OnlineBookClub.org

Hi! I'm reading a "novelog"--a novel that is entirely in blog format--and I was wondering what other people think of this. It's called "Island Wars," and it's being published at the downeast website, in their blogs section.

I know that Dickens, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, and others serialized their novels long ago. Maybe this marks a return to that tradition, using modern media.

Anyway, I think it's an interesting experiment. Do you know of anyone else who is doing this? What do you think of this approach?

Thanks!

Bob Jenkins

It might give a heart attack to older/less patient readers until the next chapter/piece/whatever comes out, but it will certainly draw more attention.

Personally I am all for little grabs of fiction but first get your blog well-known.

You are right, serialisation isn’t new. Stephen King’s “The Green Mile” was written in six instalments and then King experimented with online serialisation with “The Plant”. Apart from blogging there is email or RSS delivery. There are websites which deliver bite-sized daily instalments of classic, out-of-copyright novels for free and new novels by subscription.

Episodic blog-novels were in vogue a few years back, mainly by first-time novelists, (often romantic) and even microblogging is proving fruitful; English novelist Will Ashon has written Twitter fiction.

Also, you can email, read Twitter or blog serials on your mobile (cell) phone. A few years ago an Australian newspaper announced a new publishing experiment: a 20-episode fiction story by Marieke Hardy that you could subscribe to and have sent to your mobile (cell) phone every weekday for four weeks. Hardy said “Writing it was a challenge but I tried not to be overwhelmed by the ‘lots of tiny cliffhangers’ theory…” In Japan, when phone formats were re-published into book form, they often rocketed to the top of Japan’s bestseller lists.

Sure, it's a modern approach but the way we read is always evolving so I say 'serialised novel blogging - go for it'.