Man Ching posted this a few days ago, but it didn’t show up on the Google Group…
Writing On Your Palm: Organized Media: “Except that I couldn’t even bear to begin reading the 6 volume work until I had the whole thing in my Zod. Same with Gibbons’ =Decline and Fall=. Here’s my thinking: I wanted the entire work at hand because I didn’t want to be caught at a free time stretch without the work to read. I also didn’t want to break up the flow of this particular work. So I wanted to just read this through and =finish= it. I often read more than one book at a time, unless a work is so interesting it compels me to spend all my free time one it, like the WWII history. So I don’t think it’s because of an inability to keep multiple plots straight in my head that makes me dislike serials. What bothers me most about serials is that when I want to read the story, there is a possibility it isn’t there. It’s different with a novel since, ideally, there is some closure, even if it’s part of a series of books. With a serial, I think it’s that I =won’t= wait (and why should I march to =your= beat!), and if I just finished part 2, and I don’t have part 3, I’ll likely read something else with ‘closure’. If the time I spend with that novel is so rewarding that I crowd out other things, well, I can’t see how serialists would win. Namely, with me, Jeff and Josh would be competing with novelists.”
Actually, we already have a solution for readers like Man Ching. When you subscribe to a series, you not only get the issues individually if you want to read them that way, but you also get the compilations. As we conclude major story arcs, generally four to nine issues long, we’ll release those issues packed together as a stand-alone ebook. The idea is that people who aren’t comfortable with reading once a month can read the compilations like a series of novellas. That way they’ll get the sense of “closure” Man Ching is looking for and can read at their own pace within the confines of the arc, but on the other hand they’ll be waiting longer between installments than those reading monthly issues.
Something for everyone, that’s Solo Media.
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