Would you pay to read original serial fiction?

[diurnal_lee]

Holly Lisle is talking seriously about publishing an ezine for SFF prose fiction in serial form.

Current Model for the Zine
Earlier Version with further feedbackI'm really excited about the idea, because, seriously, to me it'd be like being able to buy only the Space channel, instead of having to get the whole cable package with its endless

Comments

[wolfraven80]

I don't know... I mean obviously serialized fiction used to be how it was done back in the day-- say the 19th century. I'm not sure how well it would sit with me, though. One of the problems with serialized fiction is that it has to have a very specific format: every chapter must end with a a cliffhanger basically, enough to make people rabid for the next chapter (more so that in a novel, for example, where you have the whole thing at once so there's less risk of the reader no coming back). That format, however, can become confining. I suppose since the zine would work via subscription.

And as for comparing it to fanfic... the thing is people read fanfic for hugely different reasons. For example, I'm a shipper, so basically I read (and write) fics that are centred on a pairing. I never read general fic, for example, because when I want something general I read a novel. But shippers are only a segment of fanfic readers so... I don't know...