A Novel’s Life After JukePop

The Road Presents Itself by T. Phillips Holland is a refreshingly colloquial crime story set in ancient Rome. Its author is currently doing book signings.

What happens to a serial once it has run its course? Just like a TV series may be released on DVD, a serial novel may be released in other formats.

No, this isn’t about my own story. I posted Chapter 22 this week (that is about half of the entire novel – the exact length depends on editing). This post is about other people’s serials and what happened to them after running on JukePop Serials.

The most voted for novel in the history of JukePop, the dark detective comedy Hobson & Choi by Nick Bryan, was self-published (with an extra short story included) a while back and can be purchased through Amazon and other sites. A sequel was published only a few days ago, and you can listen to a podcast as well.

T. Phillips Holland turned her serial into a book last year, and judging from the reviews on Amazon, it seems to be faring very well. She is currently doing events such as book signings.

Other writers crowdfund their books to finance hiring an editor, a proofreader and a cover artist and advertisng the project. One of them is Virginia McClain who ran a succesful Kickstarter campaign last year after finishing her serial on JukePop. Her book was released just a few days ago.

Virginia McClain crowdfunded Blade’s Edge through Kickstarter last year. It is out now with this stunning cover.

A new feature on JukePop itself actually offers authors on the site a crowdfunding opportunity so that they can to let readers invest in turning their serials into books. Kevin A.M Lewis, whose novel was one of the first to be funded in this way along with two of Brian Guthrie‘s, has written an excellent post on how it works.

Finally, some novels that start out as serials are picked up for traditional publishing. Last year, Black Hill Press held a competition, their Summer Writing Project, specifically for JukePop stories and picked three serials for publication. In the course of the competition, they also interviewed several of the participants for their podcast.

It’s safe to say that a novel can have a life after serialisation, and if it is done right, running a story as a serial first can have its advantages. – It’s possible to get feedback as the tale progresses and establish an audience on the way. Of course, publishing companies who are only interested in first rights won’t want to publish it, but if you are aiming to crowdfund or do other things with the story, serialising can definitely be one way to start the journey.

If you want to take a closer look at the serials-turned-books mentioned above as well as a number of others which were not used as examples in this post, please take a look at my JukePop Published Pinterest board. I think there are some great novels on it.