Posting a serial...over a number of weeks or all at once?

I was wondering if other people have a view about how to post serials.
When a new serial is posted I read it and then if I enjoy it I look forward to the next episode being released. When the next release of stories is made I quickly scan to see if episode 2 is there.
However increasingly (at least is how it seems to me) all episodes are being released in one hit, be it three or four episodes or even as with Red Robins recent Oxford serial all 25 episodes in one go.
Now there is nothing wrong with that, and please do not think this is a complaint, it is not.
I find that having all episodes in one go makes me less likely to start the serial at all, somehow 5 or 25 episodes looks rather a lot, and I tend to move on and find something a little easier to read.
Of course this could just be me, and perhaps I am a lazy reader! Do other people have a view? possibly totally opposite to me.
As I say above there is no right or wrong, just wondering what other people think.
Now I have written this I feel guilty at not at least reading episode one of the Oxford serial and so I am going to do that now!... just read episodes 1 and 2, and it looks like 3 needs to be read as well!

Either way, try to finish it before you start posting. There are few things worse than an unfinished series.

Personally I try to finish and upload the entire story at once, but that's just me. Just remember that folks stumbling over the story a year from now won't know if it was posted all at once or a slice per week.

The series that I've done so far have either still been works in progress when I started submitting the first parts or a single story that suddenly morphed into a series. So the "publish the entire series at once" option has never been relevant for me.

However, I tend to be pretty prolific with the number of stories I generate, which could have a similar impact on the overall "Latest Submissions" as submitting a series would. As a matter of logistics Februs keeps each upload to approximately 30 stories. While it would be a massive ego boost to have an entire upload be nothing but my stories, the readership at large would probably revolt at not being able to read the latest from Gloup or Lisa Berry because I've hijacked the site. So I dump a maximum of 5 stories at a time on the site owners. Sometimes all 5 get uploaded right away, sometimes only 1 might initially; it's all a function of what's in the queue. That way at worst I'm only taking up 16.7% of the available slots.

So, if I ever create another lengthy series (18 is my max so far), I'd only submit them a couple at a time to leave space for fellow authors. And as a reader I agree with your logic: in general I'd rather follow a story over time and let it build up rather than try to plow through from beginning to end at once.

Very sage advice. I learned that the hard way with a series where I started submitting it before i finished writing it. I painted myself into a corner because I made something "canon" by publishing it when by the end the event no longer made sense within the overall story. If I'd finished the story first I could have rewritten it to avoid the flaw before anyone read it.

mj2001
I painted myself into a corner

As has been pointed out to me a time or two, I started out with a story and ending in mind, then ended up with something very different, only to make the monumental error of using the original title, which made no sense with the story as published. Also, I have to be careful when I leave a story for a few days, or weeks, and have to reread it to make sure I remember all the plot lines, and characters, the old steel trap mind is beginning to get a little rusty.

In terms of loading, I try whenever possible to load a complete page of 30. The reason for this is because we tended to get regular complaints from people protesting that they hadn't been on the first page of the loaded list as long as someone else etc etc. If I have a particularly long multi-part serial to load in one go I usually try and load more than the usual 30 so that a portion of the long serial falls onto the second page of the latest loaded list.

With quite limited reading time, I'm usually the same, looking to read shorter pieces and feeling intimidated by long serials appearing all at once, especially if each part is c. 1000 words (call me anal, but I comment on everything I read here, because I believe in comments, and I slightly resent it if what could be one part is chopped into 4). But it would be a shame if serialisation died out - Lisa Berry and others still do it successfully.

Of course, in the old days... (sigh)... readers seemed to have more patience and stamina (and they commented a LOT more than of late). I had a 38-part serial posted over 30 weeks in 2010-11 (banging out my 5000 words to meet the weekly uploading deadline) and the interaction with the readers who followed it was part of the story's ongoing evolution. Some enjoyed it as a weekly fix, while others said later that they were glad they'd only found it when it was finished because they wouldn't have had the patience to bother otherwise. It depends on the reader - how often they log in, how patient they are and how well you hook them in with cliffhangers.

Best way to post a serial? Start with two parts at a time and see how it goes. If/when views and comments flag, then bung in the rest all at once!


Bring back R. Humphries!

Personally, I like it when someone starts with 2 or 3 parts, then adds to it weekly so as a reader, I have something to look forward to each week, particularly if it's an author I enjoy and look for each week.

This is the reason I try to finish before publishing. There have been countless times where making an early change can solve so many problems. There have been times where I am trying to figure out how to introduce something late the story - looking at writing several paragraphs - then realize that if I just go back to the start and includes a few introductory lines the problems is solve.

Then there are the logic mistakes... Such introducing a character wearing shorts then having her skirt raised for a spanking... the fix is either to rewrite every part where you reference the skirt OR go back and have her enter the room in a skirt.

I try to finish it before posting. Doing that with one I'm working on at present. Unifinished series are quite frustrating.