New Aussie series

[Sarah]

Hallo Aussie readers and authors! I've started an online fiction series with an Australian tech writer as action hero. Her name is Trilby Trench. Chapters 1 and 2 are out now.

In her own words:

I’m Trilby Trench.
As in the hat, the coat.

You can subscribe to the site for a notification when a new chapter comes out. I'd love to know what you think!

[Sharon]

I didn't mind it the first chapter.

Have you written it all yet, or will you write a chapter a day or week or something?

It is an interesting way to present your story. I have often thought of playing around with series or episodic writing on my own blog.

I see your blog will be fully dedicated to the story which is wonderful. There are a few writers who did very well with releasing stories that way, one of the most recent I can think of is Shades of Grey, though they released them on fanfiction sites networks with ready readers.

This makes me wonder, if to garner more readers, you don't also release them on those type of sites? One that comes to mind and I have played on and off on is

https://www.wattpad.com/

Another is https://www.inkitt.com

Good luck with it.

[Sarah]

Hallo Sharon, and thanks for replying! I've chosen to publish the story in serial form as an experiment. I'm thinking it's a good way of getting feedback from people.

Before publishing the first chapter, I have a very good plan for the entire story/book and to it mostly written though not necessarily finalised. This is so I don't have to go back and change something in the parts that people have already read. That'd be disturbing for the readers, I think.

I did look at Wattpad, but decided it'd be nicer to have my own blog so I could have more control. On the other hand, using a site like Wattpad does give you a ready audience, which I'm missing out on by having my own site. We'll see how that turns out. I also wasn't too sure that the primary Wattpad audience was right for my book.

I haven't looked at inkitt in detail. What are your impressions of that site?

Cheers
Sarah

[Sharon]

They appear to have a good reputation thus far and are growing very quickly and intend to have a book a week published soon, all based on reader driven feedback.

My experience with all sites that have been similar and I've used in the past, though I have not used inkitt, is that they are usually driven very much by author and author feedback and are usually played in the sense that you really need to expect to spend a lot of time interacting with other users. Wattipad is the same though it does have a huge reader base.

My expectation with any site that I have used to share samples has been for honest feedback from anyone, not any editor or publisher desk or deal. I was never looking for an audience.

In that sense, a critiquing sense, I have found them useful and I have seen some writers gain large audiences, but putting a story out anywhere requires a way to find readers or people to provide feedback beyond posting the story.

A good story on such networks won't necessarily find readers without a lot of time and effort in driving readers to your story.

[Sarah]

Hallo Sharon, I really like the look of Inkitt. Thanks for pointing it out! It's very clean, and focuses on readers rather than authors. One of the primary reasons I decided against Wattpad is that it keeps

popping up requests to log in, even if you're just a reader. I think that's quite a barrier to entry for readers. Also the most popular genres there are science fiction, young adult, and fantasy, and my book doesn't fit there.

Yeah, I'm with you on the work required to find an audience. I've published 3 books prior to this one. Two are fiction, self-published, very low uptake. One is technical, published by a third party, much higher uptake.

This experiment with serial publishing it going to be interesting. I may publish the book as a whole later, either on Amazon or, now, on Inkitt.

Nice chatting to you!
Sarah