An Epic Tail!

I agree that people seem to get intimidated by longer stories. It seems easier to read 4 parts of 2,500 words each than it is to read one 10,000 word story. I've done the same thing - split stories into parts, by looking for a semi-natural breaking point which sometimes doesn't exist.

The only thing I have noticed though, is that the number of readers goes down between the first part and the last part - usually almost by half - when stories are split into parts or serialized. Unless this information is not being captured correctly, I think it means that it may not be overly advantageous to split stories, at least in terms of readership.

May I offer, (also as a plug)

Never Too Old - 39,000 words in 23 chapters

Sally & Jane Go Shopping - 54,000 words in 25 chapters.

Obviously that's novel length so it's undoubtedly best for it to be split up into parts. A paper novel would be similarly split into chapters so it's reasonable to do it on the computer format, if only that it makes it easier to find your place next time - and please don't harass the long-suffering Febs to make us each a bookmark to place in a long story - they'd only get stained with sherry and crisp crumbs and that would be bad for the computer innards.

The issue with long Vs short stories is that here, on the net, it feels more natural to read shorter stories, and these have a different structure to them than the novel length ones. When you see a paper novel, it's obvious how long it is, and you set yourself to read for a long period. I think the psychology is normally different with a computer format, and so a long story is more daunting, to say nothing of being harder to read.

I think you're mis-interpreting the data. Simply because a reader views a longer story (or even a shorter) doesn't mean that he/she has read the whole thing. For many reasons, a reader who starts reading a story may not finish. The reader may not think the story is well-written, or may not like the genre, may not favor the orientation (remember that a number of views will occur before the story has even been validated), or (for a longer story) may not have time to finish it at first and then just not get back to it or may find it simply doesn't hold his/her interest. A one-part story started by a reader still is shown as "viewed" but that doesn't mean it has been read in its entirety. With a serial or multi-part story, you just have concrete evidence that the reader didn't finish. You may scare away a reader with a monolithic 15,000-word story, but whether it it's posted as one or in parts, once people start reading you will lose some of them along the way in eitehr case. I've never posted a multi-part story, but I don't try to fool myself into believing that every 'view' represents a complete read.

I actually love the longer stories. I don't believe there is a way to bookmark a story, so one could come back to it later. That would be cool. Maybe we should mention bookmarking to Frebus.

njrick, you're right about pretty much everything in you're last post. I don't fool myself into believing one view means that the reader read through the entire one-part story. Or that one view even means they have read through an entire part[/i] of a multi-part story. I think there is a better chance of that happening AFTER the story has been validated, since that mostly eliminates the "I don't know what this story is, but I'll take a look at it anyway" reader, but even then - still no guarantee that a view equals a full read. Just like the are so many mass media delivery options available to everyone nowadays, there are so many stories in the LSF - which is a good thing - that readers can pretty much pick and choose the ones they want to read, and how much of them they want to read.

And to tack onto a thread started by opb, above, by reading stories in the LSF (and free), the reader is relieved of the burden of feeling they [i]have to finish them (like I feel when I read a paper novel, or download one to my Kindle). I see it as a badge of honor to start a book and finish it - even if you know early on that its not something you really aren't going to enjoy it much. I'm proud (or maybe stupid) to say that this has only happened to me a few times in my life - and I read a lot of novels - and each time was with a D.H. Lawrence novel. I just found them too boring. But I finish just about everything else I start, including the ones in the LSF. But I recognize that this is probably not the norm. (Meaning that I am abnormal - but I already knew that!)

I also prefer to read longer stories. Possibly I think that the author will have more time to develop the characters and the plot.

I have no problem in leaving a story, novel or a book purchased or downloaded in the middle if I don't enjoy it. I am known to have jumped pages and chapters and read only the closing chapters. I am known as well to abandon movies and plays if I can't stand them.

I agree that a lengthy story is intimidating but multi-part stories give me another problem. At times I let the author finish them before I start reading. And usually I'll comment only on the first and last chapters.

As an author I find it easier to write shorter stories. I have trouble with sequels and I probably never finished a multi-part story.

I find series in general that go beyond 5 parts, especially if all the parts are submitted at once lose readers drastically, the first part well read but the last around 30% of the first part. It makes one wonder if writing a series is really worth the effort, and it is a lot of work.

In my last series (Wife's Cousin) I spaced out the parts, each part separated by at least a month to 6 weeks. The advantage is that each part is considered as a separate story but it does encourage the reader to go back and read the prior parts. If one looks at the stats on that series compared to the other series on my author page the reads show the value of not submitting parts of a series close together.

As a reader I find reading any short story over 5000 words hard, and a lot of times will keep putting off reading it due to fact I know it will annoy me no matter how well it is written. A book or novel I can put down and continue reading, that is hard to do in the Library. I am not speaking here of series over 5000 words, I can easily read each part and know which part I have read. I do read longer stories but I much prefer the shorter ones, around 2 to 3 thousands words are what I favour.

Perhaps I am a reader (and writer) who likes to read a spanking story rather then a story about a spanking, I think that difference may be the difference in liking long or short stories. There are a lot of strong stories in here that are not long or series but they do have good character development and the plots are often great.

There is another statistical nicety which has occurred to me which may shed a little light on the multi-chapter story views issue, and that is that a story view of Part 2 represents a far higher chance that the part has actually been read than a view of Part 1, so the number of views of the final part - (KJM-alike readers notwithstanding) should represent a more accurate account of the number of actual reads.

Semple's comment about DH Lawrence chimes with my own about Joseph Conrad, I read one, enjoyed it, thought "Oh, I like Conrad" and then tried and completely failed to finish anything else by him.

It is true that the reader numbers gradually decline as you progress through the parts of a several-part story, though of course even ages after it was posted, there may well be a handful of people still working their way through from one to five. What has seemed strange to me in the past is that occasionally a later part gets a higher number than an earlier even when the story would be baffling without reading the earlier one. I suppose it must be the validation. Obviously there will be some people who read one part and decide it isn't their cup of tea enough to go on to the second.

I think long stories do deter some readers. They tend to deter me because I think, "how much time have I got?", but this has less effect when I know I like the writer's work. If I'm sampling someone new to me, I usually go for something quite short because I don't like starting and not finishing. This is despite the fact that my own stories tend to be on the longer side.

However, I did post one story of 13,436 words, many of them different - "For a Fistful of Knickers", taken from the old Flaming Cheeks where length was less of an issue - and I see it's now had 337 readers, which is high for my stories. How many finished it I don't know, but they could see how long it was. Maybe the title attracted them.

FEWER words, not LESS.

I tend to not read serials or stories that are in parts that are recently posted as I don't like it when I am left in the middle of a story and the next part isn't posted until later, sometimes months later. I personally would find it helpful if the last part of the story or serial were labeled as such so that I could see that it was completed and I wasn't going to be left hanging.