Maximum word count for chapters?

[Sextified]

I am planning on making multiple chapter releases of my reworked first novel. Perhaps three or four chapters in each "installment".

On another website, when I wrote the huge finale of the second book, their system kept having an issue getting it to successfully appear. It kept crashing. And crashing. Finally the website's owner himself tried splitting it into two parts, A and B, and it went right thru so people could finally get to read it.

Apparently, it was the first time anyone had ever attempted something of that kind of length on his site!

Does anyone actually know, or could ask the right techie, what sort of system word limits there might be for the Literotica Novel section?

I am just trying to plan for the right sort of 'breaks' between sections. Or is it easier to figure it out another way? Is it 25 Lit pages max? What is the highest number of pages that you have ever seen for a Novel?

Thanks!

 

[Salacious_Scribe]

I am planning on making multiple chapter releases of my reworked first novel. Perhaps three or four chapters in each "installment".

On another website, when I wrote the huge finale of the second book, their system kept having an issue getting it to successfully appear. It kept crashing. And crashing. Finally the website's owner himself tried splitting it into two parts, A and B, and it went right thru so people could finally get to read it.

Apparently, it was the first time anyone had ever attempted something of that kind of length on his site!

Does anyone actually know, or could ask the right techie, what sort of system word limits there might be for the Literotica Novel section?

I am just trying to plan for the right sort of 'breaks' between sections. Or is it easier to figure it out another way? Is it 25 Lit pages max? What is the highest number of pages that you have ever seen for a Novel?

Thanks!

Lit paginates stories. One page is roughly 3750 words. One line is roughtly 80 characters.

You can write as long of a story as you want. I hav enever heard of an upper limit on story length.

Generally stories between 3-6 pages are the sweet spot for views. A lot of readers want 3 pages adn won't read more than 6.

The average visitor to this site spends 15 minutes here.

That being said, I write my stories how I want, not for numbers.

 

[ElectricBlue]

The biggest single posting I've seen was more than eighty Lit pages, more than 250,000 words. Don't worry about it.

 

[KeithD]

Yep, haven't heard of an example of too many words in an entry.

 

[Sextified]

Lit paginates stories. One page is roughly 3750 words. One line is roughtly 80 characters.

You can write as long of a story as you want. I hav enever heard of an upper limit on story length.

Thanks! That will really help in planning things out.

I am struggling with the sinking feeling that longer stories aren't really tolerated, much less appreciated, on Lit all that much. But I have yet to post anything in the Novel section, so I am still hoping for the reworked book to find a testing home here.

Hopefully at least some of the limited number of readers that frequent that little corner will enjoy it.

I have gotten some other advice, off list, and am grateful for all of it. But for some reason, no matter how many times I state it, the off list advisors always miss the point that it is an already completed novel that I am reworking. Just as extensive and complicated as one of those really thick Fantasy paperbacks you see in the stores.

I can and do write stroke stories under other nicks on other sites. That is not my goal, or my main interest.

The first book was done once, rather awkwardly, and as episodic chapters with at least one sex scene each. That created a horrible built in and uneven flow that a true novel cannot have.

The main reason for the redo attempt is to improve the quality, scope and style. The secondary reason I am rewriting it is because I tailored the original postings for a website. Too much recapping, too many concessions for pure action, too many critical plot points short changed or just left out.

I keep feeling that it needs to be completely redone to finally do the characters justice. The follow up novels, it's younger siblings, sort of outshine it.

Writing for me is personal, and the books are not for 'sale', nor might never be. With all the Pandemic Upheaval, this might be my only chance of ever revisting those earliest chapters. I want to test myself as a writer and an editor, and see if I can even successfully complete such a difficult task.

 

[Sextified]

The biggest single posting I've seen was more than eighty Lit pages, more than 250,000 words. Don't worry about it.

The original book was done in twenty chapters with a word count of about 300,000 words.

Adding back in the shortchanged material, and the missing characters and their plot lines? Maybe thirty chapters and 600,000 words.

Broken up into three chapter installments, seems about right to me, and should hopefully stay under the website's word limits.

Thanks!

 

[yukonnights]

The original book was done in twenty chapters with a word count of about 300,000 words.

Adding back in the shortchanged material, and the missing characters and their plot lines? Maybe thirty chapters and 600,000 words.

Broken up into three chapter installments, seems about right to me, and should hopefully stay under the website's word limits.

Thanks!

I've not written anything close to being 600k words, so take my thoughts here as just an opinion. The three parts will be 200k words each ( approx. 53 Lit Screen Pages each.) — I think you're going to loose a lot of readers if the parts are that long.

It might be helpful to go into the Novel / Novella story file and check out what other authors are doing in the category. I did just a quick peek before writing this and from what I saw the parts/chapters are kept smaller. Even though there is a 'bookmark' feature here on Lit, I'm not sure how many use it or even know how to use it. Thus, a shorter part break makes it; 1. Easier for a reader to gauge how long it will take to read 'Part x' and decide if they have time for that tonight. 2. It's easier for them to keep track of their place in the overall work.

The one and only drawback to multiple shorter parts is for the author to find obvious break points that fit the story — thus keeping the flow going. In one longer well rated multi-part story I checked out; Part #1 has 15.1k views and the most recent Part #31 has 1.5k views. This view drop off is very typical of multi-part stories here — but what it ultimately means is that the readers who were ever going to stick with the story are the smaller group that enjoyed your story. (in other words; a lot of the early views/readers were not into the story and were never going to read it to the end.)

The trick, and the goal, is to make the story as accessible as you possibly can to as many of those who do like what they are reading. In my opinion this would be best done with more smaller Parts published on a regular and reliable schedule.

Best wishes for success on this project!

 

[ElectricBlue]

The original book was done in twenty chapters with a word count of about 300,000 words.

Adding back in the shortchanged material, and the missing characters and their plot lines? Maybe thirty chapters and 600,000 words.

Broken up into three chapter installments, seems about right to me, and should hopefully stay under the website's word limits.

Thanks!

I'd be inclined, with something that long to put it out in say thirty x 20,000 word chapters (about six Lit pages per chapter). That would make it more manageable for readers to find their place - remember folk are reading on devices, not paper, and navigation through long content is key.

Also, more chapters will give you a really good idea as to how many people read the whole thing - which is something that, with really long chapter submissions, you'll never know.

 

[Salacious_Scribe]

The average person spends 15 minutes on lit per visit.

The average person reads 200ish WPM.

At that speed it takes almost 19 minutes to read one lit page. Factor in the time it takes for pages to load, to look for and find a story. Most people spend less than 10 minures reading per visit.

To be fair those are not the people who read longer stories. Just something to consider when you decide how to break up the story.

My two longest series are Agatha Allbutt & The Bimbo Squad and 12 Cams, 3 Teens 2 Milfs & 1 Wife. Lowest views for Agatha anre Ch 7 & 9. Which surprises me because Ch 01 is shorter and has no sex. 7 and 9 are light on the sex, but do have some. Ch 12 also has no sex yet has slightly more views.

12 Cams Ch 7 has as many views as Ch 04. Ch 5 & 6 have the fewest. That should change if I ever finish that series.

It is true the longer a series runs the fewer people view it, but it's also true that many people won't read more than 2 or 3 pages.

1- I usually don't worry about numbers. I write to write. I prefer to post chapters because

2- Each time you post a chapter you are on the new list bringing more eyes to your catalog

3- You can adjust the story to include reader suggestions

4-It would take me a lot longer to write a 100K word complete story than a 15K chapter

5- As a reader I can read 3-4 lit pages while waiting for an appointment or on a lunch break or while laying in bed before sleep. Until lit offers a way to bookmark longer stories, there's no way to easily find your place in a story.

6- More stories in your catalog. Some readers like authors with quantity. They want to read multiple stories by an author they like instead of finding a new author/story every time they come here. I have a few favorite authors and read at least part of every story they post even if the category or description is not my thing.

7- More chances to get an E W or H. I have about 30 H's. I have yet to get E or W. My current goal here is to get one of each, eventually.

8- One of my favorite stories here is Billion Dollar Slaves with 29 parts. I've read the entire thing 3 or 4 times. I hope to find readers like that, who return and reread my stories multiple times.

9- I get a feeling of accomplishment when I finish and post each chapter.

10- I get to post new chapters of a series then focus on a stand alone story or different series so I can take a break and prevent my characters from becoming stale.

 

[Sextified]

I'd be inclined, with something that long to put it out in say thirty x 20,000 word chapters (about six Lit pages per chapter). That would make it more manageable for readers to find their place - remember folk are reading on devices, not paper, and navigation through long content is key.

Also, more chapters will give you a really good idea as to how many people read the whole thing - which is something that, with really long chapter submissions, you'll never know.

Thanks to everyone giving me their opinions, they are really helping.

I concur with most of the ideas, and am going to take the opportunity while adding the new material to engineer some more frequent and natural breakpoints. The key that will allow me to do that, is to always concentrate on the project as a novel, and then find the breaks that make sense to the readers. I made a mistake last time to have change the book itself to fit the posting schedule and format

I just need to stay well ahead this time.

The one advantage I think that I have over most long form writers is that I have done so much of it. As opposed to over a decade ago, when the first book limped across the finish line. Smaller chapters are the way to go, as is ignoring all the old chapter points.

More frequent, smaller and reliably spaced out releases is the way to go. Also, posting some of the literally hundreds of little stroke stories set in this same universe would help drive traffic to the series.

On a technical note, The Rescuer series is written in Adobe InDesign, while my new Sword & Sorcery trilogy is in Scrivener. Since my S&S book has such a long way to go, I'm not too worried about learning a new program. The Rescuer is already being written in a publishable form for paperbacks. Headers, footers, page numbers, title pages, correct margins, etc. Basically, it will be ready to go for any publisher out there, if I ever decide to submit it for that sort of thing.

So each Rescuer page seems to convert at .43 Literotica paginations each, giving me an easy conversion ratio. I'll have to recheck that math, since my botched first submission finally got its Delete request fulfilled.

I agree, most readers do not come here for long stories, and if they do, I need to consider that they aren't reading a real paperback book kept on their nightstand. So at the moment I am in the process of searching for the first installment mark. The latest idea is to get the story started, then stop at the first true sex scene. That should be just slightly past where the other chapters will be in length.

I think that I've got about 120 Lit pages rewritten now, and have promised myself not to calculate how many more I have to go. Well, at least not until I have the first one well and truly online.

I am going to post a private message to some of my fans at the old website, and tell them where the new material will be posted at here. Some of them were old Pre-readers, and I'm going to try and get a few of them on board again.

I'll keep everyone posted.

Thanks!

 

[Zeb_Carter]

The biggest database column is now around 4 gigibytes. I have stories in the 80 to 100K words. Don't worry about ever having that much text. Oh and if you don't know, a byte is a character to us non-techie persons.

Yeah, yeah, I know that unicode characters actually take up more space. But only if you use a non-asci character set, like Japanese or Chinese or some other language that requires two bytes or more per character.

 

[Sextified]

Okay everyone!

I just decided to stay up last night, and slog thru the very last of the edits, rewrites and spellchecks.

This new version of an opening chapter didn't have the logical break that I had hoped for, but the three chapters after it do! So at least I will be able to keep those chapters a more easily 'digestible' size!

I found that the initial setup and character introductions, plus the first sex scene, was just as long as it had to be. My breakpoint had a very nice cliffhanger, so that was the true deciding point on where to stop. I already have enough material waiting on just the final edit for four or five more smaller chapters.

I'm going to PM some of my old readers from the old website, and see if I can get a few pre-readers that way. Then, in a few moments, I'll add to Lit's editing thread that I am ready to send out PDFs to those that are interested.

Thanks again for all of your help!

Wish me luck!

I'll stop back here when I finally get the new chapter online for people to read!

Thanks!