Byron Edgington's Blog - Posts Tagged "serialization"
Whither Serials?
On this date in 1885 Thomas Hardy issued his first serialized episode of The Mayor Of Casterbridge. It was a weekly serial rather than monthly, and did quite well. Charles Dickens got his start as a serialized writer. Several other authors, Brit-Lit and American started out this way because they lacked funds to publish, readers lacked funds to purchase, authors had no name recognition established and novels had not yet become a pastime in a society where people either didn’t read at all, didn’t have time to or didn’t have enough light to read by after six at night. The serial was the thing.
Today we have plenty of light, but we lack time, books are still quite pricey, there are more stories than we can hope to tackle and once we’ve spent thirty bucks on a book we feel like we must finish the thing.
So why not serialize? Could this be an answer for struggling authors trying to carve a niche? It worked for Hardy, Dickens, Woolf, Hawthorne and Tolstoy.
Today we have plenty of light, but we lack time, books are still quite pricey, there are more stories than we can hope to tackle and once we’ve spent thirty bucks on a book we feel like we must finish the thing.
So why not serialize? Could this be an answer for struggling authors trying to carve a niche? It worked for Hardy, Dickens, Woolf, Hawthorne and Tolstoy.
