Hi! I am new to Substack as well, and intend to write serial fiction here. I was wondering about the following: the idea is to post the first draft as serial. And then have it professionally edited / proofread / cover created with the intention of publishing it as an ebook through the ebook stores (using Amazon and Draft2Digital's services). Is it necessary at that point to remove the serial story so that the great Zon won't punish my story somehow? Or is it enough it is behind a paywall / for paid subscribers?
Oh, and another question: has anyone published their already published books as serials to paid subscribers here?
Hello Mark. Sharron here from LEAVES. This process of setting up a separate section just for a serialized novel sounds quite complicated for the likes of me, even though you have broken it down nicely into discrete steps. Will you clarify one thing for me? (I know this may be a dumb question, but I am willing to risk it.) I already have 13 chapters published on substack of my book. If I set up a special section for it now, will I be able to move all these previously published chapters into the new section? Thanks for any help you can offer me. Sharron
this is great! if i may offer my small variation...
instead of chapter 1, i've pinned a table of contents with all of my available chapters to the top of my section, so that readers can also pick up where they left off instead of having to scroll through the entire archive to find the last chapter they read if they're just catching up. this has been my #1 frustration when reading serialized works on substack!
Super helpful! Being new to Substack, I keep putting off these design changes that would make my page more appealing and organized. I'm always afraid of messing something up, so I'm reluctant to play around with these features. More motivated and confident now. Thank you!
With ‘first chapter’, ‘previous chapter’, ‘next chapter’ and ‘last chapter’ as options, obviously last chapter does nothing at the moment but when I’m writing the chapters I set up the ‘next chapter’ link in advance by altering the url to say ‘chapter x’ and because I know I’ll follow that naming convention when I write the next chapter it will automatically use that url when I post it.
Thanks for the advice, Mark. At some point, I hope we have the option of arranging our posts in ascending or descending order. In the meantime, this is very helpful.
Thank you, Mark! This was great for a newbie! Awesome info on using sections for serializations.
Hi! I am new to Substack as well, and intend to write serial fiction here. I was wondering about the following: the idea is to post the first draft as serial. And then have it professionally edited / proofread / cover created with the intention of publishing it as an ebook through the ebook stores (using Amazon and Draft2Digital's services). Is it necessary at that point to remove the serial story so that the great Zon won't punish my story somehow? Or is it enough it is behind a paywall / for paid subscribers?
Oh, and another question: has anyone published their already published books as serials to paid subscribers here?
Hello Mark. Sharron here from LEAVES. This process of setting up a separate section just for a serialized novel sounds quite complicated for the likes of me, even though you have broken it down nicely into discrete steps. Will you clarify one thing for me? (I know this may be a dumb question, but I am willing to risk it.) I already have 13 chapters published on substack of my book. If I set up a special section for it now, will I be able to move all these previously published chapters into the new section? Thanks for any help you can offer me. Sharron
Thanks for this, just added my first serialised story to a section. It does make things a lot more logical.
Thank you, Mark. Very helpful.
Really nice and helpful article thank you.
Thank you so much for this!
this is great! if i may offer my small variation...
instead of chapter 1, i've pinned a table of contents with all of my available chapters to the top of my section, so that readers can also pick up where they left off instead of having to scroll through the entire archive to find the last chapter they read if they're just catching up. this has been my #1 frustration when reading serialized works on substack!
you can see how it works here: https://jmelliott.substack.com/p/table-of-contents?s=r
Thanks so much for this - fits perfectly into my plans for this summer's focus.
Super helpful! Being new to Substack, I keep putting off these design changes that would make my page more appealing and organized. I'm always afraid of messing something up, so I'm reluctant to play around with these features. More motivated and confident now. Thank you!
This was helpful! I plan on using the "section" feature to serialize for my longer works. I'm still new to Substack, so I'm still figuring things out.
It’s also easy to make a simple navbar for previous and next chapters because the url pattern for Substack is consistent.
On Misadventure Adventure we have a navbar under the video each chapter: https://misadventure.substack.com/p/chapter-7?s=w
With ‘first chapter’, ‘previous chapter’, ‘next chapter’ and ‘last chapter’ as options, obviously last chapter does nothing at the moment but when I’m writing the chapters I set up the ‘next chapter’ link in advance by altering the url to say ‘chapter x’ and because I know I’ll follow that naming convention when I write the next chapter it will automatically use that url when I post it.
Yes, I agree.
Thanks for the advice, Mark. At some point, I hope we have the option of arranging our posts in ascending or descending order. In the meantime, this is very helpful.