, ends up abandoning their series without ever winding things up. So I often hold off on reading such stories... I've been burned too many times...
But yeah, multi-part tales can scare people off, unless maybe they're posted regularly enough to suggest the work is being doled out rather than churned out.

Thanks, those first 2 sentences are something I'd never thought about. In my mind *of course* I'm going to finish the series, because I'm so invested in it. But I get that people do lose interest, or life intervenes, or heck, maybe they even die?!
And the last bit about writing in full and then doling out, that's intriguing too (and I've seen that idea before). Maybe (pick a number)-page installments so they're not a slog for people who aren't into novels, and send them out weekly.
I'd even think that telling readers that up-front would reassure some who otherwise might not pick up a chapter series for fear of being left hanging, or some other reason like they don't know how long it's going to end up being or something like that.

I personally like the concept of serializing (whether already written, or still being churned out). I'm not quite old enough to have experienced it, but many of the best science fiction books began as serials in monthly SF magazines.
And after researching it a bit, a ton of classic novels began as serials:
The Count of Monte Cristo, Uncle Tom's Cabin, Madame Bovary, A Tale of Two Cities, Crime and Punishment, 20,000 Leagues, Anna Karenina, Treasure Island, The War of the Worlds, The Jungle, Ulysses, A Farewell to Arms, etc.

 

[Djmac1031]

I looked at the Views for Jenna 17-22 (3 before 20, and three after), and that same sort of trend I think shows up. (I can't see the number of reads the Ratings are based on.)

Then I wondered about a possible drop-off at 10 chapters, but didn't really see that in yours.
In mine however it's pretty prominent, whether I look at Views or Reads. (I evaluated the 8 & 9 average against 10 & 11. And all four are Hot, so I don't think it's a quality issue. Sorry, I'm kind of a data geek.)

Lol. I don't mind.

Jenna part 1 is of course the most viewed / rated. 623 ratings as of today

It drops almost in half for part 2 at 366 ratings and stays that way for several chapters, then drops to the mid 200's by chapter 6, and again stays in that range til chapter 12, where it drops under 200.

From there they're all anywhere between 100 and 200, then drop again to under 100 by part 23.

The last few chapters range in the 40 - 80 ratings range, depending.

Which makes absolute sense based on my writing.

Early on I was pumping them out very quickly, one a week or so.

Then I dropped off, one every few weeks.

Now, one every month or so.

So yes, as the story chapters release slowed down, I lost readers.

Still, I do pick up new ones now and then; I've watched readers add chapters to Favorites in real time.

But I know it can't go on forever so I'll wind it down, label it Finished and from there readers can decide if they wanna pick it up from the beginning or not.

 

[BobbyBrandt]

Thanks for this insight! It leans me toward doing the same thing with mine, and using the construct I outlined above for a Manual series with different Volume titles.

A question: were your 4 stories older and 'done,' or still in progress? With mine still living, I think I'd want to add a Note at the end of the current chapter about what I was doing, so readers would understand why it was taking me a while to produce new content.
And maybe a disclaimer at the beginning of each new story/volume: "Hey, if you've already read Dumb Title chapters 1 through 6, this is just that repackaged.
(There's a quote from Altissimus in your last post about contests, but I don't see their original post.)

How did you you handle those kinds of things, if you had to?

My four stories were 33, 41, 42, and 99 months old and all completed long ago. I didn't include any disclaimers when the replacement posts were submitted but I have added comments to them about the changes.