The Serial Novel

Last week I mentioned my intention to serialize the working draft of my next Pierce Mostyn novel, The Medusa Ritual, on my website. That plan is still in the works. I’m thinking of 18 weekly installments issued during February, March, April, and May. Then in June I’ll publish the revised novel in ebook form.

Why serialize a novel? Why not? As near as I can tell, the serialized novel has been around since at least the 1700s. It is generally agreed that the overwhelming success of the serialization of The Pickwick Papers by Charles Dickens from March 1836 to October 1837 established the commercial viability of serialization as a publication format.

During the Victorian Era, in general, the highest paid authors were the ones favored for serialization. If your book wasn’t chosen for serialization that usually meant you were considered a mid-lister.

During the pulp era, magazines often serialized novels. In fact, many pulp era novels never saw print in book form and languish in often rare and deteriorating magazines. Today, however, there are publishers seeking to remedy that situation and you can find pulp era serialized novels now coming out as ebooks and print on demand paperbacks.

Recently, I bought an ebook of Robert James Bennet’s lost race novel Bowl of Baal, serialized in All Around Magazine from November 1916 to February 1917. This is the first book publication of the novel.

Rex Stout’s lost race and subterranean world novel, Under the Andes, was originally serialized in All Story Magazine in 1914. It didn’t see book form for over half a century.

In 1932, Weird Tales published the only Jules de Grandin novel Seabury Quinn wrote in 6 installments from February to July. The novel didn’t see book form until many decades later.

However, not just obscure novels were serialized. As mentioned above, Dickens made serialization financially lucrative for publishers and authors. All throughout the Victorian era and well into the 20th century very popular novels first appeared as serials — many which are considered classics today.

In addition to Dickens’s novels, below are a few other classics that were serialized initially:

Uncle Tom’s Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe

The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas

Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky

The Woman in White by Wilkie Collins

North and South by Elizabeth Gaskell

The Portrait of a Lady by Henry James

The War of the Worlds by HG Wells

The Hound of the Baskervilles by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett

In Cold Blood by Truman Capote

And the list can go on and on.

So if serialization was so popular, what happened? I think a major answer lies in the demise of the print media. First radio, then TV, followed by the internet have damaged interest in print. Magazines and newspapers have suffered the most, and those were the vehicles that serialized novel length fiction all throughout the 19th and the first half of the 20th century.

A second reason lies in what serialization tended to do to a novel. Things that were not considered good writing:

• Excessive length
• Too much repetition
• Plot lines that didn’t go anywhere
• Excessive melodrama leading to cliffhangers

One reason the novels were revised for issuance in book form. However, publishers (and even readers) think novels have to be a certain length, and so to achieve that length some of that “bad” stuff was kept to pad out the novel.

So is there a future for the serialized novel? I think there is. Writers seeking ways to drum up interest in their work and to secure for themselves an audience, are exploring whether or not serialization will help to that end.

After all, most TV series are nothing more than serialized “novels”. So if we can watch our “novels” in installments on TV, why can’t we do so again in our reading material? No reason, really.

So I’m going to experiment with the serial novel. And I hope you’ll participate in this adventure by telling me what works for you and what doesn’t. Because, I am after all writing the book for your entertainment. I want you to enjoy it. And you can help me to achieve that end.

Comments are always welcome! And until next time, happy reading!