Navigating Serialized Fiction with Kim Boo York

Have you ever considered writing serialized fiction? What about releasing your novel chapter by chapter as you write it?

In this week's episode, author coach Kim Boo York joins us to talk about how she rediscovered her love of writing through fan-fiction, dealt with imposter syndrome and the internal critic telling her there wasn't an audience for her story, but ultimately found success with serialized fiction, particularly with the Ream platform.

(Spoiler: It's about striking a balance between creating suspense and maintaining a steady flow of content, much like the anticipation of a favorite TV show's new episode.) But it's not just about the craft; it's about the community. We delve into the strategies for building a devoted readership and the joy of sharing works-in-progress.

KimBoo York is a GenX elder-goth whose main life purpose is to provide a good life for her rescue mutt, Keely-Boo, who is perfect and beyond reproach in every way. She is also a librarian, former project manager, and a professional author who wears too many hats and  crosses too many genres including romance, fantasy, and non-fiction.  She is also the co-host of the popular podcast, Around the Writer's Table.

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Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:37

Hi everyone and welcome to the AuthorWeal podcast. I'm Greta Boris, USA Today Bestselling Mystery Thriller. Author.

Speaker 2: 0:45

And I'm Megan Haskell, award-winning fantasy adventure author. Together we are the AuthorWeal. In this week's episode we're talking all about serialized fiction with author coach Kim Boo York. She's sharing her best strategies for taking your fiction directly to readers, but in small bites. She talks about the pros and cons of the different platforms that make it easy to share and monetize your fiction before the entire book is published. But before we get into that, what's been going on Greta?

Speaker 1: 1:14

Well, lots of confidence sneezing. I've had that flu that's been going around the country and it's totally nasty. Good thing I had a flu shot. Anyway, on to writing and publishing. There was a little sarcasm in my voice there, that if anybody picked that up. Anyway, on to writing and publishing. So splitting hairs went live. Today, the day that we are actually recording this, reviews are trickling in for my art readers, so that's very nice. And my other news is that, well, I couldn't do much of anything but lay around on the couch.

Speaker 1: 1:54

I pulled apart, rewrote, wrote narrator sections and then sewed back together the first two books in the Almost True Crime series. I'm having a lot of fun.

Speaker 2: 2:07

So real quick I'm interrupting you. Explain exactly what you mean by all that, because I'm not sure you've really talked about that with our audience at all and because it's an interesting kind of side note here. Make a quick note.

Speaker 1: 2:19

I guess I will make it quick and maybe we should do a betweeny sewed on this. Yeah, maybe there we go we can talk about it longer. Basically, I've taken apart the POV character sections and looked at each of those separately.

Speaker 2: 2:35

And this was the Seven Deadly.

Speaker 1: 2:37

Sins series.

Speaker 1: 2:38

It was the Seven Deadly Sins series. So I started with what was the Liability of Lust. I took it apart, took apart the POV sections, tightened them up, added it a little bit. That one I had already rewritten, so it was really quick. And then I'm writing in a narrator who's a podcaster, so each book is now going to be an episode of her true crime podcast and I gotta say it's a lot of fun. It's so much easier than that dreaded blank page and it was probably all that I could handle with my brain on Nyquell and all of that.

Speaker 2: 3:19

I'm actually impressed you got that much done, because I don't know that I would be able to be even creative at all with that kind of flu.

Speaker 1: 3:26

It was kind of fun. I think my publisher was shocked because she got two books so quickly. So anyway, yeah, it's a good project. I'll keep everybody posted on how that goes and if listeners are interested in having a little bit more blow by blow, how do you rewrite an already published book? We could do something on that in the future, maybe a webinar or whatever. So, email us at info at authorwheelcom and let's know. Anyway, what are you up to?

Speaker 2: 3:59

Well, my toilet exploded yesterday.

Speaker 1: 4:03

That was almost as much fun as the flu. Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 2: 4:08

I mean it didn't really explode but it leaked, which of course meant lots of cleaning and plumbers and all that stuff and time loss from work. So I basically lost the whole day yesterday because even once we got it all settled and sorted and everything, it was hard to get back into a work mindset and so I ended up procrastinating what little time I did have left and it was just not productive and I feel like there's a lesson in there somewhere, but I have not yet found it.

Speaker 1: 4:42

Maybe it's something like fertilizer takes a while to sink into the soil of your creative mind, or something Kind of inky, but okay, moving on.

Speaker 2: 4:53

Yeah, yeah, I don't know. Anyway, I don't know, but I am absolutely thrilled to say that we got the tropes stacking than other genre magic course finished and uploaded to our website and available for sale. So all of our Kickstarter backers have already been loaded into the system. So if that was, you make sure you go check that out. You can log in just on our website or you can check your. I announced it in, like the Kickstarter backer update and whatnot and stuff too. So go check that out and if you're interested, it is available for purchase on the website.

Speaker 2: 5:31

But to celebrate that course, we are actually well, our quick tips episodes in March are going to be all about tropes and genre and how to put it all together into a cohesive, satisfying story for your readers and meet your readers' expectations. So, yeah, I think it's going to be great. Let me get stuff, but that's it for now. So let's get into the interview with Kim Boo York. Kim Boo is a Gen X elder goth whose main life purpose is to provide a good life for her rescue mutt, keely Boo, who is perfect and beyond reproach in every way.

Speaker 1: 6:12

As all our dogs. Sorry, sorry, I said insert that there.

Speaker 2: 6:16

Yes, especially my dog has a little hedgehog squeaky toy that he got for Christmas. So if you hear a little, it's probably him squeaking his squeaky toy. Anyway, sorry, it's total tangent already. Kim Boo is also a librarian, former project manager and a professional author who wears too many hats and crosses too many genres, including romance, fantasy and nonfiction. She's a bit grumpy, especially in the morning, although based on our pre pre interview chat, I would disagree with that last statement.

Speaker 3: 6:52

Well, thank you. It is mid afternoon for me, though, so I'm trying to warm up. You're still in the morning, but you're in the afternoon.

Speaker 1: 7:00

Okay Well, thankfully we didn't schedule you too much earlier.

Speaker 3: 7:04

Thankfully, I'm grateful, all right.

Speaker 2: 7:08

Well anyway. So Kim Boo, welcome. We are so thrilled to have you on this show today. Why don't you tell us a little bit more about yourself and how you got into writing and publishing and nonfiction and all the stuff, and how you became who you are today?

Speaker 3: 7:25

Oh man, well, that's an interesting story all on its own. But as for the writing aspect, I'm one of those bog standard people who kind of knew I wanted to be a writer since I was very young child. Part of that was my mother's influence I think she wanted me to be a right you know this parental influences but I never really took it seriously as a fiction writer for a very long time, like I was always writing stories that I was kind of writing stories that I knew I couldn't sell. And remember this was the 90s, this was prior, it was kind of my adult era. This was prior to self publishing and there was a lot going on in my life.

Speaker 3: 8:06

At about the year 2008, I guess, I had a lot of stuff going on, including a divorce, a long running divorce, and I got back into fan fiction and I talk about this pretty openly because it was an important part of my author journey. And when I got back into fan fiction, it actually got me writing again. I just had given up so much hope on writing and didn't feel like I had anything to contribute that anybody would want to read. And when I got into fan fiction I just did it as escapism, but I found a community of people who love writing and that turned everything around for me by 2010. I had a contract with an independent publisher. I had three books published in the following year and a half. My output has slowed down a little bit since then. That publisher went under, so I am now self published, which has been its own journey, which I really really like.

Speaker 3: 9:01

And this past year, in 2023, which is now last year I'm not sure how time works anymore, but I started with the subscription model, which I think is going to be very good for me personally as an author for a lot of reasons, and that's just like the nutshell journey.

Speaker 3: 9:21

There was a lot of hills and valleys along the way, but getting back to writing stories that I want to write and that I enjoy writing was a huge part of it, and so I did all of that. I am, of course, a librarian, so there's a certain aspect of being online and the internet and self publishing which is very techie, and I have a background in project management with information technology before I became a librarian, so it kind of hits all my interest points. So, getting into self publishing, I started thinking about it from the perspective of well, what does this mean for the future? And that kind of led me into some of the things that I'm writing about these days, particularly the book Becoming an Insta-Published Storyteller, which is what we're going to be talking about today, about serials and serialization and how writers can optimize that and what does it really mean, and how you can construct those stories, whether you're a planner or a writer. So that's how I've ended up where I am.

Speaker 1: 10:20

I'm very excited about talking about serialized fiction because I don't know much about it. I don't want to know more. But before we get there I have a quick question and then our second regular question, but the quick rabbit trail question, which we didn't send you and you are not prepared for. So as a librarian, my experience has been and maybe this is changing, but my experience has been that the libraries tend to be very focused on big trap and not as open minded about independently published authors or even smaller press authors there, and that there's maybe still a little bit of a bias or a prejudice in that community. So did that impact your decisions or make you drag your feet a bit, or how did you deal with that, coming from the library world?

Speaker 3: 11:20

Well, coming from the library world, I have a step up from a lot of people, which is I know how the back end works, and the back end problem with getting independent or self published works into a library was less about not wanting the books there than not being able to get them. It's not like a librarian can go to a bookstore by a few books and then put them on the shelves. Usually there's these long standing contracts with publishers and then so the publishers determine the price and determine the ability, and these long standing obligations and contracts kind of create what the library can hold in its collection. What I've noticed over the years is that that's changing. I knew it would change because I knew on the back end what was really missing was just kind of I don't want to get too techy on it, but kind of like a web hook type of situation where a library can use its official accounts to order a book from a provider. Right, it's very, very structured and set in stone and longstanding practices in the library world.

Speaker 3: 12:33

Now that the technology is advanced enough, if you use an aggregator which is something like Draft2Digital is the one that's most popular that I know of. Streetlib is another where they publish the book to multiple distributors, right? So you can publish with Draft2Digital, to Amazon, to Kobo, to Barnes, Noble and to library collections. So nowadays, because that kind of web hook type of thing exists, you can be a self-publisher and get your books in the libraries. And the technology for that just certainly did not exist 15 years ago, barely existed 10 years ago. So I think that's changing. And I think that's changing because readers are requesting independent, self-published books more and now the libraries can actually buy them. They have a way to do it. So I'm sorry for the long-winded answer, but that's.

Speaker 1: 13:29

No, that's a very good answer because I think that's educational for everybody. So it's not so much. I mean, it's probably individual librarians are prejudiced against smaller pub books, but it's not so much. That isn't the issue, as much as it was just a practicality issue.

Speaker 3: 13:45

Exactly. I think, yeah, you're always going to find snobs, I mean everywhere, right? Like yeah, that's not really me, but that's lessened over the last decade, but especially with librarians. Like, our goal is to get books to people and so it hurts us when we can't. I think for the majority of our profession, we'd rather be able to get books to people that they do want to read. It's just we're hampered by the standards and the contracts and how things have been done and just the function on the back end as librarians have worked for 150 years now. So yeah, gotcha.

Speaker 2: 14:20

Interesting, very interesting, all right. Well, now we're back to the regular standard questions that we did send you.

Speaker 3: 14:29

Yeah, you did, I did send them back to our regularly scheduled program.

Speaker 2: 14:33

Yeah, yeah, exactly. So why don't you tell us what was your biggest roadblock, especially as you were coming up? I mean, you mentioned the fanfic being the entry point back into writing, but sort of after that point, after you were back writing again, what has been kind of your biggest struggle that you've had to overcome in your writing life?

Speaker 3: 14:57

Ironically, the struggle has been the same both before and after that, and I wrote about this on my blog where I called it like the three times I quit writing, and each time I was plagued by the idea that what I was writing was something that was so niche or so something people wouldn't want to read that why bother? And in the early years it was. No agent would want it. No publisher would want it. Nowadays, what I have to struggle with is the idea that no reader will want it, that the people on the internet are on buying their books on Amazon won't want what I have.

Speaker 3: 15:34

And it's not quite an imposter syndrome, it's not quite an insecurity, it's just one of those things like well, who am I to write this? Who's going to read this? And that has been really my biggest struggle personally. As a writer, I can have a really high output. Getting words on the page is not a struggle for me, but deciding that it's worth my time to get the words on the page, that has always been the struggle, and it's less now than it was, but it's still sometimes a struggle.

Speaker 1: 16:04

Yeah, do you think that has to do a little bit with finding your audience, like the worry that there is no audience out there for what you're writing? Absolutely Okay. So it's not. So when you say it's not because it sounds like imposter syndrome, but it sounds like maybe a twist on it. So it's not so much. I'm not a good writer, I can't produce a decent story. That's not your issue. As much as I am a decent writer, I can produce a decent story. But is there anybody out there who's going to want to read the story I would write? Is that more? Am I expressing it?

Speaker 3: 16:41

correctly that. You nailed it completely. And when I was younger it took the form of well, this type of story isn't selling, you know, at borders for those who remember borders bookstore, you know. And so the publisher won't want it, and then that, so I'm not going to be able to get an agent to want it, so why bother? Like it's just not going to happen.

Speaker 3: 17:03

As I progressed into self publishing and things like that has become a discoverability issue. It's been like are people really going to read this particular type of niche romance or this particular type of niche science fiction? And it's it's. That's the concern, and that's a tough one. I mean, there's eight billion people in the world. Surely there's one or two people who will want to read what I have to write. But it is the discoverability aspect and believing that if I just keep with it, I will find my readers. And you know, as a side thing, I think that's one of the reasons why I'm very invested in the subscription model that's come up, become more popular over the last couple of years, because I want to be supported by the people who love my work. I don't want to constantly be churning trying to find new readers. You know, just somewhere, anywhere. I want to. I want a community of people who love my work and who love what I'm writing.

Speaker 2: 18:00

Oh, I love that.

Speaker 3: 18:02

Yeah, that's been a big shift mentally for me over the last, over the last couple of years.

Speaker 2: 18:07

Well, I find it so fascinating that that's where you've gone with it.

Speaker 2: 18:12

I think because I don't know I would we've talked about this on other episodes with other people too.

Speaker 2: 18:17

But with the whole AI thing Becoming more widespread and you know, people do say you know there's going to be no, you know writers aren't going to exist in the future, we're all going to be out of a job because AI is going to take our words from us, and so forth and so on. But I feel like what you're doing is exactly how you can build a community around yourself and you can build that fandom of the people who want to be part of your world, your experience, and be part of that. And so I think I find that so, so fascinating as far as, like, you don't need to have millions of fans if you can find that small group who loves what you do and wants to be part of part of what you do. So obviously you've used subscription to overcome some of that fear of not finding an audience, I guess. But how did you even get that started? How did you start finding that first fan, that second fan, to start building up that community?

Speaker 3: 19:23

I have an advantage, and the advantage is that I am myself a fan girl. I wrote fan fiction for years. In fact, I started writing fan fiction in the 1980s, secretly.

Speaker 3: 19:37

I was from my mother right Like, ooh, how risque. And it wasn't. I wasn't writing anything risque, but my mother was a very literary. Well, she would have been horrified, but she's like what? By the very concept she wouldn't have liked it. But when I was it's not quite true when I was indie published with the publisher that went under. I started getting a couple of fan letters Not very many, like I just got one or two emails. I really love this story. I really can't wait for the next.

Speaker 3: 20:09

You know, a novel with this environment or this world building. Loved how you wrote this particular experience that the character was going through and something just clicked in my mind Like it was just like, just like one of those moments where you're just like, oh, I am not only a fan girl, but I can have my own fans who love my work. And it was just like, yeah, the electrical current closed, you know, made a circuit, and I'm like, oh, other people can do that, I can do that too. And so it's been a struggle for me over the last five years or so to try to find the right way to maximize that. Now a lot of writers are doing the rapid release style, you know, the 20 books, the 50K group if anybody's familiar with that and you're listening to your listeners and that works.

Speaker 3: 21:00

Like I'm not saying that that's not effective, but it didn't work for me as a writer. That's not the way I can write or produce something, and so, even though that was a successful way for some writers to find their fans, find their communities, it was not effective for me because I just am not that kind of person. So when I started shifting into thinking more on serials, of serialization subscriptions, I started realizing that I could do something the way that I love doing it, that I had actually been doing for years as a fan fiction writer, to do it for myself and for my stuff, my characters, my world building and things that I wanted to write about, that is. Did I lose the question? I don't know, but I kind of have an attract.

Speaker 1: 21:45

No, you didn't, but so it sounds like to me that, so that with the roadblock question that Megan started, one of the ways that you've overcome your roadblock is through serialized fiction. And so why don't you, like there may be listeners who are like, I don't even really know what she's talking about. What is, let's like, start at step one. What is serialized fiction? What platforms are available? What platform do you use? Just the explanation of what it is for listeners.

Speaker 3: 22:20

One of the things I'd like to start with is to remind people, because they hear serialized serials or serialized fiction, they're like what is that? And like you already know this, this is one of the oldest forms of storytelling. It's the bard going from town to town and telling a little bit of a story every night to the people in the tavern. It's you know, 1,001 nights. It's stories that just are told in pieces and parts and dribbles. Of course, famously, charles Dickens told his stories in serialized format and, I would argue, wrote mostly serials as opposed to novels, and I'll get to that in a second. So it's not something new and different. What's new and different is the technology behind it. So you have people who write stories, whatever format they are, and they post them online in pieces chapter one, and then a week later, chapter two and then a week later, chapter three. And the fun part about this is it builds a lot of anticipation in the audience. There's a in my book, becoming Unstoppable Storyteller. I relate one of the stories of Charles Dickens. I think it was with Little Nell. I always get the book wrong, but anyway, people actually lined up at the wharfs when the ships were coming in with the final installment, the final chapter of that book, in the magazines and they were literally selling it out of the boxes on the wharf because people were so excited and so jazzed up and they're so wanting to know how the story ended. And that is real the heart of a serial. For me, it's building that kind of anticipation and investment. So it's not really new. The technology is new, but it's been around for a long time.

Speaker 3: 24:09

What I think gets people tripped up is that you can serialize anything. You can serialize a short story, you can serialize a novel, you can serialize an epic poem Like I don't care, you can serialize anything. Television shows are a form of serialized storytelling, like it's all throughout our media environment. Serials, which is something I focus on, is a different format and a serial is a function of the format. Where it is there's a technical I don't wanna get too technical into it, but like where it has overlapping story arcs so that the story can go on for a very long time. So that's the real basic of it. I have questions.

Speaker 1: 24:56

So let's yeah, no, that was great, that was like I feel like-. I think you're going like no, that's a fabulous explanation, yeah, but so for the way that it's being done frequently today on platforms like I know, amazon has Vella Kindle.

Speaker 3: 25:16

Vella, kindle Vella. So let me help you out there. There's Kindle Vella, there's Radish, there's Wattpad. There's a new kid on the block, rheem, who I post on there's Royal Road, there's Inkit. There's actually quite a lot of platforms and some writers actually self-host. They self-host on Squarespace, so they self-host on WordPress and they do it that way. So there's a lot of different places where you can do this, gotcha.

Speaker 1: 25:44

And so when the people who are doing it today and maybe this is a stupid question, but is there like a more standard way, like a certain word count, Is it usually part of something that you could eventually publish as a novel, or what's your actual nitty gritty format here?

Speaker 3: 26:08

So what's the most popular right now is a serialized novel. So it's a novel anywhere between the standard 60,000 words to 100,000 words let's just use that and they are publishing it chapter by chapter. Usually it's already completed, although some writers do what I call au courant writing, which is that they post as they write, which is actually what I do and so they just post a chapter every set number of days. Some very prolific writers on Wattpad post a chapter every couple of days. Others say on, like Ream or Royal Road, they might post once a week or even once every other week and typically like rule of thumb like there's no law but rule of thumb most installments of a story that's being serialized will run anywhere between 1000 and 3000 words. So that kind of depends, that kind of creates how long the story's gonna go.

Speaker 3: 27:08

I have a story, a novel actually, that I'm serializing. My paid members get the whole story because it's finished serializing on Ream, but I am doing free chapters and because I'm only doing one chapter a week and it's 58 chapters, it's taking a whole year because I'm doing one chapter a week. So I don't think it's gonna finish posting. The free chapters aren't gonna finish posting until April, I think when those chapters are free, when all those chapters are done, I will be able to take the book and then publish it as a novel, as a book, on whatever platforms I want. Now I will qualify that If you're on Kindle, vella, if you have a special agreement with Radish. There's a couple others, I think, where you can't do that, like you'd have to take it down from the platform in order to publish it as a book. It just depends on their terms of service. But for me, the platforms that I'm publishing it on, I can still take the book and then publish it as a completed novel. So at that point, my followers and my readers can read it for free on a chapter by chapter basis online, or they can buy the whole book.

Speaker 3: 28:19

And I know, I know, I know what everybody's gonna say. They're like why would somebody buy the book if they can read it for free? Right, I can see he's got his face. She's like yes, that's exactly what my next question was gonna be.

Speaker 3: 28:31

This is where the fans come in. This is where the people who really love your stories come in. Because they will, they will, because they want that story for themselves. They don't wanna have to log into some app. They wanna be able to just open their phone and read it at any point, at any time where they want it. They wanna support the author and a lot of authors are kind of I don't wanna say taking advantage, but optimizing that kind of fandom by doing kick starters for special editions, like if you do any search for books on Kickstarter, you'll see and I know Brandon Sanderson's everyone, everybody knows, but so many romance authors that I know and some science fiction authors.

Speaker 3: 29:14

Chris Hopper is a really famous one right now. He does really spectacular special editions which are like $50 for the book but it's leather embossed hardcover with gilded edges and ribbon book markers and signed by him with a special like. They are off the chain y'all. They're gorgeous and he can ask for that because even though his fans can read it online for free and they want that, they want that merch and I, as a fan girl, know what it means to want the merch. I want the merch. That's what I want my friends to want.

Speaker 2: 29:50

That's kind of the interesting aspect of this that as a I'm gonna flow writer, I don't. I could never do the rapid release model myself. I tried a couple of times. It wasn't worth it for me, so, slow writer, I put out now about one fiction book a year. And so being able to not and I don't serialize because I edit too much I'm gonna ask you about in a minute but but it being able to use that content, that IP, in multiple ways to reach readers across multiple different platforms, across multiple different media or styles of reading, whether that's e-book, whether that's the Collectors Edition hardcover that they literally don't open because they don't want to crack the spine.

Speaker 2: 30:43

I'm guilty of that. Yeah, no, I have a friend it was so funny Jay Andrews. She released an epic fantasy on Kickstarter and I bought it. Beautiful leather, leather foil, embossed gilded edges, the whole shebang. And it was funny because it came in plastic wrap and I was like what is this? I'm tearing it off, I want to get into the book and meanwhile she has this whole conversation going online with some of her readers about well, I don't want to take the plastic off because then I'm going to ruin the book, but at the same time, I want to see the book and I don't know what to do. So being able to reach readers at all levels, across all aspects of the industry, is such a smart way of A building community but also of, as you said, optimizing that content and really being able to use it in creative ways to build an experience for your readers. I think it's where the market's moving it is.

Speaker 3: 31:46

We was just talking with some authors recently about audiobooks, because AI and I know that's a heated topic and I don't want to get into the pros and cons or anything like that but audio narration is becoming more popular, like it or love it. We're just talking about facts here and what I was telling other people, and actually I'm going to be writing a blog post this in a little bit. It's like well, people still own horses, but they don't own horses because they have to. They own horses because they want to, it's a pleasure, or they do sports or it's an investment. So people still own horses Like that's a thing people do, but when they need to get somewhere, they use the car.

Speaker 3: 32:26

And so my thought is that with audiobooks or regular ebooks, people are going to buy those because those are media gratification Like I can read this, I can do that but when they really want to immerse themselves in it, they're going to want to pay extra for the human narration, they're going to want to pay extra for the hardback book that they can have on their bedside table, and there's just so many ways to optimize the different formats in a way that can make you, the author, more money and also give more to your fans. And serializing whether you write a serial or a novel, but serializing the story is a great way to do that, because you're investing your fans in the product before it's even completely out there, like they're waiting. Yeah, yeah, it's like the television the next episode next week, I'm going to get a new episode. I'm going to find out what really happened and it's just. I'm excited about it honestly. Yeah, I think it's going to be great for us?

Speaker 2: 33:22

Yeah, I think so too. So, OK, brass tacks now, because this is my big hesitation with serialization and that is the editing. Because I am a discovery writer, I do find myself getting 10 chapters in or whatever, and going, oh no wait, I have a better idea. And going back and adding in a new chapter or changing some detail about a chapter and then continuing on the story. So in a serialized the way you do it not where the novel's already written, but the writing as you go, publishing as you go, model how do you handle that editing aspect of the serial.

Speaker 3: 34:08

So there's two parts to the answer. So the first part is know thyself. And actually in my next book, which we talked about before we started recording, about discovery writing, one of the things that I talked about is that know that turning point. For me it's usually about 30 to 50,000 words, in which is the point where I really know the characters, I really know what the plot is going to be and I really grasp where I'm taking it. Like I kind of had a general idea and everything's kind of squishy, but at that point I know it's set in stone. I can go back and change everything I need to change and I can write forward feeling very confident in what I'm going to write from there. Most authors I know have that point. It might be 1,000 words in, it might be 50% in, but they have that point where they know the story's really and I'm talking about discovery writers here. For the most part they know that point where it becomes really solid and they know that before they write after that we'll fit the story. I find that a lot of discovery writers and this relates to serializing because you have to have a strong intuition, and intuition can be learned, I think it can be developed, but it takes a lot of experience, a lot of storytelling experience, to do that. So you have these two components that help you get to that point and know exactly what you're doing and when you know what you're doing.

Speaker 3: 35:32

The other thing I think is really important to understand is that the internet is flexible.

Speaker 3: 35:39

What a lot of authors are taught and certainly at my age, growing up in the 80s and the 90s, I was taught you don't submit anything until it's perfect. You don't let anybody see it except your editor until it's just polished to a bright shine. Those days are over. What you'll find a lot of times, especially on places like Wattpad and Reem and Royal Road, more for science fiction fantasy than for romance is people posting working drafts and then what they do is they go back later, take the story, edit it, polish it and then publish the polished version and they're just very open with their followers. Like this is a rough draft, things might change, characters might come and go. I'm going to see how it works. Some authors use that to get feedback, kind of like an undercover Our readers really enjoying this story and make changes as they go along. But working in public is a lot more common for writers especially. You see that with the younger writers coming up the millennials and Gen Z they're just used to throwing their drafts up there and then changing everything.

Speaker 1: 36:45

That's because they throw their entire lives on the internet.

Speaker 3: 36:48

I admire that we're good and we're bad.

Speaker 1: 36:53

You want to know what my lunch was. You want to know what I'm working on right.

Speaker 3: 36:57

Let's see pictures of my dog like that's my one. So that's kind of the two pronged answer. Know thyself and understand that the nature of the publishing industry has changed and that you can put working drafts up, that it's not going to be people coming by oh, there's a typo on page 67, clearly she's incompetent. There will always be those people. There are nitpickers and people who slam you on Goodreads because you got the dog's name wrong on page 47 or something, but it's much more common these days to have working drafts in public. So I think those two elements combined, especially for pancers or discovery writers, is really helpful. Wasn't there 10 years ago?

Speaker 2: 37:39

So do you actually? Then you said you know your point about 30 to 50,000 words. Do you wait then to publish anything until you've gotten to that point and then gone back and fixed whatever you need to fix before moving forward? Is that kind of your?

Speaker 3: 37:54

process. Yes, it is, and I've learned the hard way not to not do that, Not to not do that. I've learned that I need to do that. So usually like, for instance, the story that I hope to get picked back up in 2020 and this year again time is Transmigrated Territory, which is kind of a portal fantasy, a Sakai story, and in it a woman is supposedly killed and then wakes up in a fantasy world pretty bog standard. I will not be.

Speaker 3: 38:29

I've published like a first few, like first chapter of that, or a few scenes of that, just to get people interested, but I will not be publishing anything more on that until I hit that point, which I have not hit yet. Think about 20,000 words in. I think I'm going to need another 20,000 words before I really nail the characterizations, not just of the main character but of the supporting characters, because this is one with a lot of characters. So I do hold back Now, some others don't. It's just like I said know thyself, what works for me might not work for others, but I've learned that that is what works for me, Gotcha.

Speaker 1: 39:02

Yeah, OK. Well, I would also think there's a comfort level in having like 10, 15 chapters under your belt before you start making a commitment to release a chapter a week. Because if you do get caught for me, I know what you're saying about that 30% to 50% in, because it's usually about there for me too. But then sometimes I just come to a screeching halt and then I have to go and I have to do some more research and I have to noodle around the ideas and I have to figure out where the heck I'm going.

Speaker 3: 39:36

My friend, gina Hogan Edwards, who I do my own podcasts, is co-host of my own podcast. We talk about this a lot. She writes historical fiction, not romantic, just straight literary historical fiction. And going down the rabbit hole of research, realizing something she wrote was wrong, having to go back and change that, that's a big concern for her and it's a big concern for a lot of writers. And here's the thing where the technology has kind of caught up with us. You don't have to post once a week, like, if you just want to post once a month, that's cool.

Speaker 3: 40:08

There are some writers I know and this gets back into my work that I've done for years in disability services and higher education.

Speaker 3: 40:15

I know a lot of people with disabilities.

Speaker 3: 40:17

I know a lot of professional authors deal with chronic illnesses, other health issues, mental health issues, and they can't hit that Like they can't do once a week. So what do you do? Well, if you're building up a community of people who love your writing and appreciate you as a writer and you're honest with them and you say, look, I'm going to get you two chapters a month, it may not be on the first and the 15th, they may be three days apart, they may be four weeks apart, but that's my commitment to you as a community. But because of my health issues or because of what I'm writing, such as historical fiction, I can't commit to a specific day of the month. But as long as you're building up that community who's really invested in you and who wants your work and your stories, and you're being honest with them about those limitations or restrictions or things that you feel that you've committed to you can't make and the commitments you can make, I think that's fine, like a lot of authors are doing it that way.

Speaker 1: 41:15

Hmm, it's interesting.

Speaker 2: 41:17

So consistency, but consistency within the confines of what you state Like so what is it? The promise of the premise, but for your brand or for your platform, right.

Speaker 3: 41:31

Exactly. Yeah, like rapid release. There's still plenty of people doing that they like. But, like I said, on Wattpad they're putting out a chapter every three days, which is just unimaginable to me. Like, I'm sorry I can't do that, but they do. They've been doing it for a long time and that works for them. That's their promise. Yeah, others I know are doing a chapter a month. That's it, that's their promise. Their chapter might be 5,000 words, it might be 20,000 words, but that's their promise is once a month, you will get a robust chapter for me. So it's like you said, it's commitment to the consistency, the promise that you made to your readers.

Speaker 1: 42:06

This is why I don't make a lot of production promises, yeah.

Speaker 2: 42:11

And again this goes back to why I have, I'm afraid of serialization, because a lot of times I do hit, I mean, and to your point about the you know knowing myself and getting to that point, there is, like you, always that point, usually right, it's the break into act two where I kind of hit that point where like, okay, what am I really writing, what is this really about? But then sometimes I hit it again at the mirror moment timeframe or maybe a little bit after, before the big battle, to make sure that everything is in alignment, to make sure that I really have the, you know, key story points down. I'll have another little pause, so it's been a little bit questionable for me if I can maintain that consistency. But again to your point, it's like, well, if you promise a chapter a month and then you deliver three, you're gonna be okay.

Speaker 3: 43:08

You're gonna be a hero.

Speaker 3: 43:09

Yeah, exactly the CEO of Reem, michael Evans, I'm sure you've probably heard about or talked to you.

Speaker 3: 43:18

He always says, when you're setting up a subscription and doing serialization, under promise and over deliver.

Speaker 3: 43:25

And that's exactly what you're talking about. And also, just remember, if you're at a point where you've got, you know, 30,000 words in a can and every one of your chapters is 1500 to 2000 words, well, that gives you a pretty hefty long lead time of to keep writing where the posting isn't gonna catch up with you, and so by the time you get to the next stumbling block, you can let it sit for a couple of weeks as the story keeps being posted on your timeline because you have such a backlog of it behind you. So it's just what your comfort level is and what the promise is that you keep. But I think the fear of consistency is one of the things that keep a lot of authors back from serializing or doing subscriptions. But I just don't think it's that valid in the sense of it's a valid fear and since it's a real fear and you're experiencing it. But it's not valid because if you really sit down and look at the logistics of it, you're gonna be fine.

Speaker 3: 44:21

Yeah, you're gonna be fine, yeah, interesting.

Speaker 2: 44:23

Make it be think yeah, one more time to answer my list.

Speaker 1: 44:28

She's like reee, yeah, reee.

Speaker 2: 44:31

Quick side note Megan, you are serializing nonfiction on substack, yes, so there you go, that is true, and with that it's interesting because with substack, with the nonfiction, they're essays, so each one is an individual piece that I can write and sometimes I jump around a little bit, like it's wherever my brain goes that day, kind of to some extent. So I can manage that, I feel like. But it's a different part of my brain that accesses story and a story arc and the structure of novel in particular.

Speaker 1: 45:08

Yeah, I get that.

Speaker 2: 45:11

And so to me it's like two different pieces of my brain working simultaneously.

Speaker 3: 45:17

I get that, but I would say they're not that different, Like I think it's just like sit with the question, megan, that's all I'm asking you. Sit with the option, the opportunity.

Speaker 2: 45:27

Yeah, no, and it's valid and it's something that would fit into my current strategy and would be interesting if I can figure out the logistics and make myself comfortable with those logistics and how that works.

Speaker 3: 45:41

Megan, do you write series? Do you write novels that are?

Speaker 2: 45:45

series. Yes, yes, so I write fantasy. The current series I'm working on is Portal Fantasy in particular, and it's a sort of witch and urban fantasy set in Laguna Beach.

Speaker 3: 46:02

Well, I will just say that when you write a series like that, it does lend itself to more of a serial format, in the sense that you're telling a very long story over the course of multiple novels, like it's a big arc of a story, which is kind of my definition of what a serial is, as opposed to a standalone novel. And if you've already got several books like that out, you could use that as a lead-in for subscriptions, not in the sense of posting them for free, but giving people the option of reading them on a subscription platform. You'll be surprised at how many people actually sign up for that because they don't want to sit down with the book.

Speaker 2: 46:41

So taking the existing book chapter by chapter, publishing that as the now, that would give me lead time Exactly see, that's what I'm looking for.

Speaker 3: 46:51

I'm always looking for the angle.

Speaker 1: 46:53

Yeah, so actually that was gonna be my next question, because I would also think that if you start doing that, there are gonna be people who are gonna love it. That way, you're gonna pick up a new audience, people who like that and then there are also gonna be people who say, oh, this is heck with this.

Speaker 3: 47:10

I wanna sit down and binge this thing and then comfortable, and then are gonna go run over to your Shopify story and pick up the book, and it really is a matter of just reaching out to people where they are, rather than forcing people to go somewhere specific.

Speaker 3: 47:27

Like in the olden days, you had to go to the bookstore, you had to go to the library. Now people could pick up their phone and go to, like, any place they want, whether it's an audio book, a physical book, an e-book, a serial. A lot of authors I'm one of them put their back catalog up on whatever platform they're using. They make it available only for paying members. So you have the option of, like being a paying member and paying $10 a month and you can read all of the backlog, and then a large portion of this will actually go and buy the books as well, but they don't want to buy the books or they're on KU, so they don't want to spend extra on buying books. They want to be able to read something easily, right, because they already have there. So there's just so many permutations on how that can work, and having things available for people where they are will just get you more fans. Just get you more readers.

Speaker 1: 48:20

Yeah, yeah. So one more question before we move into where can people find out more about you? Is so, do you find that certain genres work better with serialized fiction? There are more readers for those genres and that kind of thing than other genres.

Speaker 3: 48:39

I think we are in an inflection point. Like I said, I know my friend, gina Hogan Edwards, who writes historical fiction. There are a lot of historical fiction readers and, again stressing, these are not romance historical fiction, these are literary historical fiction. They're not used to this whole read online ebook subscription thing, so she's struggling Now. Does that mean that the readers aren't out there? No, we had the same kind of inflection point when ebooks really started hitting, which was 2008 to 2010.

Speaker 3: 49:11

Yes, ebooks existed before them, but we're talking about the point where they became much more mass market right and a lot of people back then were saying well, I don't want to read an ebook, I don't like what. That's just ink, that's just digital, that doesn't count, I want the book in my hands. And there's still people like that. However, if you look at the numbers, many, many people read ebooks and they learned over a few years how convenient it was. We're seeing a similar inflection point now with audiobooks, especially now that Spotify and YouTube are hosting audiobooks that people are like. I can tell you how many people I talk to these days are like I didn't know I'd enjoy audiobooks. I just thought I would try it out and see if I liked it and they did, and so now they're buying a lot of audiobooks as well as regular ebooks, as well as print books.

Speaker 3: 50:00

So I think it's less because right now, if you ask people to say yes, serialization is great for romance novelists, it's not great for, you know, literature and historical fiction. It's not great for a chicklet, it's not great for. I think that's not true, simply because we're still getting these readers pulled into a new type of reading experience and I think over the next couple of years we're going to see an explosion of people reading serialized fiction as they realize how convenient it is, how much fun it is and just how, you know, energizing investment of fun. This is a pangol. It's easy for me to think of the vibe, of what it means to be invested in something like that. So I think what we're seeing right now is kind of artificial in the sense of those readers out there, just like ebook readers were out there. We just need to teach them, tell them, expose them to the fact that serialized fiction can be a lot of fun and is easily available.

Speaker 1: 51:02

Yeah, no, that's really good point. I mean, if you just look at like music and television and things that have gone before, it's the same sort of a thing. I mean people, originally, you know people thought, well, no, you needed to buy a record album. Right, you know it could be a CD, which was like, well, you know, new stuff, not vinyl, but you had to buy this whole album. And then, when it became a thing, the streaming services where I could listen to just the three songs on that latest album that I actually liked and not the rest of them, and you know, it was where you could buy individual songs, which is a lot of what a lot of people do now too.

Speaker 3: 51:45

It's like they just think that they just want that one song off that album. They don't want to have to go buy the whole CD or something like that. So it's yeah, it's a perception of a change of perception, really.

Speaker 1: 51:56

And the vast majority of people I know just have Spotify or whatever accounts and they don't buy anything anymore. They just pay for that and listen to whatever they want and let Alexis set up the playlist.

Speaker 3: 52:07

But again I really want to stress like think of Taylor Swift fans. Do they stream all of her music all the time? Yes, they do. Do they buy her vinyl albums? Yes, they do. Do they buy the special merchandise? Yes, they do. They still spend a lot of money because they are fans and consider themselves part of the community who support her as an artist.

Speaker 1: 52:30

I actually heard a statistic and I'm going to butcher it because that is one of my secret weapons is butchering statistics All right, but it was something like we this past holiday season of 2023, christmas, they sold more vinyl. Then they have sold since the 1990s or something. Yeah, this new generation coming up is loving and it's exactly what you're talking about. I mean, they've already got the song on Spotify, they've already got the music on all their streaming channels, but they love that artist. They want that thing. Some of them don't even have a record player. They probably never take the plastic off right.

Speaker 3: 53:16

Back to not taking the plastic off of the thing. It's exactly true.

Speaker 1: 53:20

They're fans, they just want the thing. So I do think that is interesting and I think that's very true. So on that lovely place to end. But just this has been such an interesting conversation and, honestly, every time I hear about people doing these things, my wheels start turning. I just need to figure out how to get more time in my day.

Speaker 3: 53:44

Yeah, that's a real problem, isn't it?

Speaker 1: 53:47

Yeah, sleep less, but anyway, why don't you tell our listeners where they can find out more about you? Your podcast, your serialized fiction, all the stuff you got going on?

Speaker 3: 54:01

Sure thing. I have an online hub. I call it. It's houseofyorkinfo, so it's houseofyork all one wordinfo there. On that landing page you'll get links to my ream where I serialized fiction. You'll have links to my blog, which is called Kimbukescriptorium, links to my Shopify store if you want to buy any of my stuff, and on there also links to all the books themselves so you can read about the book, both with links to my Shopify store and to all the main distributors where they're available. So if you just go to that address, you'll see everything. You'll be able to contact me if you want to. Yeah, it's all there, including, most importantly, a carousel of pictures of my dog. So if you want to see my adorable dog, you need to go to houseofyorkinfo, because you will see great pictures of my dogs.

Speaker 1: 54:55

That is an insistible offer. I'll tell you. That link is in the show notes. Everybody so fascinating conversation. And to our listeners, don't forget that we have available to you seven days' declarity. Uncover your author purpose. It's a free seven day email course on our website and after this kind of conversation, I think I need to retake it.

Speaker 2: 55:24

Right, I mean this is the thing there's.

Speaker 1: 55:26

So it's a fabulous time to be an author because there are so many opportunities available. I mean so many ways to do things, and I hate the expression. So many ways to skin a cat, because although I am a dog person, I still care about cats. So many ways to peel the banana. How's that Perfect. So go on over to the author wheel and grab your free course, and don't forget to check out all of Kimboo's things. And until next time, keep your stories rolling.