Judgement call...

[flexor.livejournal.com]

Peeps,

I've just finished a story consisting of ~20 chapters with trimmings. What do I do?

1. Drop the entire bunch onto the servers in one go, so all my regulars are treated to ~20 emails in their inbox all at once

2. Drop in two chapters at a time, so people get just two emails, but this goes on for some two weeks.

3. Obtain from the user guide a way of publishing many chapters of story while only sending out *one* email. Note may not be possible.

Answers onna postcard, please.

Cheers,
Flexor

Comments

[lindahoyland.livejournal.com]

I suggest option 2. I need you are more likely to have people read your story that way.

[arguingvitality.livejournal.com]

Ah, I'm far less considerate. I have a tendency to just dump fics in one go on FFN... but if you have a lot of people why have you author alert then maybe post them bit by bit, with a note to say that the fic itself is finished, but you don't want to overload people with emails.

Then again, I'm sure it's not too hard to 'select all'>delete. But it would be a tad annoying!

[flexor.livejournal.com]

Right then. Two chapters per day it is. When I finish my final edit to remove the final bits of suck.

[vampirenaomi.livejournal.com]

I always do number two. I don't particularly care about the people who have me on their alert list (if they think I post too much, they're free to take me off the list), but posting one or two chapters per week makes it far more likely that someone is going to take the time to review the story. Also, if your fandom is really active, posting everything at once means that your story will be buried into the archives pretty fast whereas updating regularly makes it jump back to the top, so more people are likely to see it.

[in_excelsis_dea.livejournal.com]

I wouldn't even do two chapters a day, but one. I know a lot of authors who will write the entire fic out, edit it, and then post a chapter a week while working on the next fic. Your readers appreciate the fact that you have a schedule and that the fic is completed, so they're not going to have to sit through a fic that won't get finished, and it spares their inboxes. It also allows reviews to pile up.

[(Anonymous)]

Option two is your best bet. Not only does it give more people time to find your story, but it also gives you additional time to go over your story one more time as well as to see how the formatting plays out when you post it. If there are problems it'll be easier to fix them with only a few chapters posted.

[flexor.livejournal.com]

Thanks all.

[hanfastolfe.livejournal.com]

A bit late --

But I've found that if I get an alert about a zillion chapters in one go I just kind of go D: because I'm the kind of person that HAS to read new chapters as they come in, right there, so unless I've cleared my weekend I end up procrastinating on actually doing the reading.

Another thing: Spacing the uploads keeps the fic up at the top of the fic list in ff.n's default system of listing fics so you'll get more new readers that way.

Another thing x 2: Post your fics up around the morning in the USA's time zones and you'll get the biggest spike in new hits because during the day in the US is when most readers tend to look at ff.n.