It was a good idea to give your readers some background to your choice of characters and their personalities. I read a fair amount of fiction set in Victorian times and found your characters true to the period, as I understand it. Thanks.
You and I have excellent taste, Richard 😂 I love my Victorian novels. Currently reading Sherlock Holmes again. I've started with A Study In Scarlet. Thanks for your comment. I like sharing a bit of background. I feel like when I studied my Lit degree, I just filled up with all of this random information and need to share it whenever the occasion calls for it. Thanks for indulging me 😄 it's been bottled up for a while.
Have you read the Barker and Llewelyn series by Will Thomas, an American with Scots immigrant parents and a Sherlockian? Very much worth the time, IMHO. Barker (a Scot) and Llewelyn (obviously, a Welshman) are "Private Enquiry Agents" at work before and after Jack the Ripper. Really well done. I'm just sad that I have only the last two books to read before I finish the series (to date).
As you know Hanna (maybe?), I've pre-ordered the Spider. Funnily, I did it on a whim, kind of - I read the premise/blurb and it grabbed me and I thought, why not? I'm not sure if I should read this post now or not. I kind of like the idea of going into the book blind and seeing how it goes.
I'm also very interested in your process and serialising it here on Substack. I'm going to slowly figure out whether this is something I want to do, but it's so useful to follow your progress and the way you've gone about it.
I published my first book over the summer and have written my first novel (for NaNoWriMo) and am wondering whether to serialise it or not. If anything, it's a good way to gauge whether it's crap or not! 😂
I know there are other Substackers who have serialised their works - in some cases I've read those each week (for free) and then to support them bought their previous book. It feels like the right thing to do, and it's great to discover new writers.
Best of luck, once I've read the Spider, I'll be sure to leave a review.
We can talk about it! I do really appreciate you having pre-ordered. I think serialise and go for it. Do you use other social networks? What I've learned is that you're not losing anything by running a serial. A lot of my subscribers don't like to read on the computer screen, so they just wait for the book. However, there are those that do like to read it week on week, and that's great. You get the best of both worlds. I like releasing a book at the end of it. The serial was the soft launch. I sold 200 books after serialising Oceanus. It's easy to bang on about it all year when you are running the serial.
I'll just ask one last question for now (this might be a dumb question, I'm new to writing fiction after years of purely non-fiction) - when you serialise it, do you just publish like it's a post? Or does it go through an editing process? Does that make sense? I mean, is what you serialise the final product - I think you might have answered this in your interview with Sam Mas, I need to read that first probably.
One thing I might need to sort out is paid v free. I started my newsletter as a resource for language learners, I was a long-time English teacher but over the past few months, I've picked up a lot of new, non-language learning readers, who engage far more with my work than my original target audience. And even though my newsletter is free, a few people have pledged subscriptions (which is kind of them) but if I pivot to this fiction...anyway, ignore this, I'm pontificating out loud (again)...it's fascinating, all of these options.
(I promise this is not a shameless plug - I too have read Simon Jones' post about the subscribe me/you nonsense (!) - but my most recent post does revisit my intentions for starting my newsletter and the direction it's gone in over 18 months.)
It's as close to the final product as I can get it. It gets a final proof read before being formatted into a book. I post a chapter a week as a post here, so it is delivered like a newsletter. Simon Jones has a lot of resources on how to make the serial really engaging and accessible with your links etc, but it's all pretty simple. Running the serial gave me the kick up the bum to get it ready for publishing. I don't paywall anything, as it's better to just share. You're going to get more engagement that way. I find it hard to charge for a serial when people can just buy a book. Similar to you, kind subscribers have pledged but I offer everything for free.
This is so awesome, Hanna! My copy of The Spider is expected to arrive today. The post here is notorious for failed promises, but I have my fingers crossed!
It was a good idea to give your readers some background to your choice of characters and their personalities. I read a fair amount of fiction set in Victorian times and found your characters true to the period, as I understand it. Thanks.
You and I have excellent taste, Richard 😂 I love my Victorian novels. Currently reading Sherlock Holmes again. I've started with A Study In Scarlet. Thanks for your comment. I like sharing a bit of background. I feel like when I studied my Lit degree, I just filled up with all of this random information and need to share it whenever the occasion calls for it. Thanks for indulging me 😄 it's been bottled up for a while.
Have you read the Barker and Llewelyn series by Will Thomas, an American with Scots immigrant parents and a Sherlockian? Very much worth the time, IMHO. Barker (a Scot) and Llewelyn (obviously, a Welshman) are "Private Enquiry Agents" at work before and after Jack the Ripper. Really well done. I'm just sad that I have only the last two books to read before I finish the series (to date).
As you know Hanna (maybe?), I've pre-ordered the Spider. Funnily, I did it on a whim, kind of - I read the premise/blurb and it grabbed me and I thought, why not? I'm not sure if I should read this post now or not. I kind of like the idea of going into the book blind and seeing how it goes.
I'm also very interested in your process and serialising it here on Substack. I'm going to slowly figure out whether this is something I want to do, but it's so useful to follow your progress and the way you've gone about it.
I published my first book over the summer and have written my first novel (for NaNoWriMo) and am wondering whether to serialise it or not. If anything, it's a good way to gauge whether it's crap or not! 😂
I know there are other Substackers who have serialised their works - in some cases I've read those each week (for free) and then to support them bought their previous book. It feels like the right thing to do, and it's great to discover new writers.
Best of luck, once I've read the Spider, I'll be sure to leave a review.
We can talk about it! I do really appreciate you having pre-ordered. I think serialise and go for it. Do you use other social networks? What I've learned is that you're not losing anything by running a serial. A lot of my subscribers don't like to read on the computer screen, so they just wait for the book. However, there are those that do like to read it week on week, and that's great. You get the best of both worlds. I like releasing a book at the end of it. The serial was the soft launch. I sold 200 books after serialising Oceanus. It's easy to bang on about it all year when you are running the serial.
I'll just ask one last question for now (this might be a dumb question, I'm new to writing fiction after years of purely non-fiction) - when you serialise it, do you just publish like it's a post? Or does it go through an editing process? Does that make sense? I mean, is what you serialise the final product - I think you might have answered this in your interview with Sam Mas, I need to read that first probably.
One thing I might need to sort out is paid v free. I started my newsletter as a resource for language learners, I was a long-time English teacher but over the past few months, I've picked up a lot of new, non-language learning readers, who engage far more with my work than my original target audience. And even though my newsletter is free, a few people have pledged subscriptions (which is kind of them) but if I pivot to this fiction...anyway, ignore this, I'm pontificating out loud (again)...it's fascinating, all of these options.
(I promise this is not a shameless plug - I too have read Simon Jones' post about the subscribe me/you nonsense (!) - but my most recent post does revisit my intentions for starting my newsletter and the direction it's gone in over 18 months.)
It's as close to the final product as I can get it. It gets a final proof read before being formatted into a book. I post a chapter a week as a post here, so it is delivered like a newsletter. Simon Jones has a lot of resources on how to make the serial really engaging and accessible with your links etc, but it's all pretty simple. Running the serial gave me the kick up the bum to get it ready for publishing. I don't paywall anything, as it's better to just share. You're going to get more engagement that way. I find it hard to charge for a serial when people can just buy a book. Similar to you, kind subscribers have pledged but I offer everything for free.
Wow! This is great intel on your book Hannah - best of luck
This is so awesome, Hanna! My copy of The Spider is expected to arrive today. The post here is notorious for failed promises, but I have my fingers crossed!