Here is the full transcript of author Elle Griffin’s talk titled “What If We Release Books Episodically?” at TEDxSaltLakeCity 2024 conference.
Listen to the audio version here:
TRANSCRIPT:
The Future of Books
Thank you. What if you could follow your favorite book the way you follow your favorite show? What if you could get a new chapter every week, comment on those chapters in real time, communicate directly with the author and other readers, and even influence where the story might go? This is the future of books.
It’s an exciting one for readers who follow and interact with their favorite stories live. It’s also exciting for authors who publish their first stories, their first drafts for their biggest fans while being paid by a monthly subscription instead of by a book sale. That’s what I did.
Publishing My First Novel
After I completed my first novel, I decided to publish it for my newsletter subscribers. I sent the first four chapters out for free, then invited readers to become paid subscribers to read the rest. Every Friday, I sent new chapters to my subscribers via email.
Every Monday, I sent essays documenting my process and what I was learning about serial publishing along the way. When I started publishing my book in 2021, I had 1,700 newsletter subscribers. By the time I finished it a year later, I had 6,000 subscribers and had earned close to $20,000.
I even printed 25 collector’s edition copies for readers who subscribed at my premium tier. I chose serial publishing because the alternatives weren’t great. The problem with the publishing industry is, well, have you read more than five books this year?
The Decline of Reading
But have you watched more than five episodes of a television series? Almost a third of Americans don’t read at all. The rest read only 15 minutes a day.
Meanwhile, the average American spends two and a half hours scrolling social media every day and the same amount of time watching video content. That’s 15 minutes spent reading five hours on other media. Americans just don’t buy a lot of books, much less read them.
Of the two and a half million books sold online in 2020, only 268 titles sold more than 100,000 copies. 96% of books sold less than 1,000 copies. You might be thinking, two and a half million books sold in a year?
That’s still a lot. People love to point out that publishing is still a $28 billion industry. But radio is a $22 billion industry.
The Rise of Video Streaming
They’re nearly the same size. Compare both to video streaming, a $375 billion industry, that’s close to 15 times the size. As an author, spending three years writing a book only to sell 1,000 copies for $10 each didn’t sound enticing.
After I ran the math, I realized a better idea would be to charge readers a monthly subscription. If I earned $10 a month, instead of $10 a book, I’d earn $120,000 a year from those same 1,000 readers. This is not a new idea.
The History of Serial Publishing
In fact, that’s how some of my favorite authors did it. In 19th century Europe, authors like Charles Dickens and Alexander Dumas published their novels in a portion of the weekly newspaper devoted to fiction. They were wildly popular.
Readers couldn’t wait to get their hands on the latest chapter of “The Pickwick Papers” or “The Three Musketeers.” When Alexander Dumas published “The Count of Monte Cristo” in the mid-1800s, it was published in 18 installments for a weekly newspaper in Paris. 10,000 subscribers followed Edmund Dante’s every move as he planned his escape from the Chateau D’If and took his revenge on his betrayers.
Readers were captivated by these stories. And that was good business for the newspapers, who developed a larger following over time, but also for the author, who was paid by the line, even by the word. In 1845, Alexander Dumas was paid 10,000 francs per installment.
That’s $65,000 in today’s dollars, per chapter. Could you imagine an author being paid $65,000 per chapter today? If serial publishing was such a successful model in the past, I wondered if we could bring it back.
The Success of Serial Fiction in China
Could we release our favorite books? Could we release our favorite television series in weekly drops? The country’s largest reading platform allows readers to find and follow their favorite authors online.
They get new chapters weekly, even daily, and often receive behind-the-scenes commentary from the author. Some books have gone for thousands of chapters and millions of words. Readers might follow their favorite series for decades.
One app is bringing that to the United States. It has more than 95 million users who spend more than an hour reading on the app each day. 80% of those users are in their early 20s or younger.
The company says the serial fiction market is worth more than $100 million and is growing rapidly. Many popular series have already been made into films, and more than 100 film projects are currently in the works. One popular series, written by a 15-year-old girl for her online followers, was eventually picked up for a three-book publishing deal, then adapted to the screen.
The Rise of Serial Fiction Among Younger Readers
When it debuted in 2018, “The Kissing Booth” became one of the most watched films in the world. And serial fiction is on the rise among younger readers. Close to 70% of Generation Z read with their phones, compared to only 50% of older generations.
And they’ll gladly invest their dollars in their favorite writers. As younger generations grow up, they might not be reading or buying books, but they’re following their favorite authors online and spending hours each day reading their stories. Personally, I have found this a much more motivating reason to write.
Publishing My Second Book as a Serial
If my first book had sold only a couple hundred copies and earned only a couple hundred dollars, I might not have written a second one.