A New Zealand Halloween
When I was a kid Halloween had barely arrived in New Zealand. It was still seen as an American tradition. But fast forward 20 years, and one street in our neighbourhood has designated itself as the ātrick or treatingā street. This yearās decorations were quite well done and Mr Mini NW enjoyed pretending to be a pirate.
And this is what the cops got up to:
But on to some actual book related news…
Oathbringer by Brandon Sanderson
Oathbringer is coming out in the 14th of November as an ebook etc. but Iāve just been over at Tor.comĀ and noticed that theyāve been releasing a couple of chapters every week for the last couple of months. Except they are only planning to release up to chapter 32. I guess if you are enjoying it you then have to purchase it to find out what happens? Iām really only familiar with reading traditional books where you can read as much as you like in a sitting.
Would you wait a week to find out what happens in the next chapter?
I was really surprised to find the chapters are generating a lot of chatter. Each set of 3 has around 300 comments on it, with people discussing what they liked, didnāt like and what they thought would happen next. Itās almost like a modern reincarnation of a book club with everyone reading along at the same pace.
Is this the way books are going? Bite sized chunks? What do you think of the serialisation of books?
Navigating Worlds 
Serialization of books is for those who:
A) Have no patience or self control
B) Don’t have the attention span to actually sit down and read a whole book in a couple of sittings
C) are total fanboys who want to be part of a group instead of being able to stand on their own opinion
Needless to say, not a fan of serials here š
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I feel like it was an idea dreamed up by a marketing team somewhere to get more mileage out of the āproductā.
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Absolutely! I’d totally agree, IF, this hadn’t been going on since the 1600’s with Don Quixote. Dickens was also serialized.
So Sanderson’s in good company.
But that doesn’t mean I like it š
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Haha obviously I had no idea!
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It’s an old idea that cycles through time. It really depends on the publishers and the audience š
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It doesn’t bother me. That used to be how people read books, in bite-sized chunks in newspapers and other such publications.
It sounds fun to me, being able to read a little bit at a time and then chat about it with friends- rather like watching a television show every week instead of binge-watching it on Netflix.
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It seems like itās a much older approach than I realised! Thatās a good point.
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Hi Mr & Mrs NW, serialisation is alright depending on the material. It worked for King of the Rocketmen and The Lone Ranger in Saturday morning cinema, it was even used by Batman on television but to find out how that worked for him you’ll need to tune in next week, the same Bat-Time, the same Bat-Channel!
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I like to be able to read a book in a full sitting at times or the ability to do so. I dont have the patience for this! Lol.
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I’ve known about the serialized chapters for Oathbringer for a while but I just can’t read books in bits and pieces, which is why despite my anticipation for the novel I pretty much just ignored the updates. Tor ended up sending me an ARC of the book though, so having the entire thing in hand is a different story. After three weeks of reading (though I wasn’t in a rush) I should be finished today. It’s a GIGANTIC book, which I think might be another reason why they decided to release up to chapter 32 online. If they want to generate buzz and have reviews come out in a timely manner, it might make sense to give fans a head start.
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I saw somewhere that Chapter 32 is well before the halfway mark. Three weeks – wow. Iāll keep an eye out for your review of it. From all the comments it looks like theyāve got a lot of people who are enjoying it so far.
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I didn’t even know they were publishing chapters already!
As much as I am looking forward to it, I’d rather wait until I have the whole book.
Halloween is quite popular in Australia as well now. People love to dress up and go trick or treating. Fortunately not so much in our street, we only had one girl knock on the door and I only had one bag of chocolate anyways haha! Normally we don’t even have sweets at home apart from our Yum box that gets delivered once a month š And no way I give anything of that away!!!
Your decorations look like lots of fun!
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I have a friend who writes this way; I’m not sure why, whether he had difficulty getting published or whether it just started out as an online fun thing and grew. But he has followers all over the world now who love his series.
Then of course there’s The Martian by Andy Weir; he didn’t get anywhere with publishers so he resorted to doing it as an online series then due to its popularity it got picked up.
Historically this was quite common too, there are a couple of famous books (none of which I can now remember, but I’m sure Dickens was among them) that were published weekly in a newspaper as a serial and then later published together as one book.
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I think itās a cool idea, but I wouldnāt be able to wait a week for the next part of a book.
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My two cents: I write serials (basically) in that the stories have to be read in a particular order to really know what’s going on. This is pretty typical of fantasy from my experience. But each book is a full-length book (i.e. about 300 pages). Now, I could break a trilogy into 9 books or 18 books and make a whole lot more money, but it feels really gimmicky to me and inconsiderate of the way most people read. Serialization online – on a blog, for example – is totally different. It makes sense because online readers often looking for something short and quick.
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Itās good to hear a writerās perspective on it. I can see how writing full length books in a serial manner makes sense. You can build on what went before.
I guess in this case the release of 32 chapters is like a very extended sample of the book. At least people will really know if they want to buy it or not by the time they get to end of the free chapters.
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I suppose that’s true. And hopefully the hook is so deep, readers will go for it. This industry is changing rapidly, so who knows what the norm will be five years from now. I’m also a binge-reader so the dribble would drive me nuts. Ha ha. We’re all different – one of the beauties of writers and readers. š
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