How much time between posted parts?

[JuanSeiszFitzHall]

I’ve finished the writing and editing of a nine-part story. I’d appreciate experience-based advice from anyone on how to schedule the publication of the parts: A long enough interval to provide enough reading time, yet a short enough interval to keep up reader interest.

Each part is around 10k words. I didn’t plan that, it just happened that this length advanced the story well. The story will be posted in Group Sex. My hunch is to ask for each part to be posted about five days after the previous one, but this is based on no knowledge.

Thanks.

https://www.literotica.com/stories/memberpage.php?uid=5116173&page=submissions

 

[oggbashan]

Don't do as I did. Over a decade (actually 13 years) between parts two and three of Christmas Fairy!

If you submit them all together, Laurel will space them over several days.

 

[TadOverdon]

I submit a chapter every other day.

 

[HeyAll]

As quickly as possible.

If you look at the stats, the longer the wait, the less people will read it.

There are so many stories on this site that people will forget.

 

[KeithD]

I submit the next one the day the previous one has posted. This ensures nothing is going to go wrong in the posting of the previous one.

 

[NotWise]

I’ve finished the writing and editing of a nine-part story. I’d appreciate experience-based advice from anyone on how to schedule the publication of the parts: A long enough interval to provide enough reading time, yet a short enough interval to keep up reader interest.

My last posted story was two parts that went up on the same day. It's hard for me to gauge if that went well or not. The views on part 2 and about 2/3 of the views on part 1, which is better than I might expect.

I don't know if I'd do that with nine parts. It seems like you'd be flooding the hub.

 

[JuanSeiszFitzHall]

I submit the next one the day the previous one has posted. This ensures nothing is going to go wrong in the posting of the previous one.

I intend to ask, in the Notes field, that no part be published until every part has been approved, so if there's a problem in Part 6 that can only be fixed by changing earlier parts, that can be done before anything is posted.

 

[KeithD]

I intend to ask, in the Notes field, that no part be published until every part has been approved, so if there's a problem in Part 6 that can only be fixed by changing earlier parts, that can be done before anything is posted.

I don't ask laurel to take on any work like that. The submissions chore is already onerous enough. I can see when the previous part has posted and can take care of follow-up posting myself with little trouble for me and no trouble for Laurel or the system.

 

[ElectricBlue]

I intend to ask, in the Notes field, that no part be published until every part has been approved, so if there's a problem in Part 6 that can only be fixed by changing earlier parts, that can be done before anything is posted.

Submit them altogether with the Note to the Editor, and Laurel will schedule a 24 hour release.

Or submit them one at a time when the previous part is published - but you'll have a much longer time period between each chapter because each one has to wait in the queue by itself.

 

[KeithD]

Submit them altogether with the Note to the Editor, and Laurel will schedule a 24 hour release.

Or submit them one at a time when the previous part is published - but you'll have a much longer time period between each chapter because each one has to wait in the queue by itself.

My follow-up chapters post at the same rate as the first one did--almost always in two days; occasionally (like now) three. This is work I can easily do myself without expecting Laurel or the system to keep it juggled. Any extra time/effort she has to expend on one author is deducted from the posting time of other authors' works.

 

[SimonDoom]

I applaud you for getting the whole thing done and giving yourself the (smart) option to post chapters close in time together.

I defer somewhat to KeithD and HeyAll, since they have published far more stories than I have, but I don't see why there's an advantage publishing chapters just one day apart. If that's what the stats show, then that's fine and go with that. But it seems to me it might be better to milk each story for a few days before publishing the next one. That way the new one comes online right about the time the previous one dips significantly in views. Then the new one will pick up the views of the old one. By stretching things out you maximize exposure for the whole story.

Another factor: In Group Sex, your story is assured of being on the new category story hub for about a week (unlike incest, where it will drop off in one day). So why not milk it more? Wait at least a few days before submitting the next chapter. With 9 parts published 5 days apart, you're assured that your story will be on the new story list for 45 continuous days.

 

[Bramblethorn]

Received wisdom here is that if you leave it too long between chapters readers will lose interest and drop out, but I haven't seen much sign of this in my own story stats. I had a posting gap of a year in the middle of my last series, and obviously I lost a year's worth of views, but it didn't seem to have hurt the numbers beyond that.

 

[KeithD]

I applaud you for getting the whole thing done and giving yourself the (smart) option to post chapters close in time together.

I defer somewhat to KeithD and HeyAll, since they have published far more stories than I have, but I don't see why there's an advantage publishing chapters just one day apart. If that's what the stats show, then that's fine and go with that. But it seems to me it might be better to milk each story for a few days before publishing the next one.

By not submitting the next until the previous one is posted means at least a two-day delay between postings, sometime more. It's been three days in interval for the current multiple chapter story I'm running here.

 

[SimonDoom]

By not submitting the next until the previous one is posted means at least a two-day delay between postings, sometime more. It's been three days in interval for the current multiple chapter story I'm running here.

I want to make sure I understand: Is it your custom to submit Chapter 2 after you notice Chapter 1 being published?

That would be my default way of doing it, if I was diligent enough to get all the chapters done ahead of time. However, my stories get published more slowly than yours. Mine consistently take 4-5 days as opposed to your 2-3, so if I did it this way they'd come out about 5 days apart. Which still seems fine to me.

 

[KeithD]

I want to make sure I understand: Is it your custom to submit Chapter 2 after you notice Chapter 1 being published?

Yes. The day a chapter is posted is the day I submit the next chapter--after I'm sure the previous ones have been posted. In a proslug to the first chapter, I note how many chapters there will be and a timeframe by which the series should be completed. At the end of the last chapter, I put "FINI," which notes it's finished. I take full responsibility for submission dates.

 

[ElectricBlue]

Another factor: In Group Sex, your story is assured of being on the new category story hub for about a week (unlike incest, where it will drop off in one day). So why not milk it more? Wait at least a few days before submitting the next chapter. With 9 parts published 5 days apart, you're assured that your story will be on the new story list for 45 continuous days.

You're right, in a slow moving category you can to some extent control your own timing (contests will get in the way), but in a volume category you're running against the clock and the avalanche of other stories, so it might be a moot point.

My Arthurian novel was on the Sci-Fi and Fantasy front page for six weeks or seven weeks, since it went out one chapter a day for a fortnight. It was set and forget for both me and Laurel - each chapter came out at 3.00 pm my time, on the dot (a midnight server run somewhere in the US). By that stage, having had it consume my writing life for a year, I was over it, and the daily clock worked well.

My next half dozen were published as I went along because I needed a different mind set for writing. Both methods work, in different ways.

 

[BuckyDuckman]

I don't publish many serial or chapter stories. I got stung before finding Lit with the dangers of getting halfway through and losing interest while my readers still craved for an ending. (I feel for George R.R. Martin, LOL.)

In general, I finish the complete story before posting any of it and then submit a chapter every day or two so they are posted in order. Since I don't try to push boundaries in my stories, I don't worry much about a story being rejected for content.

 

[Zeb_Carter]

I don't ask laurel to take on any work like that. The submissions chore is already onerous enough. I can see when the previous part has posted and can take care of follow-up posting myself with little trouble for me and no trouble for Laurel or the system.

The only work required is to put the date that the chapter will go live. She will see all the chapters at once, if her queue is coded correctly and she will date them all at once.

You should see them in pending each with a different date to be published.

 

[KeithD]

The only work required is to put the date that the chapter will go live. She will see all the chapters at once, if her queue is coded correctly and she will date them all at once.

You should see them in pending each with a different date to be published.

Nope. Anything out of the regular flow is a requirement to keep in mind there's something on the side that needs taken care of. I've been doing regional anthologies for a decade and a half. I know what it means to have something else on the side that needs to be taken care of. And this is time/effort taken from others.

Anything requiring something out of the normal flow of the process requires extra time/effort/mental juggling. Yes she/the system can handle it. But it's effort taken from taking care of everyone else. So, I'll continue to handle what I can myself to not be taking more than my share of the site's effort from other posters.

 

[JuanSeiszFitzHall]

As the OP, I thank all who weighed in. Based on what you advised, I’m going to use a slight modification of KeithD’s approach. I’ll submit one part at a time, but each will be sent as soon as I see on my Works page that the previous one is scheduled, rather than waiting for it to be published. My stories’ waiting time in Pending is rarely less than four days, so this could result in a gap of about five days, which I think is reasonable. If a pending wait is short, I might submit upon publication of the previous part.

 

[ElectricBlue]

The only work required is to put the date that the chapter will go live. She will see all the chapters at once, if her queue is coded correctly and she will date them all at once.

You should see them in pending each with a different date to be published.

That's exactly what happened with my long chaptered novel. Each chapter came out at the same time each day, with the midnight server run. Computers are clever like that. Zero more work for Laurel, zero more work for me.

 

[Zeb_Carter]

Nope. Anything out of the regular flow is a requirement to keep in mind there's something on the side that needs taken care of. I've been doing regional anthologies for a decade and a half. I know what it means to have something else on the side that needs to be taken care of. And this is time/effort taken from others.

Anything requiring something out of the normal flow of the process requires extra time/effort/mental juggling. Yes she/the system can handle it. But it's effort taken from taking care of everyone else. So, I'll continue to handle what I can myself to not be taking more than my share of the site's effort from other posters.

And why would you make more work for yourself?

The submitted stories go in a queue each in the order they were submitted. I'm sure each one that Laurel vets goes through a process to identify stuff they don't want to publish about, that takes 2 seconds. She then scans it herself, that might take a minute. Then she notices that there are 27 more parts to the story and vets them through the process as each is ok'd she puts a date of publication in the field on her screen beside the story information. Boom, she's done. Time for all 27 parts, 30 minutes or less.

You're way takes her days.

 

[JuanSeiszFitzHall]

I’m the OP, and I’m reviving this to provide info on what actually happened. I submitted Part 1 by itself, and it was published six days later. Thinking this might be the interval for every part, I submitted Part 2 the day Part 1 was shown as scheduled (that is, the day before it was published)--and this review period was only two days, so Part 2 was published the day after Part 1. This is quicker than I thought ideal, because each part is around 10k words, so I waited to submit Part 3 until Part 2 was published. The review interval was, again, two days. So maybe something about the Part 1 review has cleared the way for other parts to be reviewed more quickly. Or not? Anyway, each part has had a couple days on the category hub, which was probably as much as I could hope for.

https://www.literotica.com/stories/memberpage.php?uid=5116173&page=submissions

 

[KeithD]

And why would you make more work for yourself?

Because I'm not selfish? Was this a trick question?

I don't think you have any idea how the system works. I do know, as having worked systems like this, that no matter how automated it might be, when you have outstanding transactions on your plate to do later, life is more complicated for you than if the authors take responsibility for their own submissions flow.

Do what you please. I see the reliance on the system keeping track of it as extra work/effort for Laurel and taking her time away from other authors who are taking responsibility for their own submissions flow. So I do what I think is respectful for others.

 

[ElectricBlue]

The review interval was, again, two days. So maybe something about the Part 1 review has cleared the way for other parts to be reviewed more quickly. Or not?

Probably. Laurel will have remembered you and the story, would know you comply with content policies, and would gauge the time gap for the story's best advantage. She's clever like that .