Serial (literature)

At that time, books remained a premium item, so to reduce the price and expand the market, publishers produced large works in lower-cost instalments called fascicles.

Serialised fiction surged in popularity during Britain's Victorian era, due to a combination of the rise of literacy, technological advances in printing, and improved economics of distribution.

[3]: 13  The wild success of Charles Dickens's The Pickwick Papers, first published in 1836, is widely considered to have established the viability and appeal of the serialised format within periodical literature.

Alexandre Dumas wrote at an incredible pace, oftentimes writing with his partner twelve to fourteen hours a day, working on several novels for serialised publication at once.

The difference in writing pace and output in large part determined the author's success, as audience appetite created a demand for further instalments.

[5] In the German-speaking countries, the serialised novel was widely popularised by the weekly family magazine Die Gartenlaube, which reached a circulation of 382,000 by 1875.

[7] Bizarre Happenings Eyewitnessed over Two Decades was serialised in Xin Xiaoshuo (T: 新小說, S: 新小说, P: Xīn Xiǎoshuō; W: Hsin Hsiao-shuo; "New Fiction"), a magazine by Liang Qichao.

[10] With the rise of broadcast—both radio and television series—in the first half of the 20th century, printed periodical fiction began a slow decline as newspapers and magazines shifted their focus from entertainment to information and news.

[12] Starting in 1984, Tom Wolfe's The Bonfire of the Vanities, about contemporary New York City, ran in 27 parts in Rolling Stone, partially inspired by the model of Dickens.

In 2005, Orson Scott Card serialised his out-of-print novel Hot Sleep in the first issue of his online magazine, InterGalactic Medicine Show.

In 2008 McCall Smith wrote a serialised online novel Corduroy Mansions, with the audio edition read by Andrew Sachs made available at the same pace as the daily publication.

[14][15][16] Conversely, graphic novels became more popular in this period containing stories that were originally published in a serial format, for example, Alan Moore's Watchmen.

Aspiring authors have also used the web to publish free-to-read works in serialised format on their own websites as well as web-based communities such as LiveJournal, Fictionpress.com,[17] fictionhub,[18] Kindle Vella[19] and Wattpad.