Book Advice Please!

[Callirai]

Hello! I was am currently working on a couple of stories. I am still quite a bit away from writing the rough draft. I am currently in the process rounding out character designs and figuring out more of the plot.

Random fun fact about me, I am also an artist. I debated for a long time if I should create my stories into webcomics or books. I finally came to the decision that I preferred the stories to be in book format and that I wanted to be able to draw or sketch different characters and sort of do "fan art" for my audience.

However, with coming to the decision to do it in book format, I have also realized I have a lot of questions. I am curious where others post the books. How do you go about posting them? Do you do a chapter at a time or the whole thing? Are there multiple platforms? Do you have any preferences for platforms? Would it be more financially smart to build an audience and then self publish the book and have it for sale? Do you have any advice when it comes to writing a book or posting it anywhere?

Thank you to anyone who takes the time to reply! O greatly appreciate it!!!

[Panqiuyan]

Well i normally post a chapter per episode on here. sometimes i might break a chapter into parts. it is up you though. i also post on webnovel but you might need to explore both to figure out which one you might like.
here is an example of my story

Thorns of the Forgotten Rose | Tapas

[LJ2]

Hi, I have just recently started writing a book of my own, and had the same questions! you can look up "places to post books" and lots of choices will come up. personally, I enjoy looking at Wattapad, and there are a lot of people on the platform that will read your book. in my opinion, posting your story on a website and creating an audience before publishing your book is more financially smart. and when your ready to publish your book,you can post on whatever website you put your book on that you are publishing your book, and include a link to where you could buy it. To answer one of your other questions, I tend to write whenever I have sudden motivation, so the length of how long I write depends on how motivated I am. if you suddenly become really motivated to write, I recommend getting to your book as soon a possible, and writing as much as you can.

[joannekwan]

When posting your novel, you'll find that different platforms skew in favor of different subjects. On Tapas, romance and all its subgenres do very well. On RoyalRoad, fantasy (particularly isekai and rpg inspired stories) is the main draw. And Wattpad, romances with 'bad boys' get a lot of attention.
I've been with Tapas a long time, even before it started hosting novels, so I'm a bit biased. But I think authors have a good chance of building an audience here. There isn't an insane amount of competition like Wattpad, so your work won't get as buried.

And how much you post depends on what platforms you're on.
Tapas likes smaller sized uploads, since the majority of readers are on mobile. Pros: since you're posting smaller parts at a time, you can have a larger buffer. Usually my manuscript's chapters can be split into around 4 Tapas episodes at around 800 to 1k words an update.
I know readers on other sites like to read whole chapters at a time, so best to check out the works that do well on each platform and follow accordingly.

It's always better to build up a following and try and get them to buy your work that way. Even if they cannot make a purchase, they might share your work and you can expand your reach that way. Build an audience, build up hype for your work, and you will have a better launch than publishing something on Amazon cold with no following.

Advice: If you are looking into traditional publishing, check out the publishers you want to shoot for. Publishers will not sign a work that has already been self-published and made available to purchase (unless its numbers are outstanding). This can even extend to works published on webnovel sites, but some publishers are more lax about it.

[Maps]

I post chapters. From personal experience, I found it helps you gain more readers to release chapters consistently (once or twice a week) than to drop all the chapters at once.
Also, if my chapter is too long to finish (on Tapas because of the word limit) I just make Part 2, Part 3, etc. and post them all at the same time.

[Callirai]

Thank you for all of the advice from everyone!!! I really appreciate it and I will take anything else that anyone can give!!!

[darkone4587]

Well personally on this site I upload chapters at a time in bulk and then spread them out over a period of time using the scheduling feature to post somewhat consistently. On other sites I post in bulk posting full volumes at a time with gaps in between uploads.

But that just what works for me personally, but everything depends on how you like to upload and post things.