Posted on July 23, 2008

6 Tips on Promoting Serial Novels

Serializing a first draft of a novel online is wonderful.  For reasons I’ve discussed in earlier an article, the experience of getting daily feedback and enthusiasm from readers is the best way I’ve found to push through the sometimes dreadful moments of carrying a story to novel length.  The trouble is getting those readers in the first place.  With the internet crowded by content, both fantastic and miserable, convincing readers to put the effort into to something that promises to be book length is a battle.  Getting them to actually land eyeballs on your work is no easier.

What follows are the techniques I used and the promotional options I tried.  Some worked well, others didn’t.  With many of them, I probably could have done a better job but, on the whole, I’m happy with my novel’s performance.  THE HOLE, at the time of this writing, has thousands of visitors every month and a couple hundred people signed up to get each new chapter in their email.  Those numbers aren’t staggering, they aren’t what Stephen King can expect from an online serial, but they feel pretty good to this first time author.

1) Nail the opening.

This is all most people will ever read.  You want them hooked at least enough to click the next link at the bottom of that first chapter.  Serial novels demand a lot of on screen reading, something most users, myself included, aren’t thrilled about.  It’s one thing to read a 500 word blog post and then click a link to something new, but the prospect of consuming 100,000 words on a monitor sounds like nothing by eye strain.  So it better be a great 100,000 words and the opening better be fantastic enough to convince readers that that’s the case.

2) Community news sites can be hit-or-miss.

THE HOLE began life as a series of articles published on the social news site, Newsvine.  That community driven newspaper allows writers to create their own subgroups on whatever topics are of interest.  I’d had success with my non-fiction essays on Newsvine before, often receiving several hundred thoughtful reader comments on each, and, finding a Newsvine community for serial fiction, I decided to try it out.

The results were mixed.  I did attract a handful of readers who have loyally stuck with me to the present, but it was only a handful.  These kinds of sites just aren’t for fiction and so that’s not what readers expect to find when they get there.  Still, if you already have a sizable following, there’s no reason not to cross post on a community news site and your blog.  The more places you make your novel available, the more potential readers you have.  And when you’re writing a book, it’s all about getting readers.  Worry about building a brand around your website later.

3) Social networking isn’t as productive as it might seem.

I never fully groked the social networking scene.  I have a Facebook account and maybe forty friends on it, but I don’t use it much, and don’t really get why others do, either.  Promoting your novel on a social networking site ultimately means promoting it to your friends, and that’s always been easy, even without the Facebook or MySpace go-between.  Just email them–and ask them to email their friends.

I did setup a Facebook fan page for my writing, since these pages allow anyone to join up, keeping my friends list limited to people I actually know–but it didn’t do a whole lot. Perhaps if I’d had more experience with social networking sites, I’d have been better able to leverage them as a promotional tool.  As it stands, Facebook (the only site I use) was a bust.

4) Social linking is easy, but don’t expect the world.

Social linking, such as Reddit and Digg, can provide some return, though I’ve come to expect little.  Reddit has been great for my non-fiction writing, but fiction submissions generally fail to bring many readers.  Digg, as a whole, isn’t worth the time to submit to.  It’s too specific in its interests, and fiction isn’t one of those.  I got in the habit of submitting occasionally, so as not to look like a spammer, and only to those sites that make it easy, such as Reddit, which requires only pasting a link.  Sometimes I’d get new readers that way, but usually not.

5) Sponsorships let you outsource promotion.

This is the one that’s probably most reponsible for the success of THE HOLE.  Early on during the writing, I was doing web searches for small press horror publishers, mostly to get myself excited about who I might submit to when the novel was completed.  One I came across, Permuted Press, had a message board where authors could post their online fiction.  I put the first chapter of THE HOLE up there, with a link to the rest of it on my site.  Besides the immediate and enthusiastic response from some new readers, I recieved an email from the publisher, asking if they might sponsor my book.  This involved me putting a link to them on the site and a tagline–”Sponsored by Permuted Press”–on my mock cover.  In return, they promoted the novel to their mailing list of horror fans.  Within days of the arrangement, I had nearly a hundred new subscribers.  Permuted even took the time to post about THE HOLE on various horror websites, drawing on their recognized brand to promote my book.  They also set me up with my own author message board on their forums.

6) Provide email sign ups.

This one’s easy and makes a huge difference.  Of the two-hundred people subscribed to the feed for THE HOLE, nearly all are doing so through Feedburner’s email service.  I can’t know the exact numbers, but my guess is that a large portion of those reader would have forgotten about the book at some point during its run.  Getting each new installment in their inbox as soon as it comes out keeps them reading.  This is why it’s also crucial that you not limit your book’s RSS feed to excerpts.  Again, the game isn’t to get readers to your website, it’s to get readers to your novel.  If that reading takes place in Outlook, that’s just as good as if it takes place somewhere you have banner ads.  You’re not trying to make immediate money.  Instead, you want an immediate audience.

I encourage readers of this post to add any further serial novel promotional ideas to the comments section below.  Have you written succesful online fiction?  If so, what worked for you?  What didn’t?