Delay between chapters

[alohadave]

My question is; if your story is "complete," why publish it in chapters? Just publish as one long story.

Many of my stories turned into chapters because early on in my writing I'd write a story, people liked it, asked for a sequel so I wrote one.

The first published stories were complete in the sense they stood alone, but left room for a sequel I wrote later.

How many chapters are we talking about? Three? Four? If so, you're probably better off just publishing it as one longer tale.

Just my thoughts.

Some people like reading serial works, it gives them something to look forward to. There a couple stories on other sites that serially, and the anticipation of knowing that today is update day is fun.

There have been stories here that work the same way, and there is one author that posts once a month, but I really like his work, so I deal with it.

 

[Djmac1031]

Some people like reading serial works, it gives them something to look forward to. There a couple stories on other sites that serially, and the anticipation of knowing that today is update day is fun.

There have been stories here that work the same way, and there is one author that posts once a month, but I really like his work, so I deal with it.

Oh, I agree there's an audience for serialized stories. I've written several myself lol.

But there's no denying the view rates drop off considerably.

 

[ElectricBlue]

Oh, I agree there's an audience for serialized stories. I've written several myself lol.

But there's no denying the view rates drop off considerably.

But don't ever assume that the Views you see on a standalone story mean that number of people have actually read it. Probably just as many back out before reaching the end.

 

[Djmac1031]

But don't ever assume that the Views you see on a standalone story mean that number of people have actually read it. Probably just as many back out before reaching the end.

Oh, I get that, too.

ALL I'm saying is that even if Chapter 1 does phenomenally well with views / likes, it's not a guarantee that Chapter 2 retains the same readership.

I have a three part series where I lose more than half the number of views per chapter.

Chapter 1: 60K views
Chapter 2: 27.9K views
Chapter 3: 11K views

I'm not trying to discourage chaptered stories. I still write them myself.

I'm just saying he MIGHT be better off publishing a complete tale in one shot.

 

[ElectricBlue]

I have a three part series where I lose more than half the number of views per chapter.

Chapter 1: 60K views
Chapter 2: 27.9K views
Chapter 3: 11K views

That's absolutely typical, in my experience.

The key thing here, for the OP, is the length of their story and the proposed chapter length. Many new writers post very short chapters, often less than a Lit page, which doesn't really hit the sweet spot (which is more like 2 - 3 Lit pages).

 

[Altissimus]

Average chapter length sits at about 10k words, which tends to be my preference (most of the stuff I publish is about that). There's 5 chapters at the mo. I'll probably finish at 7.

 

[BobbyBrandt]

Average chapter length sits at about 10k words, which tends to be my preference (most of the stuff I publish is about that). There's 5 chapters at the mo. I'll probably finish at 7.

What category are you going to target?

 

[Bazzle]

I find the longer the story the less votes I get. People back out well before the end.
But then, on shorter snappier stories the readership of subsequent chapters/sections decreases as well.

Think its a chicken or egg thing.

 

[BobbyBrandt]

I find the longer the story the less votes I get. People back out well before the end.
But then, on shorter snappier stories the readership of subsequent chapters/sections decreases as well.

Think its a chicken or egg thing.

Your comment prompted me to go back and check my chapter stories compared to my single-submission ones.

Excluding the anomaly (70% of views have voted) that is my latest non-contest story, my longer, single-submission stories see votes being 2% to 5% of views. When I look at the individual chapter posts for longer stories that were broken up, the per chapter votes are typically in the 4% to 7% range, and in every case, the later chapters had the most votes.

I believe the major factor to consider with comparing vote percentages between longer and shorter stories remains the propensity for readers to open a long story and bail on it when they recognize the length. That counts as a view, but not an actual "read". After the first chapter of a multi-chapter story, I think the likelihood of views being closer to actual reads increases. Not 100%, but still closer.

 

[ElectricBlue]

After the first chapter of a multi-chapter story, I think the likelihood of views being closer to actual reads increases. Not 100%, but still closer.

I reckon chapter three is when the views more closely relate to those settling in to read the whole thing - when a story shows a steady(ish) state.

 

[BobbyBrandt]

I reckon chapter three is when the views more closely relate to those settling in to read the whole thing - when a story shows a steady(ish) state.

Chapter 2 or 3.

That raises another question:
I know some authors move between categories when posting chapters. For those who remain consistent in the same category for all chapters, do you add or remove tags that could influence readers jumping into your story mid-stream?

 

[oneagainst]

I have a multi-chapter story that I want to submit. What is the best way of doing this to ensure the work gets noticed?

e.g. - publish all chapters at once; submit the next chapter after the previous is posted; submit the next chapter x days after the previous is submitted, etc.

Going back to OP question re multi-chapter stories, my 2c: I think readers get put off by dropping 20k words all at once since it's a big time commitment and not easy to digest in one sitting (you have to be mindful of the reader's time). It seems from my experience that 2-3 pages with storyline/character development and then climax (pun intended) in a chapter serves well.

I believe you have to publish to a schedule (and stick to it!) if you want to keep up the readership, e.g. same day each week so the regular readers know when to tune in and start to expect it. I experimented when releasing Alena's Game, top and tailing the weekend with a chapter on Friday and then on Sunday, religiously, which just *unleashed* reader engagement, more than for any previous stories. Obviously you have to have everything queued up ready to go since you're then committing to drop 10k-12k words a week for 3 months.

Oh, and no publish on Wednesdays, bit of a lull midweek in my experience.

Oh, and also don't drop the finale of a 25 ch story between Xmas and New Year. Man, all that build up and then just crickets....

Oh, and it's the characters! Sex is good in a standalone story to get the interest, but I found that people are eight ch in because ch seven ended with the MC naked, looking through the window at the city lights, and they want to know what the hell she's going to do next

 

[Altissimus]

What category are you going to target?

Lesbian, non consent, romance...changes depending on the chapter.

Going back to OP question re multi-chapter stories, my 2c: I think readers get put off by dropping 20k words all at once since it's a big time commitment and not easy to digest in one sitting (you have to be mindful of the reader's time). It seems from my experience that 2-3 pages with storyline/character development and then climax (pun intended) in a chapter serves well.

I believe you have to publish to a schedule (and stick to it!) if you want to keep up the readership, e.g. same day each week so the regular readers know when to tune in and start to expect it. I experimented when releasing Alena's Game, top and tailing the weekend with a chapter on Friday and then on Sunday, religiously, which just *unleashed* reader engagement, more than for any previous stories. Obviously you have to have everything queued up ready to go since you're then committing to drop 10k-12k words a week for 3 months.

Oh, and no publish on Wednesdays, bit of a lull midweek in my experience.

Oh, and also don't drop the finale of a 25 ch story between Xmas and New Year. Man, all that build up and then just crickets....

Oh, and it's the characters! Sex is good in a standalone story to get the interest, but I found that people are eight ch in because ch seven ended with the MC naked, looking through the window at the city lights, and they want to know what the hell she's going to do next

How do you ensure it releases "on a friday"? IME, I hit "publish" and some random day in the next 30 it goes live.

I reckon chapter three is when the views more closely relate to those settling in to read the whole thing - when a story shows a steady(ish) state.

I think the number of readers you have that start the final chapter of a story chain is, broadly speaking, the number of readers who actually read the first chapter of a story chain. The rest clicked in and DNF. There will be some drop-outs a long the way, sure, but when your numbers go:
Ch1 - 100k
Ch2 - 50k
Ch3 - 25k
Ch4 - 22k
Ch5 - 21k

...maybe it speaks for itself. You probably have a touch over 21k readers who finished chapter one.

Just my opinion.

 

[SimonDoom]

Oh, I get that, too.

ALL I'm saying is that even if Chapter 1 does phenomenally well with views / likes, it's not a guarantee that Chapter 2 retains the same readership.

I have a three part series where I lose more than half the number of views per chapter.

Chapter 1: 60K views
Chapter 2: 27.9K views
Chapter 3: 11K views

I'm not trying to discourage chaptered stories. I still write them myself.

I'm just saying he MIGHT be better off publishing a complete tale in one shot.

DJ I'm curious what your vote totals are for those three chapters.

 

[BobbyBrandt]

I examined 3 of my multi-part stories to determine what the percentage of views were from one chapter to the next and what the percentage was from the first chapter to the last:

 

[RelentlessOnanism]

Make sure you have the whole thing written before you publish, is my advice. One of my earliest stories ended with a cliffhanger, and I’ve never been able to write a sequel. I get deluged with requests about it, but I just can't come up with anything.

 

[Djmac1031]

DJ I'm curious what your vote totals are for those three chapters.

Part 1: 1k votes
Part 2: 380 votes
Part 3: 171 votes

More or less the same ratio.

 

[SimonDoom]

Part 1: 1k votes
Part 2: 380 votes
Part 3: 171 votes

More or less the same ratio.

Interesting. In fact the view:vote ratio goes UP, counterintuitively, from part 1 to part 2, and part 3, while lower than part 2, is higher than for part 1.

One would expect the ratio would decrease significantly.

My results are similar. View:vote ratios don't change as much as one would predict.

What that tells me is that it's wrong to assume that as series progress the view total over time comes to closely approximate actual reads. If that were true, then the view:vote ratio would dramatically change too, wouldn't it?

I think this is an observation that weighs a little bit in favor of consolidating a story into one long story as opposed to publishing it in chapters. While we don't really have any idea how many of the views are reads, we can at least assume from these relatively unchanging view:vote ratios that view:read ratios likely are not changing much either (since it makes no sense that I can figure to assume read:vote ratios are changing dramatically). So there is a dramatic drop off from one chapter to the next in total readers.

 

[Altissimus]

I examined 3 of my multi-part stories to determine what the percentage of views were from one chapter to the next and what the percentage was from the first chapter to the last:

Matches mine.

 

[Altissimus]

One would expect the ratio would decrease significantly.

Not my experience.

Part 1 is voted on by people who finish it, and quite often don't ever read part 2 even if they liked part 1 - because they don't come back, they forget, they're done for the day and need to recharge (so to speak...).
Part 2 is read by a loyal core, who then go on to read subsequent parts, and vote based on the whole thing on the last part. I've received comments to that effect on some of my works.
So voting is higher on part 1, low on part two, higher on part 3.

This assumes that all three parts are available, or soon available, at the time part 1 is read.

Well, that's what I figure has happened based on my stats. YMMV.

 

[SimonDoom]

Not my experience.


Part 2 is read by a loyal core, who then go on to read subsequent parts, and vote based on the whole thing on the last part. I've received comments to that effect on some of my works.
So voting is higher on part 1, low on part two, higher on part 3.

This assumes that all three parts are available, or soon available, at the time part 1 is read.

Well, that's what I figure has happened based on my stats. YMMV.

This is consistent with what I'm saying.
Say chapter 1 has 100,000 views and 1,000 votes. A 100:1 view:vote ratio. We don't know how many actually read it. We would assume many started to read it and then stopped.

Chapter 2 has 50,000 views. One would intuitively expect a ratio of LESS than 100:1, wouldn't one? Because this time around those who click on it presumably are pickier, and more likely to be those who actually read Chapter 1 the whole way through. If my assumption is correct then the view:vote ratio should be lower. But it's not, which is curious.

In my two series, I also have seen a bump up for the final chapter. So my results seem more or less consistent with your and with DJMAC1031's, but I think they are curious results.

 

[BobbyBrandt]

Not my experience.

Part 1 is voted on by people who finish it, and quite often don't ever read part 2 even if they liked part 1 - because they don't come back, they forget, they're done for the day and need to recharge (so to speak...).
Part 2 is read by a loyal core, who then go on to read subsequent parts, and vote based on the whole thing on the last part. I've received comments to that effect on some of my works.
So voting is higher on part 1, low on part two, higher on part 3.

This assumes that all three parts are available, or soon available, at the time part 1 is read.

Well, that's what I figure has happened based on my stats. YMMV.

This is consistent with what I'm saying.
Say chapter 1 has 100,000 views and 1,000 votes. A 100:1 view:vote ratio. We don't know how many actually read it. We would assume many started to read it and then stopped.

Chapter 2 has 50,000 views. One would intuitively expect a ratio of LESS than 100:1, wouldn't one? Because this time around those who click on it presumably are pickier, and more likely to be those who actually read Chapter 1 the whole way through. If my assumption is correct then the view:vote ratio should be lower. But it's not, which is curious.

In my two series, I also have seen a bump up for the final chapter. So my results seem more or less consistent with your and with DJMAC1031's, but I think they are curious results.

In my multi-part story, "Change", the percentage of votes to views for the first part (chapters 1-3) was 4%. It went up to 6% for part two (chapters 4-6), and except for a one percentage drop for part five (chapters 13-15), it remained at 6% for the remainder of the 33 chapters.

With the 20 chapter story "Heavy Traffic", the first chapter had a vote to view percentage of 3%. The following 19 chapters toggled between 4% and 5%.

"Searching" had 18 chapters, with the vote to view percentage starting at 3% and then ranging from 4% to 6% for the next 16 chapters and the final chapter seeing 7%.

I have one additional multi-part story, "Elements", which had a vote to view percentage of 2% for the first part, 5% for the second part, and 6% for the third part.

In my experience, while the view count is higher for the first chapter or part, the votes as a percentage of views have always increased in later chapters and the percentages have been higher than for single submission stories by at least a point.

 

[KeithD]

I've seen subsequent chapters in some of my series register more views than previous ones. That's a headscratcher, as I can't imagine jumping in in the middle of the series to start reading. I just see it as the unreliability of "views" as an indicator of actual readers.

 

[ElectricBlue]

Chapter 2 or 3.

That raises another question:
I know some authors move between categories when posting chapters. For those who remain consistent in the same category for all chapters, do you add or remove tags that could influence readers jumping into your story mid-stream?

I wouldn't category shift with a chaptered story, but I do tailor the tags for each chapter, especially if it wanders around, sexually. I pick the most appropriate category for the overall story arc, and stay with that category.

If you want to explore multiple kinks, it's time for separate stories, I reckon. Audiences tend to be fairly "focussed" in my experience, and don't always want it mixed up too much. They tend to let you know, one way or another.

 

[Altissimus]

In my multi-part story, "Change", the percentage of votes to views for the first part (chapters 1-3) was 4%. It went up to 6% for part two (chapters 4-6), and except for a one percentage drop for part five (chapters 13-15), it remained at 6% for the remainder of the 33 chapters.

With the 20 chapter story "Heavy Traffic", the first chapter had a vote to view percentage of 3%. The following 19 chapters toggled between 4% and 5%.

"Searching" had 18 chapters, with the vote to view percentage starting at 3% and then ranging from 4% to 6% for the next 16 chapters and the final chapter seeing 7%.

I have one additional multi-part story, "Elements", which had a vote to view percentage of 2% for the first part, 5% for the second part, and 6% for the third part.

In my experience, while the view count is higher for the first chapter or part, the votes as a percentage of views have always increased in later chapters and the percentages have been higher than for single submission stories by at least a point.

I think you may be missing an order of magnitude or two.
6% voting means 6 votes per 100 readers. That's 60 votes for a 1000, 600 votes for 10,000. If you're seeing this, you are ***way*** above the number of votes I've seen on my 100k-read stories.

I wouldn't category shift with a chaptered story, but I do tailor the tags for each chapter, especially if it wanders around, sexually. I pick the most appropriate category for the overall story arc, and stay with that category.

If you want to explore multiple kinks, it's time for separate stories, I reckon. Audiences tend to be fairly "focussed" in my experience, and don't always want it mixed up too much. They tend to let you know, one way or another.

My last multi-chapter went across two genres (non-consent -> romance) and it's done the best of anything I've written. I did take some pains to align the tags and preface the stories so the readers knew, though.