Book Talk: To Monetize or Not to Monetize (Part II) —struggles of a penniless writer who once knew a penniless sitar player by Jaye Viner

Two weeks ago I shared with you the beginnings of my deep plunge into web serialization and my decision to post a chapter a week of my fiction trilogy on various social media sites around the web, draw attention to them through other social media sites, and hope to find enough people who love my work that they’ll love me forever, which is what we ultimately want as writers, right? The love of enough people to allow us to eat and keep writing.

Making money with fiction writing on the world wide web is two parts high stakes gambling and one part a long minimum wage slog working at McDonald’s. The gamble being it is possible to be noticed but the chances of having that winning formula that catapults your work into publishing industry fame and commendation are slim to none and in the process you could lose money through book editing, cover art design, and advertising, all of which you will need if you want to go through Amazon, or Smashwords, or Barnes and Noble and publish your serial by chapter as that rock star Hugh did.

So why did Hugh Howey’s Wool series-- a self publishing venture which has led to rabid fans demanding more, a publishing contract which allows him the status of a traditionally published author while he retains the rights to his ebooks, and being a poster boy, errr man, for success, work? Visibility? Good writing? Speculation abounds but the answer remains elusive. A hop over to Howey’s Amazon page shows mostly overwhelming four and five stars with a few naysayers. These naysayers, though in the minority, are important for non-famous people like us because they all complain about length. The number of chapters in the installment didn’t live up to the expectation of what they spent.

Using Amazon Publishing

When going the Amazon route, pay careful attention to this price vs content value. The content must deliver action and propel the story forward. It cannot rely always on cliffhangers to draw readers to the next installment or reader ire will follow. Also, too many grammar and proof reading errors will also lead to complaints and the feeling that your writing isn’t worth their money. On social media sites where writing is a free exchange such as the ones I highlighted last week, this isn’t an issue. You may decide to leave the money aspect out of the picture at first.

JukePop: The minnow in the pond

If Amazon is the big fish certain to dominate the world for at least the next decade, the minnow in our pond of making money with fiction on the web is JukePop.com I found this site through a community on Goodreads. (There is a serial community on Goodreads but it’s not particularly active.) Still in its beta phase, JukePop caters to an adult majority by comparison with Figment and Wattpad which are dominated by teens.

Three weeks ago I applied to have my serial posted on JukePop. Just last week it was finally accepted. In some ways I am comforted to know the curators vetted my work and found it worthy. In other ways, two weeks is quite a while to wait in cyberspace. Once your serial is accepted you have the option of registering an Amazon Payments Business account. This allows JukePop to pay you once a month based on readers’ votes. I don’t know how much but, compared with Amazon, where you’re going it alone against the world, JukePop sends emails with special instructions not only for success on their site but also social media tips. Their Twitter account highlights new stories and new authors and hopes to facilitate an authors helping authors platform across the web.

Thus far my only complaint has been time. While other sites allow any old text to be thrown up or uploaded, JukePop has stringent formatting requirements which include stripping all invisible Word doc parameters. For me this means, every time I upload a chapter I have to sit there and insert page returns.

Blogging with ads. Money for hits. Etc.

Last but not least there’s the old school option for serialization: blogging. Just with any other kind of blogging the important wisdom here is the schedule. Given enough time, if you post when you say you’re going to post, readers will come. Adding money to this makes it more complicated as blogs need visibility and a certain number of hits before even being allowed to apply for ads. Many Indi authors who publish on Amazon and use their blog as a website have had some success with this but those authors were four or five books into their careers and had already established their platform. If you go this route make sure you deliver content that is reliable and visible to search engines. Sharing to Google+ is especially important for visibility as every word posted to Google+ is visible to Google the search engine.  

What I did, and why.

My decision to choose blogging with a side serving of web communities for my serialization over Amazon was ultimately an economic one. If I’m going to charge people money I want a product that a professional editor has worked over which costs money. Plus I’d like a professional cover design to draw attention which also costs money. Having heard from the gate keepers in NYC that my story was something they wanted but that they couldn’t sell in the current market my priority was to get the story to the people where it would be seen.

Thus far, Wattpad has been my most ‘successful’ site with thirty reads and several positive comments showing a couple readers are returning each week to read new installments. My blog has also received steady traffic. This I attribute to social media as well as the option to download direct to Kindle. Most of the feedback I’ve had from readers suggests they’re not likely to sit on their computers and read. They download to their mobile what have you. Based on this, I coded a Download to Kindle button which appears at the heading of each of my blog posts which allows a visitor to transmit my writing direct to their device. Nifty.

The social media visibility is still something I’m learning. Drawing attention on the web is an ever-evolving tectonic plate of adventures and mis-adventures. If you’re interested in marketing a serial this lady is ahead of me in the game and she has a great post about marketing and what she’s learned.

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Thanks for tuning in. If you decide to take the plunge with serialization, find me on any site I’ve mentioned or Twitter @JayeViner. I’d love to connect with you and throw some Internet love your way.