# Web serials to ebooks?



## antonnaseton (Dec 10, 2013)

Hello everyone,
Here I am again, hoping to gain wisdom from you kind folks. This time from those who have written web serial fiction or ebook serial fiction.

I'm about ready - just days away -from launching my first ebook. It's just a short story, but to me the thing is not about making money but finally brave enough to let my story go into the wild, wild world of ebooks. (Of course it'll be nice to earn money, but I digress)

Anyway, as I explore this new world of publishing, the one thing that set my mind and creativity on fire is the idea of writing a web serial. My idea is to write one and then eventually compile that into an e-book. I love the idea because I've always liked connecting with readers in a fun and interactive way. I suppose this stemmed from my time writing fanfic (way before the days of fanfiction.net). I loved the feedback I got and being able to get to know my readers. Many of them became my friends!

But as much as I'd like to be part of a community, I'd also love to monetise what I write. And then there's that Dean Wesley Smith admonishment about giving away your writing for nothing...

Long story short. I'm rather confused about what to do. So, if any of you who've done the following below could tell me about your experience it would be awesome!. Should I:

1. *Put out my story on sites like Jukepop Serials to gain a readership?* But I don't very like the idea of making my story exclusive to a site other than my own. Also, those who've tried Jukepop Serials - is it easy to compile your work into an ebook later?

2. *Release my serial on my website and link it to aggregators* like Tuesday Serial and when the story is done release it as an ebook? Should I take down the serial fiction on my website after I release it as an ebook?

3. *Or just go the pure e-book route and release episodes?* For some reason I'm not very keen about the idea because I'm afraid of pissing off readers who hate buying incomplete stories. I do know there have been people who've had success with it, however... such as the writers of Yesterday's Gone.

No. #1 and #2 holds the most appeal to me, but I'm a little worried about piracy and also I heard that if the Amazon robots find a story that has been published on the web, they won't let you turn it into an ebook.

Some feedback will be awesome.  Sorry for the bother, but I'm such a noob at all of this I'm finding myself being overwhelmed by all the options and choices out there!


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## Vaalingrade (Feb 19, 2013)

I've been doing a serial (The Descendants) for seven years now and only last year did I get the idea to self-pub collections. I'm using option 2 because I'm not letting any internet sneaky TOS take my creator rights away.

The thing that's slowing me down the most if cover creation. The visual dependency in self-pub is awful.


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## antonnaseton (Dec 10, 2013)

Vaalingrade said:


> I've been doing a serial (The Descendants) for seven years now and only last year did I get the idea to self-pub collections. I'm using option 2 because I'm not letting any internet sneaky TOS take my creator rights away.
> 
> The thing that's slowing me down the most if cover creation. The visual dependency in self-pub is awful.


Ah, do you use a designer perhaps? Or premade covers?

I love creating covers ... I used to design newspaper pages and covers and had a blast doing it. I wish I was great at photoshop though, then I could really make some awesome covers.

Question: How in the world did you keep the serial running for that long??


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## Guest (Dec 31, 2013)

Maybe you should give Wattpad a look, although they mainly cater to the younger teen crowd.  I think readers like longer stuff myself, but best way to find out is to try.  I have a hard time getting long or short books noticed, so I'm probably not one to listen to.


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## Vaalingrade (Feb 19, 2013)

antonnaseton said:


> Ah, do you use a designer perhaps? Or premade covers


I have no money, so it's all me except for my first two Rune Beaker covers. It's all Creative Commons open images, free clip art, pictures I take and photoshop.



> Question: How in the world did you keep the serial running for that long??


The deal with Descendants is that it's not modeled on serial novels but comic books. So I have self-contained issues of between four and six chapters with the issues being part of a larger, ongoing story of the main characters. It's now been seven years and 73 issues and I'm nowhere near the end.


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## quiet chick writes (Oct 19, 2012)

I don't have any advice (just sympathies), as I'm only just hoping to make the same kind of moves toward ebooks with some of my web serial stuff this year. 

I guess my plans are aiming toward option #2. Kindle readers like at least 10,000 words in an episode, as far as what I've heard they'd be willing to pay for, and my episodes finish much smaller than that. My comfort zone is ~2,000-word episodes, making up a 30-40K season. So I'm going to continue posting them on my blog, then collecting, revising, (figuring out what I'm going to do about the machinima shots, lol!), and releasing the seasons for Kindle and paperback.

I'm not interested in posting on any sites but my own (I use a Blogger blog for mine), and I doubt I would ever skip the web-stage entirely and go straight to e-book, because I LOVE the community and reader input along the way, and I love being able to draft and figure things out as I go in a way that's not really efficient or even possible in my regular novels and stories. That's honestly most of the fun for me, and why I keep getting sucked into writing these things! 

I'm am also a little concerned about what Amazon bots will think of the material remaining online. I have known authors who took all of their stuff down, as well as some who left it up. As far as I know, I think Amazon just asks you for links to all the places you've published your work online, so you just give them your website address, and then maybe they're okay with it. It's just that their auto emails sound a little scary sometimes.


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## antonnaseton (Dec 10, 2013)

Greg Strandberg said:


> Maybe you should give Wattpad a look, although they mainly cater to the younger teen crowd. I think readers like longer stuff myself, but best way to find out is to try. I have a hard time getting long or short books noticed, so I'm probably not one to listen to.


I'm trying it out now, though I'm afraid my story is not exactly the greatest genre for Wattpad: Post-apocalyptic short story!!  Oh well, just giving it a try since I'm serialising it on my website too.


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