Experience Marketing Serials? Help Needed, Por Favor! #writing #publishing #help

My current manuscript is quite long, over 300k words, and, as such, is far too long for the market accustomed to novels that are more like 110k at the outside. However, the good news is, that the manuscript is structured in such a way that I believe it would work well as a serialized novel. Each part would be around 38k words and I’d price them accordingly. 

As I get closer to a completed product, I’m looking for some input and advice about serialization. Does anyone have experience with publishing a serial? And if so, could you offer any advice about what to do, what not to do, or pass on ideas for marketing, etc? Any input at all would be lovely and helpful!

In addition, I’m wondering if I’m overlooking an obvious way to sell subscriptions to the serial, so that someone can pay a set amount up front and receive each episode as it is put out, rather than having to count entirely on return traffic as each episode is released. I saw that Amazon has as service called Amazon Serials, but it requires pitching your idea to them, being accepted, etc, and I’m not sure I care to go that route. I’d rather do it on my own or find another service, unless someone knows something about Amazon Serials that I don’t. Surely there must be some obvious way to provide a subscription service for myself. Hopefully.

Again, any information or experience that might be shared would be wonderful. Thank you!

 

Any Other World: Training Season #johnnyweir #mm #romance

My upcoming novel, Training Season, is a romance featuring a male figure skater and a rancher. The story has existed in various stages and forms for a few years now, but it has only come into its own in my latest sweep of edits and additions. It is turning into something that I feel rather pleased with, if I do say so myself, and I look forward to sharing more information on it soon, including a lovely cover designed by the always wonderful Dar Albert. Expect that cover reveal soon.

In the meantime, I wanted to talk a bit about the initial moment of inspiration for this novel. The spark originated from watching the following video. It is a fanvideo, a montage of Johnny Weir’s performances over some of his earlier years, set to the absolute perfect song. It was the combination, and the impeccable editing, that really engaged my mind and made me start to ask some really important questions. Such as, what does it look like when you work hard at something with no guarantee that the outcome of years and years of work will pay off? (Hello, I am a writer, I think I understand this quite well, actually.) Or what does it look like when someone keeps screwing themselves over because they just don’t believe, deep down, that they deserve it? What happens when they meet someone from outside of their world who gets them, sees them, and loves them anyway?

Other questions came up, too, but those were the very first ones, and they were all due to this little fanvid right here. Oh, Johnny Weir, you are a divine mess at times, aren’t you? And, yes, he is, in part, along with some other skaters and some people I know in my day-to-day life, the inspiration for the character of Matty Marcus–God’s gift to figure skating, and victim of his own worst impulses.

Enjoy the video. The way it makes you feel is pretty much what this book is about. The emotional base of it stemmed from this video.