feuil·le·tons 🔖
I'm a huge fan of web serials. It's a niche interest, but my
contrarian opinion is that web serials are both the future of
writing and its most powerful medium. This is at odds with how
general public perceives them — as trashy, cheap, and low-quality —
but I've spent enough years reading them to know that they can
outshine even the most beloved works of popular fiction. People
dream of Brandon Sanderson's Cosmere, or marvel at the rich sands of
Dune, but the most compelling worlds I've seen have been found
online.
This is obviously a pretty bold claim, but I do think that there are
some major structural advantages to online fiction that make it
possible. The most important of these by far is the business model
that web serials rely on.
Historically, writing stories has had extremely front-loaded costs,
is inaccessible, or otherwise has significant operational overhead.
The only two avenues open to authors were the traditional publishing
model, and the self-publishing model. With the traditional model,
authors first must write a complete manuscript of their work. Only
after this can the author pitch publishers for distribution. If they
are lucky enough to be signed, the publisher takes over the story
and handles marketing, distribution, and warehousing. The advantage
for the author is that the publisher handles all marginal costs
after story creation. However, because the publisher monopolizes
distribution, they can also capture a significant portion of a
story's value.
The second option is the self-publishing model. In this model, the
author still has to complete their entire manuscript before they can
make a single cent. The author must handle all the marketing,
distribution, and warehousing of their stories, and pay for that
out-of-pocket. The advantage, however, is that the author retains
100% of the profits, and that all rights to the book are retained.
The model of web serials is completely different, and allows authors
to not only trivially distribute their stories, but do so in a way
that lets them retain all profits, and make money earlier. Most
importantly, because the internet enables zero marginal cost
distribution, authors are able to charge in a way that adheres more
closely to the true cost of writing a book, which is the
worldbuilding and creative process.
To do this, web serial authors release their stories incrementally
in chapters. Authors then monetize the continuous attention from
their most devoted fans, instead of charging for every view. This is
similar to how people pay extra money for "unnecessary" merch and
tickets to see their favorite musicians, despite the ability to
listen to music for free on streaming services. In web serials,
obsessed fans subscribe to advanced chapters and special
story-shaping privileges. Authors thus break out from the power
dynamics of an author-publisher relationship, and gain the ability
to extract value directly from the stories they're building.
What does this look like in terms of numbers? For the traditional
publisher-led model, sources like
Bookstat paint a
bleak picture of revenues for the majority of authors, showing that
achieving even self-supporting incomes with a book is impossible for
the vast majority of authors. Even in the biggest success cases,
publishers end up taking a hefty chunk of the revenue.
This is different with online fiction. Works are mostly free to view
and new chapters are published weekly, similar to shows on streaming
services like Netflix, or the great literary works of old in their
newspaper feuilletons (see:
The Count of Monte Cristo). Authors use platforms like Patreon to give exclusive benefits to
their most devoted fans, such as a measure of influence over the
story, a community with other fans, and most importantly advance
viewing of the chapters. Li Jin's
100 True Fans
(or the original, Kevin Kelly's
1,000 True Fans) both show the potential of this model — just by charging patrons
$5/mo, a simple audience of 1,700 fans will net an author a steady
six-figure income. This absolutely changes the way authors can
support themselves.
This also enables an improvement to the quality of stories. While
publishers have played an important role in distribution because
they are a filter on the entrance of new books into the market, they
also have front-loaded distribution costs, meaning that they can
only take a risk on a book if they predict it will do well. As a
result, they raise the floor on the quality of books that come out,
but also fundamentally limit the distribution + success of works
that break the mold.
Web serials are a different story. Authors can publish whatever and
whenever they want, and therefore they can be wildly more creative
with the structure, themes, and form of the stories they write. The
result is that while the average story quality does plummet, the
best works soar.
This, in addition to the fundamental medium on which online fiction
takes place, enables entirely new dimensions of storytelling. For
instance, worlds can be uniquely meticulous in their detail yet
breathtaking in their expansiveness. In a web serial, the authors
can offer readers a branching web of optional side-stories accessed
by embedded links, to be explored at a user's leisure. Want to
investigate an intriguing personal relationship, or just dive deeper
into this obscure aspect of the world? Authors can also play with
unique story forms, such as hidden (black) text indicating secret
events hidden in the background, only revealable if you suspect
something and highlight the right areas.
What I'm particularly excited about is how this world is just getting started. There are so many ways for literature to continue evolving, once it adapts to the expressive power of the internet and technology. One key idea is interactivity, harkening to prehistoric oral traditions, which involved the audience as participants in the stories being told. Another is personalization — books are static, but people are individuals, preferring slightly different stories, perhaps ones with a greater focus on character development, or cultural worldbuilding, or political intrigue. Web serials are swimming in the water of technology, and we can expect to see so many new literary experiences in the upcoming few years as people discover what this old medium, taken in a new light, can do.
As a longtime fan of the scene, I'm proud to support so many incredible authors and stories. If you're interested in jumping down the rabbit hole, here are some of my favorites:
A Practical Guide to Evil ↗, a story set in a world where the logic of stories — their tropes, roles, and narratives — actually drive the world. It follows a girl Named the Squire, apprenticed to the Black Knight who conquered her homeland. One of the most unique universes I've ever seen, with intelligent characters navigating a chess-like board of Stories where one misstep can place them in a Role where their Fate is to die.
Worm and Ward ↗, a hyper-realistic superhero story that makes The Boys / Marvel feel shallower than DC. It follows the story of a teenager with a pretty unconventional superpower who is forced to become a villain, and dives head-first, unprepared, into the world of 'capes'. Amazing at exploring the psychology of superpowered individuals, interaction and application of superpowers, and the types of societal dynamics / interests that would need to exist in the world for typical superhero tropes to be realistic.
Twig ↗, a biopunk story that follows several orphans in a world where bioengineering is developed in the early 1800s. An incredibly personal and introspective Bildungsroman in a very unique, alien setting.
Mother of Learning ↗, a progression fantasy following a magic-academy student who gets trapped in an endless time loop and has to figure out why he's there and how to escape. A mix of Groundhog Day + Harry Potter + Sherlock Holmes, this is a story with a delightful hard magic system that is somehow both deeply intricate and understandable. There's no deus ex machinas or handwaved logic here — when things are revealed, you can immediately see how subtle hints in the past yield the underlying laws that underpin the entire world.