Webnovels to physical publishing?

[redfish]

Am curious if anyone had taken their webnovels to traditional publishing or self-publishing. Please let me know what that was like and if you chose to keep your webnovel up afterward!

[cherrystark]

I have self-published and I honestly have mixed feelings about it. In general, people still don't like the concept of web fiction. Especially on paid sites, they would rather have the story all at once rather than be nickeled and dimed into paying more. This does not mean that the web fiction industry is going to go bust. It just means that the authors are dramatic because they aren't earning the big bucks and want Amazon to do all the legwork for them. And readers are being dramatic because it's another schtick to get their money. I am making $$ self publishing but it's not a lot.

Please let me know what that was like and if you chose to keep your webnovel up afterward!

I took this in two ways. Depending on your publisher, you can't keep your webnovel up on sites like this. With my main series, I can't have it up on free websites like Tapas without going against their TOS. However on the other hand, I am still writing the series so I am "keeping it up".

[redfish]

I wanted to approach it the same way webcomics/manga are. You can read it online but also if you like it enough you can buy physical copies of the work.

I do suppose if you are with specific publishing companies it could complicate having your work online.

[cherrystark]

It just depends on your platform's specific TOS. I can have my work on different platforms so they all have to be paid. You can buy my books on Amazon in print or read digital copies.

The biggest piece of advice that I'm sharing these days is to think about your creations as a business. While it's totally fine and valid to post your stuff online for fun, if you plan on making an income online - you have to be thinking ten steps ahead. While I didn't use them last year, I'm totally planning on writing off my Canva premium bills and FB ad receipts as business expenses.

You also need to shop around for platforms. Tapas lured me in with the promise of earning money. While I stay for the community, I know that I'm not writing to a profitable niche here. But I'm on other sites that pay decent royalties and pay on a schedule so I can make my plans. Other sites hold tighter reigns, so it literally pays to do your homework.

[IndomitableX]

I am currently on the way of hybrid publishing (hybrid publishers are in the middle in the middle or trad and self publishing). I don't have the time to write and organise query letters to submit to many agents and be lucky to find one and after finding one, they will have to submit to certian trad publishers who might accept your manuscript and take 2-3 years to completely prepare and release your book to the world (the wait is worthwhile, but not when you are getting older every year). I also don't want to take on the burden of self-publishing which includes paying a professional editor to edit my manuscript (which is freaking expensive), or invest my money in ads after doing a litle internet research and it might not even work. I am not ready to buy an isbn which is like £80-90 for every format of my book (ebooks, paperbacks etc). I am not ready to register my copyright with another amount of money and at the end of the day earn either 50%, 70% or 35%. At the end of the day, I chose to go with hybrid publishers, ready to pay for the upfront cost and at the same time, keeping the rights to my novel and I don't think I am coming back to writing webnovels after my book is published.

[cherrystark]

You're reminding me of a list of things that I still need to do. I picked self-publishing because I was frankly at a loss about what to do next with my work. I wrote my main series specifically to be serialized. It doesn't fit the typical genre guidelines to work on a lot of other platforms and I don't have the mind to make something work on Patreon. With my income on Kindle Vella trickling off because it's still in beta, books became my last hope. It's still a pain in the butt to market my work, but it's nice to be actually earning some money on my work instead of dreaming about it. You know?

[IndomitableX]

lol, it's true. After researching and joining facebooks amazon groups, ingramspark group and following the big 5 trad publishers, I made a decision to self-publish on google books first because of the large crowd of books flooding amazon everyday before I found out about hybrid publishers

It is certainly true that it feels good to make money of some thing you created instead of sitting down to dream about it until days and years pass by and then you realise that you should have done this earlier while you had the time, patience and money.

[cherrystark]

It is certainly true that it feels good to make money of some thing you created instead of sitting down to dream about it until days and years pass by and then you realise that you should have done this earlier while you had the time, patience and money.

Oh yeah! My brother and I are both writers. In the area where we live, there is a strong subculture of writers. However, aside from each other, we both only know two MAYBE three people irl who have published. Everyone else falls into the cycle of writing their 100k word novels, having friends beta read/edit it, and MAYBE try to send it into a publishing house. I was the first person my brother knew who took the leap and started publishing online.