In this episode, Michael Evans and Arielle Bailey delve into the exciting world of serial fiction. With the publishing landscape evolving rapidly, serials have emerged as a powerhouse, captivating millions of readers worldwide and generating substantial revenue. But what exactly makes serials so compelling? Join us as Arielle shares insights into the allure of serial fiction, exploring how it offers unique storytelling opportunities.
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#80 Show Chapters:
00:00:00 Introduction
00:02:47 Keeping Up With Arielle
00:05:01 Why Do Readers Read Serials?
00:14:29 How to Market Serials
00:19:15 Serial Release Schedule
00:26:03 Ideal Chapter Length
00:38:33 Lessons From Serial Storytellers
00:48:16 Conclusion
#80 Episode Transcript:
[00:00:00]
Welcome to Subscriptions for Authors. Meet your co hosts, Michael Evans, sci fi thriller author of a dozen novels, and Amelia Rose, a semi romance author that makes six figures per year in subscriptions. Together, we will help you make more money with subscriptions and succeed in the future of publishing.
Michael Evans: Hello, everyone. Welcome to the Storytellers of the World show, which is actually the first time I’m actually introducing it as the Storytellers of the World show, but you definitely have noticed the branding for the channel or the podcast, wherever you’re listening. It’s changed. We don’t have the subscriptions for author’s title anymore.
It’s Storytellers of the World. And we have a new logo that the logo to be very clear is the Storytellers of the World logo. The Ream logo is staying the same, but Storytellers of the World has like a little like stack of paper, the crown on it, because Storytellers of the World. With that said, we’re going to be doing an [00:01:00] official launch of the Storytellers of the World show.
In probably from when you’re listening to this about another 30 to 45 days. So we’re excited for the show. We’re excited to share it with you all and the new format. Let’s consider this podcast a little bit of a transition. It’s public that the branding is changing here, but this episode won’t be too much different from what you’re used to on the subscriptions for authors podcast, as it was formerly named.
And to prove that point, we actually have a familiar face, Ariel with us. And Ariel is going to be talking with us all about serial stay, really what it takes to succeed in serials because. So many authors are looking to get started in serials. It’s a very fast growing area of publishing. There’s tens of millions of readers reading serials, and each year there’s over a hundred million dollars that readers are spending on serial.
So it’s a big market. That’s really just thinking about like eBooks and audio serials. That’s not even really getting into web comics and all the other formats. So it’s an exciting time to be a serial author. It’s just an exciting time to be an author period, because there’s all these interesting opportunities to reach new readers, to share our stories in different ways, and [00:02:00] ultimately grow a career, doing what we love.
But of course, with all of that said, the opportunity ahead, there becomes that big question of what even is it and how do we make this work for us like us individually? And of course, I can’t sit you down each of you and walk through your life and talk to each of you, at least not in this format and figure out what will work best for you.
But I think we can provide some advice that’s gonna be really helpful. Or I shouldn’t even say we I’m gonna leave it to Ariel to provide all the advice. So with that said,
Arielle Bailey: Okay.
Michael Evans: I feel like people don’t need a huge introduction to you, but. Maybe for the folks who’ve tuned into the last episodes, maybe you want to share I think the last episode we recorded, correct me if I’m wrong, I was in Italy in January.
So it’s been about three months since we’ve recorded an episode. What’s life been like for you, Ariel, over the last three months?
Arielle Bailey: thought it was busy then, and it tripled in busyness, at least, because I joined Ream March. I was still part time before then, so I was [00:03:00] part time when we recorded our last episode. I joined full time in March. We recorded the serial fiction course. We’ve launched so many things in the last three months and in just a month, I’ll be in Boston with you and the rest of everyone attending the summit.
Which I’m really excited for. So the last three months have been a whirlwind in a really good way, but they’ve felt a bit like a hurricane.
Michael Evans: I love it. You’re in the rainstorm now. Super, super grateful to have you with us. It’s funny cause you do a lot of things for us, but. Like the core of what you are here is like my right hand person keeping the chaos under control. So it is definitely like you’re in the eye of the storm for sure.
And speaking of storms, thinking back now, this is me like going really into the weeds [00:04:00] here, but we did have an event called spring the cereals. And one of those graphics is all about that little storm, right? Creating. creating a serial that you can’t leave, you got to get trapped in it. And I want to start there.
What makes a serial a format that readers are interested in? Like, why would someone read a serial? Because I’m actually asking this question a little bit for myself. Because as an author, like growing up, I always read books in novel format. So for me, Like when I turned to writing, I wrote what I read in a sense, in multiple senses, like I wrote inspired by the books I read, but I also wrote similar formats.
And to me, like serial fiction, I can understand the opportunity. It can wrap my mind around. Okay. People are reading it, but why do people read it? Because for me, like as an author, I’m like trying to be like, what’s different between this and a novel? What is this thing? I’m just used to books.
So tell me like, what is this serial thing? Why do readers read serials? [00:05:00] Obviously it’s a generalization.
Arielle Bailey: Right, so there are a few different reasons to go for serials in addition to or instead of a novel. And for me personally, I’ve always read serials in addition to novels, so like each one has its own purpose. And as a writer and a reader, I feel like Some stories just fit one format better than the other, and serial stories in particular, you can do more in a serial story in one sense than you can do in a novel.
Now, you can write a novel series, but with a serial, you’re writing a really long novel. It’s just structured a little bit differently. In a novel, you can’t really write an ensemble cast of, say, 12 characters. Not unless you want that novel to be 250, 000 words long, 400, 000 words long, which is fine for some people.
In a lot of genres especially, if you want to write a big ensemble cast going on [00:06:00] adventures of some kind, where it’s like the challenge of the week, the monster of the week format, the mystery of the week, The Puzzle of the Week, that just fits a serial format better because the cast, the characters, are what pull you through the story and so you’re along for the character’s journeys and they have these little mini quests or larger quests broken into.
Mini quests and occasionally they go on side quests and that format of story just fits a serial better because instead of being one big plot or one part of a big plot, so like you have a trilogy is three acts of a bigger story and then within each act there are smaller subacts with a serial instead of being like a big central story.
You can have a big central arc, but you can also see where all of the characters smaller stories fit into that bigger arc in a much more close view [00:07:00] way. So it’s like you’re zooming in with the camera. And you get to spend more time with the characters, you get to spend more time learning about the relationships in their lives, more time learning about their background, you can spend extra time on occasionally having what we would call in novel like a filler episode, or in TV a filler episode, and in a novel you’re supposed to cut that, you’re not supposed to have that in novels, most authors.
cut that and most writing coaches advise cutting it. I don’t always, but. Whereas in a serial, you can have a filler episode now and then because readers get so invested in the characters that they want to see just an episode where, hey, they go on a camping trip. I was recently at a friend’s birthday party where we all literally went to a park and played Frisbee and badminton.
And one friend joked that it was the everyone goes to the beach and has fun episode of an anime. And that’s exactly what filler episodes are, and you can do that in a serial because [00:08:00] readers are there for the characters or for, they’re usually there for the characters. Occasionally there’s something else, but again, we’re generalizing.
And it’s okay if you have filler episodes. A slower episode here or a filler episode here because they’re there for all of the little adventures on this big journey that all of the characters are going on. So that’s one reason for serials. Another is that close view that I talked about, that zoom in.
You can really, if you have a really big story. That you want to tell, but it has a lot of little parts. It can actually make more sense to tell it serially because you get to go in depth with all of the little parts in ways that don’t really fit novels very well. Even novels, a series, even if you have 12 books in a series, it’s still going to fit a serial better because you can break it up into smaller chunks.
But each of those smaller chunks is like, A contained story in and of itself, and then it’ll usually end on a compelling reason to keep going. [00:09:00] Sometimes that’s an actual cliffhanger, sometimes it’s an emotional payoff of some kind, sometimes it’s an emotional not exactly payoff, but not, it’s a cross between a cliffhanger and a tense moment.
So there are lots of different reasons to write serials, and some stories just fit that context better. Any kind of adventure story. Frequently does well in a serial. So Star Trek TV shows, you can tell those serially.
Michael Evans: Yeah, no I’m thinking like, and I think you draw the analogy well between maybe comparing like the novel to movies and serials to television, which is sometimes too simplistic, but it’s interesting. But it also, it makes me wonder this though, so I, the way that you’re making it sound, because we always like to think about who are the readers of X?
There’s the readers on Facebook, there’s the, there’s the KU readers, the, this readers, the, that reader, right? That’s how we like think about it, right? But in reality is there, because part of me is going your answer when I asked you about like, why do readers read serials is basically like, there’s certain [00:10:00] stories that are just better to be told in a serial form.
And like that story, if it’s a serial, like it has a different shape than a story in a novel format, which kind of rings true to I think how a lot of people approach movies and television Few people are like, I only watch television shows or I only watch movies, right? Like you’ll watch a mix of both.
But I’m curious does that work in the book world? Because we have this idea at there’s, and for right or wrong reasons, like there’s a KU reader and that KU reader doesn’t leave KU. And as we know, there’s not really serials in KU. Is there a difference between a serial reader, someone who’s like a, and I’m gonna use quotes here, but like a whale reader of cereals, someone who’s maybe spending 30, 40 minutes a day reading cereals is reading, either binging one cereal at a time or like keeping up with five to 10 different cereals at once.
Is there a difference between that reader and maybe the more traditional also quotes, but KU reader, who’s, consuming maybe. a novel every two or three days. Is there a difference in the reader or can that [00:11:00] be the same person? I know this is again, generalizing, but we always talk about reaching different readers.
Like what makes serial readers different? If anything,
Arielle Bailey: So the simple answer to that is yes and no. Yes, they can be the same reader, 100%. And one reason so far that we haven’t seen a huge percentage of readers be both is because serials are still relatively new to American readers and the American reading market. They’re super popular and have been for years and years in Asia.
But in America, less and so where the society is largely trained on the KU model, they’re not used to serials yet, but they can absolutely be the same reader. They can absolutely, novel readers, whale readers on KU can absolutely get invested in serials and be either binge reading them or keeping up with a bunch at once.
They can be the same reader. And the biggest [00:12:00] challenge that most. Authors have to getting those readers is that we have so many different websites where really only one kind of fiction lives on each website. So serial fiction platforms tend to have just serial fiction and novel platforms tend to have just novels.
They don’t tend to represent multiple formats very well yet,
Michael Evans: that’s definitely where it’s going to be different because the whole goal of Ream is to be able to have an author publish in every format and every way in one place where storytellers are the world. And that’s why, audio is something we’re working on now. And by the time you’re listening to this, it should be getting.
pretty close. And in addition to audio, you can already publish serials and novels. We already have many serial authors and many novel authors or more novelists, I should say. And we have authors who are doing both and creating that shared ecosystem where at the end of the day, what it’s [00:13:00] about is not like the format or, The specific like KU like subscription it’s involved in, but it’s about the story and it’s about the storyteller and that’s what Reem is based around.
At the end of the day, it’s based around you as an author, knowing that you could create all these different kinds of stories, which makes it exciting. And
Arielle Bailey: Exactly. And that’s where the answer to that is yes, they can be, but no, many aren’t right now just because. Here’s what the ecosystem looks like right now.
Michael Evans: yeah, I agree with that. And I think it’s not only is it changing with, obviously like a platform like Reem coming about, but it’s also because the actual landscape of publishing shifting towards, serialized content becoming more and more popular. And, to be clear, this is like an audio format, like people listening to audio and like podcasting apps.
This is web comics. And this is like what we think of as eBooks or like text format, but digitally. And obviously the question then becomes, okay, so I get like how I can generally [00:14:00] write these. We’re going to dive a little bit more into the graph questions. In a bit towards the end of the podcast, you’ll have to wait if you want a little bit more of Ariel’s advice on storytelling, but what does it look like to actually reach an audience of readers for my serial?
How do I actually grow and market myself? Because obviously that’s the question at the end of the day that, we’re all thinking about after we get the story down, which is really hard. But once we do that, and once you feel confident about it, it’s always what do we do next?
Arielle Bailey:
So there’s two ways, primarily. Three. Three, primarily. The first way is serial fiction sites. Serial fiction sites Generally have a built in audience the site itself goes out and pushes ads to readers that get them to come to the site and then you post your serial with tags that reach readers who search for that kind of story and then they find your story and if they like it they start following it.
And that’s how you get readers there. [00:15:00] And then if you’re, depending on the rules of the site, and this is different for every site, you can put a link to your website, your subscription, your social media profile, however you represent yourself as an author outside of the site, if you do. So that’s number one.
Number two is the same way that you would get readers for a book. Novels, which is social media, and there’s a really fun thing about serials and serial marketing on social media that isn’t true for novels, which is that with novels, you tend to have a limited range of how often you can talk about your novel in any given time period.
Without just boring readers to death or making them do the social media equivalent of skip the YouTube ad. Because when you’re writing your novel, you can tease about the writing process, you can post them in progress, quotes. you can talk about the novel that’s being written. Then you can do [00:16:00] your whole release period.
You have like your pre release period, your release period, and your post release period, which is typical of novel marketing. But then when that’s over, of course you can talk about it again, but only Periodically, you can’t constantly talk about it. Now with a serial, especially if you’re releasing at least once a week or every two weeks or something like that, if you are on a regular release schedule of a few episodes a month, you have something new to talk about almost every week.
It is still the same story, but you have something new. It’s like TV spots and TV trailers for episodes, right? If you’re a fan of a long running TV show, you’ll get A little TV trailer like three days before the episode airs, or at the end of the episode you’re already watching you get coming up next, and then that induces people to stick around for the next week, but also for long running fans who don’t need an inducement, it creates The same kind of, it creates a space for [00:17:00] speculation and extra excitement.
And also, Oh, it looks like my theory is coming true. Oh it creates a dopamine trigger is what it does.
Michael Evans: That’s so interesting. I think this is, when authors say, because oftentimes when we think about subscriptions that monthly recurring payment, it’s also about how do you like consistently market yourself. And there’s something really interesting about the serial release model, like being a very natural fit for subscriptions, which I think explains why that’s becoming a more popular model.
for serial authors because the paper chapter model was always a little flawed with serials because then it becomes a game of how long is the chapter? And then it’s incentives aren’t necessarily live with the reader. The reader wants to continue loving a story and just be hooked in the world for as long as possible.
And, Especially, this isn’t necessarily authors, but platforms would incentivize some very shady things, would either first of all, forget what they pay authors, that’s just let’s just that was just horrible. The royalty rates that these authors [00:18:00] would get from the platforms it’s bad.
But, the readers also would get screwed too, because the whole game was like, how much can we take advantage of these readers by taking as much from them while giving them as little story as possible. And, it’s why you see these Single author subscriptions. Like I’m going to subscribe to a story.
And I’m going to get ongoing access to that story. And if, Hey, if the story stops being good, I’ll unsubscribe. But if, as long as I want that next chapter, I’m going to stay subscribed because I really want to know it becomes like this interesting model, but. It brings me back to this question of, okay, so you’re right about this, like marketing and that serials afford you like new opportunities to,
your work with your audience, because you’re doing it in a regular interval.
But how regular is that interval? Really, because obviously one of our main points has been like, it’s about being consistent. It’s about sustainability. It’s about what works best for you. And I think that’s, not true, but I’m going to press you as a reader, What kind of serial [00:19:00] release schedule gets you excited?
Is there a release schedule that you and other readers would have where you’re like, yeah, this doesn’t cut it for me. What does that actually look like? How, what is the programming for our season? Yeah,
Arielle Bailey: that, I want to quickly close the previous loop because I mentioned three different methods that you can get readers. And I forgot to mention number three, which is just ads, like not to put ads down, but also you can use ads for serials if you learn the strategies. so to go back to your question, the most common.
Okay. That’s overly generalizing in some ways too, but like it really depends on the genre, but one of the most common early schedules for a serial is once a week. Because it’s like with TV shows, most TV shows release once a week when they’re in season. Obviously streaming’s different, but most TV shows do one episode a week.
And serials and webcomics, which are one of the most popular serial [00:20:00] formats, same thing. They tend to release one a week. And then readers, It becomes a ritual for readers. It’s once a week on this day, I know this episode of this is coming out. Same thing with TV viewers, right? It’s a lot of people will plan a week around, Okay this episode of this show is dropping.
Or even, when was the last time I watched something? I think it was probably Rings of Power. Which was an experience. But, it was actually one of the rare streaming, Shows that released once a week and my partner and I planned Did that one release or did we just yeah, I think it did and then we would plan A whole watch party right around that and granted it wound up being way too long because we ranted way too much about it but the point is it becomes ritual whether you are watching a show because you love it or because you love to rant about it or because you’re Researching or whatever the reason, serial stories and webcomics are the same way.
It’s like you start to look forward to this little bit of time when you get to read the next [00:21:00] episode of what your favorite characters are doing in their story. I’m following about, okay, let’s not even try to count how many webcomics I’m actually following at the moment, but I’m regularly keeping up on about five, and they release once a week.
And so I know. That every Saturday these three are going to have a new episode out and I can catch up on that and every Sunday these two are going to have another episode out and I can catch up on that and this one releases on Monday so I can either catch up on those As they drop or I can save them until Tuesday evening and read through all of them and catch up on all of the adventures for my favorite stories.
So once a week is generally a really good model. A lot of lit RPG stories release much faster. Partly because in order to get the kind of traction. that really pulls readers on the most popular lit RPG site, they have to release more often. For a lot of authors, that kind of thing multiple times a week is not going to be sustainable.
Kindle [00:22:00] Vela authors, a lot of them tried a twice a week model and that was sustainable for a lot of people and for others, it just wasn’t. So how often a week you release is definitely down to what can you sustainably do as an author. And also every other week, Some authors see high success with. it is also true that if you get your audience used to your release schedule, you can do whatever you want.
That can be one episode a month. Does work for some authors. We have some, I think, on Ream who do that. But in general, serial releases are looking, serial readers are looking for once to twice a week.
Michael Evans: think the once a week is, it makes a lot of sense because you’re mentioning like the word catch up and you’re right. Like you’re not going to always be there. Every Friday, right when the chapter drops, two months in a row. If you’re releasing two chapters a week, all of a sudden, you can actually get behind in the serial.
And [00:23:00] then someone just decides, Oh, I’ll drop off and I’ll catch up later. But they might never actually catch up. They might just not forget about your serial, but they’ll stop reading it. There’s this dangerous extreme of you can release too often. Imagine keeping up with a television show that’s releasing three nights a week.
It would be very tough to keep up with The Bachelor if it released three nights a week, right? So that’s the type of stuff where it’s like what can do three nights a week? In television is like game shows or wheel of fortune stuff that people just watched at television with their family, like jeopardy.
But they’re also like pretty repeatable formats too. So it’s not like they’re actually generating like new content, but like in terms of keeping up with something that’s like in a serial form where you have to go from one episode to the other. Like you can’t just come in at episode 100.
That’s the other thing about like shows that are going on all the time. You can usually just enter into them, the news you can enter in any day. But if you’re like writing a story with a structure where you have to start at the beginning before you get to the end, which is like most stories right?
Like you don’t want to spoil the ending. I think there’s a danger of doing too much, but I hear you on this one episode a week. And then I also am thinking because I’m like, okay, [00:24:00] all these media formats come from text, like text was the first original medium. So it’s almost like actually television stole pages, serial fictions book.
And, now we’re coming back to it. with that said though, one thing about television is like the average television episode, right? Yeah. It was supposed to be like 30 minutes in runtime, but with 22 minutes of actual actual plot. And usually 8 minutes for commercials or end credits thrown in there, right?
So that was like the standard model. 22 minutes a week is what you’re going to produce. And that’s what everything was written around.
They would plan many cliffhangers before the big cliffhanger at the end of the episode. Each beat, which would last usually, three to four minutes on average.
And then there’d be a cliff, a mini cliff, and then the big cliffhanger, right? To keep people engaged. But part of that format was like restricted by this is the business model. This is what the cable providers say. This is these are the ad slots. This is your time, buddy. Go write a story.
And you can write great stories doing that. Similarly, what is the structure for online? Oh, I’m going to release an episode a week. Okay. What does that look like? [00:25:00] Because.
Length, but it’s true. Like a 10, 000 word chapter every week is very different from a 2000 word chapter or a 1000 word chapter.
And
Arielle Bailey: yeah
Michael Evans: we live in now is that storytelling is due to the world. We do get to set the rules, but that’s sometimes not helpful because. It is nice to have some sort of guidance. So if you could give any guidance on chapter length, obviously, you’re not gonna be as prescriptive as the ad buyers on Madison Square, who are saying, you got to do 22 minutes, every four and a half minutes, give me a commercial break,
Arielle Bailey: board.
Michael Evans: being real for a little bit
Arielle Bailey: So
Michael Evans: I can guarantee you I would say probably a paragraph too short, like just a single paragraph.
And we can almost certainly not to be too prescriptive, but we can almost certainly say that if it’s going to take you five hours to sit down and read it every week. That maybe you’re writing a novel every week, but that’s probably not that’s very hard for the average reader. And by average, 98 percent of readers to actually catch up with.
Okay. That doesn’t really help us though. So if you could help us maybe bound things in a [00:26:00] bit more, what would be your advice on chapter length?
Arielle Bailey: to 2, 500 words. lot of authors. go a little bit shorter. They go like 1, 000 to 2, 000 words. Which still falls within that sweet spot, but 1, 000 to 1, 500 words. And then some authors see success with like 3, 000 word episodes, but 1, 500 words to 2, 500 words is a good range because that’s usually, even if you go like to 2, 500 words, that’s usually short enough for people to read on like a smoke break or a Or waiting in line at an appointment or waiting for their kid to come out of school.
Now those are like, more that’s like slightly an older demographic a little bit because it’s I’m expecting that you’re an adult with a job and these commitments. But even younger and serial fiction super popular among Gen Z, it’s long enough that you can read, honestly, when you go to the bathroom or when you’re waiting for your drink or [00:27:00] something like 1500 words to 2500 words is long enough for most people to read on a break. from something, or in the middle of something. It’s not too short that they feel cheated, but it’s not too long that they can’t actually get to it.
And that’s another huge draw of serial fiction, is that unlike novels, you can read the episode, it’s a contained part of the story. You read it, it’s done, there aren’t any more to read if you’re caught up. And so you can fit it into your day much better than sitting down and reading a 3000 word chapter or a 5, 000 word chapter or something like that.
And that’s coming from me who writes long chapters, but it’s way easier to fit into a busy life. So 1500 words to 2,
Michael Evans: what you’re describing it being popular among Gen Z. I don’t necessarily want to do like a social media analysis on like how often different like hashtags are mentioned for different platforms and things, but it’s amazing how [00:28:00] often like serial fiction is mentioned by like Gen Z on Tik TOK.
Like it’s it’s unbelievable. It’s millions and millions of different posts. And I think you’re right. Like traditionally. Reading has been something that people have done as they’ve gotten older, right? Like the traditional whale reader audience, which I know we have many authors listening, that would fit this demographic.
And that’s beautiful. Empty nesters and up would be, Typically, right? That’s the typical wow okay, I have more time to read now because you read as a kid, then you go to college in high school, it sucks all the reading out of you. You go right into the workforce, then you get married, have kids, whatever it is, like that was the path, right?
For most people. And obviously that, that standard path, there’s many deviations from, and that’s what makes, life, individual, beautiful. But the idea is that like that social clock turned where around empty nester age, generally people are able to read more. Okay.
The thing is that desire to read never left for many people.
It’s not like they, like you re find your love for reading, but it’s not like you hated it. Or maybe if you hated reading in school, you didn’t [00:29:00] like actively, if you actually read a book you liked, you wouldn’t hate it. Obviously we’re all here because we like books, hopefully. So what does that mean if serials are actually reaching people and able to enter a new area of their life?
It means like
Arielle Bailey: points today. We’re
Michael Evans: we’re able to, as a,
Arielle Bailey: couple of different ways
Michael Evans: Global unit of authors be able to have more stories actually be successful. It’s not that serials are taking away
Arielle Bailey: a little bit
Michael Evans: from novels. It’s that it’s almost like thinking about tick tock and YouTube or tick tock and podcasts, right? Like when people are on tick tock, right? Tick tock didn’t destroy YouTube’s business.
It’s not like people stopped watching YouTube. People didn’t stop going to Twitch. People didn’t stop going to, what’s the other one podcasts, right? People still listen to all these formats, but they also listen to TikTok. I guess the dystopian thing is that, if we’re doing all these things all of our time, like where do we have time for friends and loved ones, which is a whole other conversation, which we’re going to get to.
But when it comes to like stories, now we have our stories as authors, as fiction, that’s able to [00:30:00] take up more space in readers lives. But With that said, you can hear what I’m saying. If we’re spending more time reading, we can now have our novel reading time, now our serial reading time that fits into a different area or stage of our life.
That’s great for us as an industry, that’s great for us as storytellers, but that also means that reading now has a fundamentally different place in the lives of readers. And that’s why we see this buzzword, community, come about.
Arielle Bailey: actions.
Michael Evans: There is no doubt that serials and community are a thing. And when I say are a thing, I mean that the best authors and serials tend to have these rabid fan bases who are talking about them on social media, who are forming these different, discords and reddits and tumblr.
With that said, what is it like participating in a community as a serial reader from your perspective? If you participate in a, and as an author, what can we do with this knowledge to actually build a community? a better community of our readers, because obviously, even if you don’t want to interact with fans, we all want fans who are rabid about us and want to go on social media and want to share our [00:31:00] stories and want to keep coming back for them.
So what is that interplay between what can we learn from how readers view community and what do we do about that?
Arielle Bailey: For starters, we get rid of the idea that there’s only one right way to do a community because it’s not true. And we throw out the idea that what works for One person is going to work for most people because the thing about every storyteller is that they communicate differently. Every person is unique, every person is individual, and especially storytellers.
A lot of storytellers turn to stories because maybe the world doesn’t understand their native language. And storytelling is a way to find the people who do understand that. That is one reason a lot of people turn to storytelling. But, chiefly, when you start to look at how readers view community, One thing I think that emerges over and over again, one pattern, is that the authors are not [00:32:00] necessarily putting out a ton of content.
What gets readers connecting with each other is the fact that they share interests with other readers and these interests tend to overlap with the story. So this kind of goes into finding your ideal reader, but most of the people who are drawn to a specific story, If you like actually map out the demographic of any one particular story, for example, A Court of Thorns and Roses has probably one of the biggest literary fan bases in the world right now.
And it’s also one of the most varied in some ways in that like a lot of different people read A Court of Thorns and Roses, a lot. But one thing, That you see when you really start drilling down into who’s Loving it, who’s posting about it, who’s talking about it. You start to see some similarities emerge between these people.
This is way, way too broad of a subject for me to actually talk about. Go too deep [00:33:00] into right now or way too deep of a subject to get too much into because we would be here literally all day, but the types of people who like specific stories, there’s always shared interests somewhere. Okay, there’s always gonna be like some really rare exception, but there’s almost always a shared interest somewhere.
And a lot of times it’s a shared perspective on the world in some way or a shared. Flavor of escapism, which goes back to something that we talk a lot about when you’re marketing your story. You need to tell readers what kind of an experience they’re getting into, but A Court of Thorns and Roses, in particular, the type of people who really love that story, they love
sexy, unrealistic, fairy fantasy escapism. And by unrealistic, I mean there’s not actually much. Realism to the characters in A Court of Thorns and Roses, and that you wouldn’t necessarily [00:34:00] expect to meet them living as your neighbor. Okay, so it’s very escapist, not just in the world, but in the characters.
It’s extremely escapist, and it portrays a combination of, oh, this is dark and wild and crazy, with But also these people have strong relationships with each other and they have attitudes and emotions that I can understand even if I wouldn’t really be living next to them in your average suburban neighborhood.
And so readers, to bring it back to the initial point, readers view fandom more through the lens of, or community, more through the lens of escaping together. It’s an experience and I want to live in this experience with my friends because sharing the experience with people creates a strong, deep bond. We call them parasocial bonds.
These people can literally, the people that you read A Court of [00:35:00] Thorns and Roses with and that you talk about A Court of Thorns and Roses with rapidly every single day for three months on end and you’re obsessed with when the next book’s coming out and you’re obsessed with fan theories and you’re reading Tumblr and everything, it’s a shared experience.
That you understand that person and they understand you. And you look around you at someone else in your life and it’s I love you, but you don’t understand what I’m talking about when I say I’m passionate about this kind of thing. And this person over here does understand me. And that feeling of shared understanding really tightens those parasocial bonds.
And as authors, I feel like a lot of times when they think about community, it’s more I need to keep readers happy. And in order to keep them happy, I have to give them what they want. And to give them what they want, I need to know what they want. So I need them to give me feedback. Instead of, Looking at your story and looking at what the timeless themes are in that story and what kinds of people would like them.
First by [00:36:00] examining yourself because after all you wrote the story. So your ideal reader is pretty much going to have something in common with you. Something in common that specifically ties to this story. And then figure out whether you want your community. To be a space that connects around a story, around like the plot, the characters, or coming to have a shared experience like a book club that isn’t maybe tied specifically to your story, but tied to the kind of spaces that you like to create.
Are you a community minded person who likes to create spaces where people can come and have a tea party or kick back and open a bottle of beer and talk about? The game, like that kind of a space and think about the vibe that you want your space to have, which again, is a super long topic that we could get super deep into, but I think authors overthink community sometimes instead of focusing on the content that they’re making and how to make [00:37:00] that content accessible to readers, because that’s how the readers grab on.
It’s is this accessible? Awesome. I can share it with my people.
Michael Evans: That that’s a different way of approaching entirely. And I think that big step back reflection Really, what is it that’s going to draw your readers together and actually build a CUNY? The CUNY needs something to join around. And we don’t have physical locations on the internet.
We have stories. So what is it about that story that’s going to bring people together, right? Who’s coming together there? There’s a, it’s like the geography of your CUNY. There’s specific people who are attracted to live in places like San Francisco, the, the end of the frontier of the United States versus, a New York city or versus, a small town outside of Birmingham, Alabama, different types of people are attracted to live in these types of places.
And part of that has to do with what is the geography? And I know one of the things that you love to talk about is what is the shape of the story? And I think that brings me to really my last question for you, which [00:38:00] is, you Let’s step it back from serials. I feel like I got like an amazing crash course in serials, if I’m reading this or if I’m listening to this, we’ve been talking a lot about reading.
If I’m listening to this and I’m going okay. I’m not sure seals are for me right now. I’m like halfway through writing my novel currently, but I’ll come back and hit you up again in three months. If you’re one of those authors, which I high key relate to, you might not be ready to jump into serials right now, but you might be really interested in it.
What can we learn from serial authors, from serial storytelling, that can apply broadly to being better storytellers and being better at our craft?
Arielle Bailey: lot. But going in for the close focus view, and following some characters more intimately, can be a really good thing. And if that means that you wind up with an extra novel in the series, that’s okay. Now that, that can be really tricky because a lot of novel authors, especially if they are writing to a market, writing [00:39:00] to reach that audience, writing to make a name for themselves before they go off and write like stuff they’re a little more passionate about writing but that are less, that are more niche, less popular so to speak.
You tend to craft your novel series to a specific pattern and that makes sense because that’s what’s selling and that’s what readers expect and so you’re giving them what they expect in order to keep them coming back. But
it’s okay to go off the rails sometimes to do Something that feels a little bit more like it belongs to the world of fan fiction. And seriously, we could do an entire podcast, probably three podcasts, just on how fan fiction authors and fan fiction writing has some really good lessons to teach. Authors in other areas of fiction, but that’s not this one.
But one of the lessons from serial fiction that I feel like more novel authors could really take to heart is it’s okay to follow this character more deeply for a little while, [00:40:00] or it’s okay to have a little bit of filler. It’s really frowned on in novel writing. It’s really frowned on, but The reason that a lot of people turn to fanfiction is because there was something unsatisfying about the story that they initially consumed.
And first of all, it’s not the author’s job to make every reader happy. They are never going to make every reader happy, and not every reader who picks up your book is going to love it. A lot of them will not. Some will only like it, and there may only be a small percentage of readers who will actually love it enough to keep coming back for more, and that’s okay.
It doesn’t mean you wrote a bad book. It just means that’s not your audience, and your audience might only be 20 people, and that’s okay. But! yourself in too closely with the patterns of what you have to do to get readers because as long as you write well, And as long as you really hone your [00:41:00] craft, you’re going to find your readers and they’re going to keep coming back for you.
And I feel like serial fiction authors are way more willing to take a little risk here and a little risk here and put this extra scene in here or go off and write a side story here than novel authors are. And that is a hideously huge generalization. There are a lot of novel
Michael Evans: There’s going to be a rebellion now. There’s going to be a rebellion after this.
Arielle Bailey: I do feel like serial authors are a little more willing to experiment. They’re also, and this, they’re also really good. Many serial authors are really good at connecting with their community through author’s notes. So a lot some serial platforms actually have this built into the publishing model.
Radish does. I think Vela does. Yes, Vela does. Reem is going to, I can’t remember what other ones do, but having an author’s note at the end of a chapter. Or episode having an author’s [00:42:00] note. A lot of fiction authors are where you can put an author’s note at like the beginning or end of a story, but having little tiny notes at the end of each episode as you go can really keep readers invested.
And while it’s not really a workable model according to the publishing systems that we have today to do that for like novels. What you can do is you can write little notes about each novel chapter and put them on your social media, put them in your community, wherever you post, that can really help readers kind Extra connected as they go through the story, or maybe they’re binge reading all of them at the end and they just go and they find all your author notes.
But author notes is another huge thing that I feel like novel authors could really take from serial authors because the notes can be anything from, Hey, writing this chapter really surprised me because I didn’t think I was going to do this and then I did this. To, Oh no, I think I’m in love with this new character.
To, [00:43:00] Guys, I’m worried. There’s such range and. And every author’s note is going to be unique to just you and it can be anything. But that is another thing novel authors could really take from serial fiction.
Michael Evans: So right. And amazing insights. And what I’m left thinking about is, if I did want to get started in serials, obviously I know. You’ve been working on, but why don’t you share with us a little bit of now what we’ve been working on you and Amelia Manley to be able to help really give authors a VIP experience, the ultimate education and also mentorship and actually taking the first steps or the next steps into growing an amazing cereal and eventually getting to a million reads in short, like a million.
If you come out of this podcast fired up, what can we do?
Arielle Bailey: So the One Million Rates Serial Lab is first and foremost a course. There are eight modules all about writing serial [00:44:00] fiction, publishing serial fiction, marketing serial fiction, and building your community around your serial. But that’s just the first part. Because in addition to those eight modules, there are three different critique forms that you can submit your serial information through.
And trained serial fiction reviewers will go through it and they will critique the first 5, 000 words of your serial. Your serial packaging, so your cover, your blurb, your tags, your tagline, a lot of authors, I’ve seen be confused about like the difference between a tagline and a blurb and why both are super helpful or can be helpful.
And then they struggle one way or the other. Often their taglines are too long or their blurbs are too short or they give too much information in a blurb. And I think we also, if people are confused about what kind of tags would you put on this story on a serial fiction platform? And then the third is your [00:45:00] marketing plan.
So you can tell us where you’re planning to market your serial, how you’re planning to get readers in and we tell you, or trained viewers tell you, yeah, that sounds great. Here’s another suggestion I would make, or this sounds like it works, but also keep this in mind. So that’s part two. Part three is there is a discord community called the Serial Science Lab where you get to chat with other serial authors who have been through the course, who are currently going through the course, and you can talk about your serials.
You can talk about anything regarding serial fiction. And we will also be Adding a sprinting bot so that if serial authors want to sprint with each other, serial academy authors want to sprint with each other, they can. But then there’s still more because part four is as part of the serial course, you get access to live sessions [00:46:00] called live labs, where you send in questions about serial fiction.
And then one of the teachers of the course sits down for an hour on zoom. and just answers your questions. And the first time we did this was last Friday and it was fantastic because it was one hour of solid question and answer. So I had a bunch of questions through the form that I sat down and I answered and that was about half an hour.
And then there were a bunch of questions that came in through chat because you do get the opportunity to ask questions in chat and we answered those for another half an hour and it was just, Literally I hope I didn’t bore everyone to death because I talked the whole time. Like I checked in with people like, do you have any other questions and then more questions would pop up and a solid hour of just question and answer.
And it’s a lot that you get in the lab.
Michael Evans: It’s, it’s truly like taking the lab myself and going through with the experiences, someone who’s written quite a few novels, but it’s [00:47:00] never in a serial. It was like eyeopening to me about, how to go through it from, where do I start? How do I actually craft the story? What does marketing look like?
And like, how can I make money doing this? What does this look like? And how can I even translate my serials into Novels, how can I take my serials and put them into other formats? If I’m writing in maybe ebook format, how can I make them audio or web comics? It was like it was just covering everything and truly is that kind of experience that like when I saw it I’m like the course alone is like gives you everything you need but what I really love is that you and amelia are taking the time to being able to Answer the questions in the lab.
You can get that one on one time You can well one on many but one on one questions, right? Like you get to ask your personal questions and the fact that you get the one on one feedback Truly, through the critique format is amazing, because what’s so hard about these courses you try and implement what you learn, like anyone does, but then when you don’t get feedback, you’re just in silence, and you’re like, oh my god, why is it not working, but when you actually get the feedback, it’s oh, you can work through maybe the areas that you were [00:48:00] confused, or some of the things that you can lean into.
And just take everything you’re doing to the next level. So yeah, with everything we do, we always like to go over the top and really try and help you all. And we’re excited to include that as part of storytellers of the world Academy, which the Academy is now like the broader picture of
Our way of providing education to you all, being on provide awesome mentorship and give that hands on personal experience to those who want it.
But the good news is that if you just feel Keep listening to this show, subscribe to us here. We’re going to keep publishing new things for you every single week. If you want to join the lab, definitely go down into the description. You’ll find the link it’s at academy. storytellersruletheworld. com. So it’s academy.
storytellersruletheworld. com. You can find the lab there and the exact link will be linked in the description. You all are awesome. Ariel, you’re awesome. This was super fun. I hope to see some of you in the lab. You’ll have a lot of fun. It’s open now.
Arielle Bailey: [00:49:00] Okay.
Michael Evans: the meantime, hope y’all have an amazing rest of your day.
And as always, don’t forget storytellers rule the world.
I’ll be back at work, so let me through. I know you need it all, so let me through.