feuilΒ·leΒ·tons πŸ”–
I'm a huge fan of web serials. It's a niche interest, but my opinion is that web serials are both the future of writing and its most powerful medium. While the general public consensus is that they're cheap or trashy β€” admittedly, some works fit the stereotype β€” I've spent enough years in the community to have read stories that 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 a pretty bold claim, but there are some major structural advantages to online fiction that make it possible. The most prominent factor is the new business model that underlies online fiction, which is both more sustainable and favorable to the author, compared to traditional publisher-led distribution. This model has rollover effects to the readership β€” specifically, a large number of people have easy access to works, while the most devoted fans have more opportunities to interact with and explore their favorite franchises. Additionally, the reduced reliance on publishers removes filters that enable more radically creative and interesting works to appear. Most importantly, however, the unique medium of online fiction gives a massive advantage to works that are web-native, by opening up entirely new modes of interaction and story exploration that weren't possible before.
Among these factors, the economics of web serials has by far the most apparent effects. While people typically associate free things with cheaper value and lower quality, in a world with unlimited, zero marginal cost distribution, this assumption breaks down. The true cost of writing a book is the worldbuilding and creative IP of the author, which is effectively a constant effort. The final price of the good doesn't correlate with any marginal production cost, but is purely correlated with the gravity and cultural capital of the IP, which grows and matures continuously over time.
As a result, authors can thrive on a completely different business model than that of traditional printing businesses. Instead of deriving value from the distribution of the story, authors monetize the continuous attention from the true fans of their series. Similar to how people pay for merch and tickets to see their favorite artists, 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, native to the age of the internet. Works are mostly free to view and publish new chapters weekly, just like our favorite Netflix shows, or the great literary works of old in their newspaper feuilletons (see: The Count of Monte Cristo). Creators 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 β€” 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.
There are also structural factors that tend to improve the quality of stories. While publishers have played an important role in distribution because they are a quality 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 can 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 are free to publish whatever and whenever they want, and 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 β€” 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 β†—, a story set in a world where the logic of stories β€” their tropes, roles, and narratives β€” 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 β†—, 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 β†—, 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 β†—, 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 β€” when things are revealed, you can immediately see how subtle hints in the past yield the underlying laws that underpin the entire world.