Monday, May 8, 2017

Resurgence of Episodic Fiction

If you've ever looked through all the thousands of ebooks out there, chances are, you've come across one that said 'season 'blah' episode 'blah.' Episodic, or serial, fiction is a popular format among ebooks. It allows the author to write more pieces in less time by publishing shorter pieces at regular intervals (often at once a week, every other week, or once a month) so readers get new stories more frequently and don't have to wait as long as with regular novels. Episodic works are very like TV shows in how they're done. You'll have a more complicated storyline that may or may not fully resolve at the end of the season while each episode also contains their own, less complicated, plots that resolve sooner. For a story to be considered a novel it generally has to have a word count of at least 40,000 (unless it's a middle grade story, then you're looking at 20,000-55,000 depending on whether it's upper or lower middle grade) though the exact word count ranges based on genre. With episodic fiction, each episode tends to be only 10,000 - 20,000 words (give or take). For the reader, this helps if they have a short attention span or simply don't have much time available for reading. They can still read a full story, but in much less time. Also, since the author puts out a new story more frequently than they would with a regular book, the reader doesn't have to wait frustratedly for the next installment. For the author, it's easier to write and they can start selling their stories much sooner. Episodic ebooks can also be more profitable. Besides the individual episodes, once a season is complete, it is often sold as an ebook set which may also be offered in a print-on-demand paperback form.


However, episodic fiction is not new. It's actually been around for a very long time with celebrated authors like Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Charles Dickens, and Alexander Dumas being among the many to publish this way. For a long time, paper and printing costs were very expensive so it was much more affordable for an author to publish their works as installments in weekly/monthly magazines or newspaper. It was only when advances were made in creating paper and printing methods that it became cheaper to publish the story in it's entirety.  This form of serialized publishing was common during the 1800s and early to mid 1900s with the penny dreadfuls and half-penny periodicals (or half-penny dreadfuls). Dime novels were also often serialized. However,  serialization began to go down as both printing costs went down and various forms of broadcasting started up. Apart from comic books (another example of episodic fiction), serialized fiction mostly disappeared until the internet where it is now re-emerging as a popular format.

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