Serialisation is an increasingly popular way to publish, whether to test books, build an audience, or make money. You can write your work in advance and release it all at once, or schedule it. Or you can release chapters as you go. It’s not even a new phenomenon – the very first novels were published incrementally. Jane Austen was typically published in several volumes, and Charles Dickens was serialised weekly in literary magazines. These are some currently popular sites:
Site |
About |
Payment options |
Wattpad |
Wattpad is one of the biggest out there – 35m unique visitors/month. It’s so huge that any genre can find an audience. The biggest audience is US teenage girls who tend to like YA (Young Adult) fiction and Romance, so if you write in those genres it could be a good fit. | The Wattpad Futures programme that placed ads in stories and shared revenue has now closed. Wattpad now has a Paid Stories option which writers can apply to join. |
Radish |
Anyone can apply to Radish, but they have some level of quality filter, and they like authors to already have some kind of following on social media and to have gained some readers/fans. | No payment offered but depending on the model chosen (free, freemium, premium) you can generate revenue based on the amount of readers who read your work. |
Channillo |
Channillo lets readers subscribe to read works. Authors can schedule when they want new chapters to be released. | Authors get 80% of the total subscription revenue, so having a strong fan base is important. |
Inkitt |
Inkitt’s trick is to try to use algorithms to help authors reach their target readers. It holds regular contests, and authors have won traditional publishing deals as a result. | Successful writers can now earn money from the Inkitt monthly royalty fund, as well as through competitions. |
One last thing… don’t forget that on many of these sites you can also be a reader. Subscribing to other authors’ works and commenting and sharing also helps you and your work get noticed.