Serializing fiction and short stories – what’s the best platform nowadays?
I have been looking into serializing fiction in addition to writing short stories. And a book. These are busy and highly unprofitable times.
I grew up reading sci-fi and fantasy novels in paper book form, and all short stories in magazines or collected paperbacks. Those were pretty much the only options pre-internet. However, if you go back a century or two, everyone was really into serializations from top authors. This was how Charles Dickens worked, and how Arthur Conan Doyle brought Sherlock Holmes to the public attention. It is a trend that has returned.
I now have a few short stories ready to go, so being old-school, I have been logging in to Duotrope and looking for a magazine, anthology, or online publication to send my stuff to. But then the idea of serialization caught my attention and the plethora of platforms that have sprung up to facilitate different ways of publishing.
I had previously noted books by authors with odd names that seemed do ludicrously well on Amazon. I did a bit of research and found that they nearly always got popular on some literary platform or other first, then brought their audience with them.
These platforms seemed like viable alternatives for serializing books, publishing short stories, and building a following.
I asked ChatGPT if it had any suggestions and it suggested a few places like Wattpad, Patreon, Royal Road, and Substack. Substack came out favourably, but I already have one dedicated to fascinating, quirky tales from history and culture. It was time to research more.
As is sadly often the case these days, my searches are now: first, ask AI, and then second, search in Google and add the word ‘Reddit’ at the end. The answer soon became clear – or at least slightly less muddy.
The ideal option seems to be down to genre
I went down a rabbit hole and found that there are an annoying amount of options. But happily, the genre seemed to be a way of narrowing things down. For example, Tapas is for manga, AO3 is for fan fiction and so on.
As I would be writing and serializing science fiction and fantasy, all signs pointed to Royal Road. It is one of the biggest platforms and arguably the best for serializing SFF.
Some others were mentioned on Reddit, but one of the discussions raised an issue that hadn’t occurred to me – plagiarism. Apparently, some sites are rife with it, with assholes trying to get attention by spamming with really short chapters, plagiarising stuff and posting elsewhere, and so on. You know what the internet is like, there are always less talented people trying to find shortcuts or mooch off others, as opposed to actually doing something good and trying to get better at it. If I believed in magic, I would curse them.
Still, Royal Road seemed ok.
As you can see in the image (depending on your device), some of the stories are doing well, with thousands of followers. It seemed promising. But soon, a couple of things started to become apparent. Yes the top stories were mostly fantasy, but they were niche fantasy.
Thanks to the awesome Dungeon Crawler Carl, I now know what LitRPG is. But I don’t know what stuff like portal fantasy, progression, Isekai, or XianXia are. So I disappeared down another rabbit hole finding out what progression is. In a subsequent flash of insight, I realised I really couldn’t be bothered with the rest.
I don’t want to write in any of these niches. There are normal fantasy and sci-fi books on there, but I couldn’t see any on the top lists. I’m tempted to write a LitRPG under a cool pseudonym like xyzpdq or He Who Eats Pizza or something, but not yet. For now, I just need the best option for what I write and a few things put me off the platforms,
What issues did I find?
I looked at around half a dozen of these sites and then read up on what some of the terminology is and generally spent a whole morning in glorious procrastination pretending to be researching.
I love that these platforms exist, but I couldn’t find any that were a great fit for what I do. The main issues were:
- They were a bit too niche. I don’t want to write any of the types of books that were near the top of the trending lists. I’m not being mean to those who write them, I just don’t know enough about the genres and doubt I would be able to write them as well.
- I didn’t like the way the sites were laid out. This is probably just personal and I am sure regulars know how to find what they like, but outside the top lists, it seemed like discovery would be an issue, and the problem would be compounded if you aren’t writing stuff like LitRPG or progression.
- As I mentioned earlier, plagiarism seems common on some of these sites.
- Combining Wattpad or Royal Road with something like Patreon seems like a good option, but a complicated one. I am too lazy to go this route and everything would ultimately end up online. This seems like one of the better possibilities though.
- The level of commitment seems high for someone like myself with a dozen unfinished novels in my folders. If you have a couple of thousand paying followers and you realise you have written yourself into a corner, you might feel pretty bad about it. The only way to combat this is to have the book written first.
This all led me to the option that I should finish a book first and turn it into a serialization after on Royal Road. I could, but I am not going to.
Sad though it is to say, I think a book that is straight SFF will do better on Amazon. The only real advantage I can see to serializing a completed book on a platform would be the audience you can generate first – but again, most of those I see on Amazon doing well with this strategy are all LitRPG or similar.
So what am I going with?
After researching for half a day, then another half getting the flavour of the work on the sites – aka putting my feet up and reading – I realised I knew what option would be best for serializing what I am writing and what to do with other types of work.
I will send short stories to magazines using Duotrope. These will hopefully help build an audience and would look great in a bio.
Full books will just go straight to Amazon. It has the biggest readership and is where, no matter what platform I was writing for, my work would ultimately end up.
But for serialization, the plan is for novellas in a series. Think Silo or Murderbot. These can be linked and create an overall story. Again, this would be on Amazon.
So, I will pretty much be doing what I had originally planned. It is good to know though.
I hope some of the above helps if you’re in a similar position. I think some of these platforms are perfect for people whose writing aligns with their more popular stories published there.
If you write quite niche stuff, these platforms might be ideal. Start with your genre and work from there.
Good luck with whatever you decide to do.
Final final thoughts…
As you can see on the My Books section, I have a few short books out. Two are science fiction. The Uneven Passage of Time came about when I wanted to learn how to publish on Amazon. I found some stories that were loosely linked to time and put them together. A couple of them are a bit dark.
Cooperworld is more fun and deals with the nature of reality. It is a longish short story and is my main candidate for serializing a longer tale. You can check it out here. I will probably be rewriting it a bit, so if you want a first edition with no serialization in mind, you should get it now.
(This post contains a couple of affiliate links.)