serializing your works for free before you publish them on Amazon etc?

[jaglionpress]

I'm debating doing this as kind of a marketing thing, trying to attract more eyeballs to my wordpress site/blog. I know a couple of SF/F writers I read do this or used to do this, including Ilona Andrews and the Sharon Lee/Steve Miller duo. Elizabeth Ann West does something similar on Wattpad. It seems like it's mostly a thing that more established writers do, so I'm not sure about what it would do for someone who wasn't already a name. I would remove the serialized version off my website once I was ready to publish, of course.

Does anyone have any advice about how best to go about this? Or whether there is some burning reason to not do it?

The options I have at the moment:

1. Clean up the rough draft of book one in my new series, posting scenes or chapters as I finalize them.
2. Post my upcoming NaNoWriMo project as it gets written, warts and all. This would be book two in the new series, but they are supposed to stand alone.
3. Post segments from my "between NaNo's" project, the rough draft of which is about 20% complete as I write this.

1 and 3 would probably get interrupted by me working on NaNoWriMo. I guess I could schedule posts of Book 1 in sequence, enough to cover November.

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[ShayneRutherford]

One thing to think about - it could work the way you want it to, but it could also teach people to expect all of your work free. That's what happened to a friend of mine who posted her stories on her blog.

[jaglionpress]

One thing to think about - it could work the way you want it to, but it could also teach people to expect all of your work free. That's what happened to a friend of mine who posted her stories on her blog.

That's a good point. I hadn't thought of that.

[unkownwriter]

Yeah, I wouldn't do this. There's a segment of readers who only do free stuff, and you don't want to start off with those. They likely won't ever buy anything, so kind of useless to build a fan base from.

What you could do is have something you can offer as an incentive to sign up for a mailing list. Make it only for that. I'd write something different than what you already have out, though. Prequel, related short story, something like that. There are loads of threads around about reader magnets.

[rockondon]

I used to give out free copies of a book to friends and ask them for a review. They agreed wholeheartedly to do this but no matter how much they like you or how enthusiastic they sound, they would rather get stabbed in the eyeballs with a screwdriver than post a review.

So I wrote a novellete to give away for free to people that subscribe to my mailing list. If someone shows an interest in my writing, that's what I give them.

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