Serialisation: a way to get readers hooked?

Margaret’s Story started life on Wattpad where it appeared as a serial. It was updated daily and each part would end with a hook designed to lure the reader on and pull them into the story.

‘Would things get better? We’ll have to see.
Stay with me and my history.’

It’s generally accepted that poetry is difficult to sell. Given the competing media and our shortened attention spans I don’t completely understand why.  Bite sized posts are the order of the day, so you’d think short concise pieces, well expressed would be popular.

The truth is that to an extent they can be as social media stars like the Instagram Poet Rupi Kaur have proved. Her self published work Milk and Honey, promoted on social media, was picked up by publisher and has become a best seller but is there a market for something longer?

I’m convinced that serialisation is an excellent and underused resource for building an audience. My first experiment on Wattpad was Summer of Sixty Six an account in verse of England’s World Cup win and the frustrations and delights of experiencing it from, of all places, Germany.  It was popular with those who read it but failed perhaps to find it’s target audience.

Margaret’s Story, now available as a paperback or for kindle from Amazon, was I think more successful and certainly more ambitious. Summer of Sixty Six was free verse whereas Margaret’s Story is Sixty pages of rhymed couplets.

Dickens famously delivered all of his novels in serial form. I can’t help speculating how he would have taken to social media. I think he’d have had to adapt his style a bit. There’s no space for meandering description however gifted a writer you are.

I’d love you to buy my book  but if you want to sample first the first few chapters are still on Wattpad, it’s available, if you are signed up,  on Kindle Unlimited where you can read for free but still earn me a few pennies. Or, if you are interested in the serialisation on social media idea, follow me on Twitter where I’m sharing drip sized bits three times a day.

Hopefully, you are gripped by the content and will want to follow. Watch this space for the next gripping instalment.