The Crossroads of the Aether
Publish like it's 1899
I know that there are a lot of folks here at The Empire with aspirations of becoming an author, film maker, cartoonist, etc.. I had an epiphany of sorts the other day concerning you lot that I wanted to share. You guys may be really awesome. For all the rest of us know you could be channeling Verne in the morning, Wells in the afternoon, and Dickens in the evening. There could be raw talent oozing from your pores and you might even write in dark, flowing rhymes that Poe would envy.
How would we know?
You know...back in the old days, they had these things called serials. A serial is a story told in installments. Each chapter is published at regular intervals and they used to be published with each regular installment of the newspaper or magazine that carried them. At one time it was even considered to be a more serious art to write serials than books. Later, of course, when the serial was complete it could be sold again in book form anyway, but there was a sort of prestige to the serial that improved the value of the book.
There was a practical upshot to all of this, which is that authors had a chance to get their work out and build a loyal fan base of people eager to read the next installment of their story. Harriet Beecher Stowe wrote Uncle Toms Cabin as a serial in weekly installments over the course of 10 months.
Now I'm sure someone will correct me if I'm wrong, but as I understand it anything posted on The Steampunk Empire remains the sole intellectual property of the poster. I believe this includes blogs as well as forum posts. There are around 13,500 members here dying for content. I bet that if some of the talented and dedicated storytellers among you were to start creating weekly or monthly serial content, they would get a following.
I don't know about anyone else. Personally though, I would check out someones blog every week if they were creating good content. I would be on pins and needles waiting for the next 10 minute installment of a Steampunk movie with with a great plot even if some of the effects had to be cheesed up a bit to get it out every month. It's not my thing, but I know many people here like those adult comic books, and there may be a following for manga artists to do a weekly serial of 8-10 frames
WE here at the Empire... WE who would be your target audience... WE who would be your fanbase... would get to know more about you, your work, your ideas... and you might very well end up with people wanting to invest in your other projects.
Food for thought,
-SD-
Tags: actor, author, comics, film, maker, publishing, serials
Replies to This Discussion
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Permalink Reply by Professor Beauregard Diggs on
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neither a day late or a farthing short s.d. ... you have simply with this addendum given us two possibilities for serial writing ... thank you
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food for thought indeed s.d.
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Permalink Reply by James Murray on -
And role plays work too, you get to exercise your creativity, and also respond to others feedback to your latest post. Good fun.
And yes, I am following two installment novels through the empire, one you mentioned earlier, and the Shadow Cast Chronicles, although this is on another site, but i was alerted to it through the Empire.
Problem I have, is what is to stop others stealing your hard work and ideas and publishing them as their own?
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good question james...any answer out there?...other of course than a poor man's copyright
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thank you wally
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Permalink Reply by C.D. Fleur on -
Jo and I were writing one with weekly postings on here. The form was a bit awkward because it repeated the first chapter on each page.
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Permalink Reply by C.D. Fleur on
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It would be nice. We had the whole story arc outlined. Jo's been very busy lately, and the weekly chapters were getting difficult to keep up with.
I think if I was doing it over, I'd put it on a website/blog so people could subscribe via RSS, and post links to it on SPE. On here there is so much content hitting the site every hour, and unless a lot of people post comments it gets buried almost immediately.
I've got an Egyptian-themed time-travel novella being published in an anthology in a week or so. I'm also working on a steampunk story centered in the Great Lakes region, but that's still in the planning stages.
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