A Wise Mare Once Told Me Some Good Tips On Chapters Publifications

This is what User: GMBlackJack told me...

My preferred method of writing is to finish the entire book's first draft before official publishes, and then release the chapters as they are edited.

Naturally, I can't ALWAYS do this, sometimes due to length (SotS is over a million words) and sometimes due to the interactive nature of the story (see League of Sweetie Belles. Nothing but endless collaboration.)

That said, you seem curious about the reasoning behind these actions, so why don't I go ahead and outline my preferred method of writing fics/books and give explanations as to why each step/action is better than the alternative in my opinion? I'm going to ignore prewriting since you're more interested in publishing timing, but I'll at least mention that it's always better to have a full outline all the way to the ending. (I will also mention that there's a 50/50 chance that I throw the outline out in the middle and make a new one, but let's focus on the 50% of the time I DON'T do that)

So, first off, I write. I write starting from chapter one and get all the way to the ending before anything is officially published. Why? Absolute assurance to my readers that no story will ever be abandoned if I can help it. (The only abandoned stories on my account are a collaborative round-robin story and one I tried to write on the fly, both stories that were written specifically to experiment and break out of my mold. So the 'complete everything' mentality seems to work for the most part.) This is not to say I don't receive feedback. I have editors and pre-readers who read things as I post them, but this actually isn't necessary. My most recent story, Amber Ashes, received almost no pre-reader checks before it was completely done, and I think it's going to be one of my better works.

This 'write until it's done and DON'T PUBLISH ANYTHING' mentality is a difficult one to maintain, I'm told. But you'll never disappoint readers this way. I have abandoned many, many projects in my time. I have seen many, many abandoned projects. I will never subject anyone to that if I can help it. And you know what? I rarely abandon projects these days. I've got a ~2mil word fic completed and slowly publishing! Wootwoot! So yeah, it helped there too.

Anyway, after it's completely written, I edit - and once I finish editing a chapter, it either goes live or goes into a "hold" are to be published later. Here's the deal. You may think that publishing it all at once will get people interested, like showing them a full novel. Hahano. At least not on this site. Publishing a ton of words at once will scare readers away, and if you update too fast it'll grab them and make them go 'welp, that's too much effort'. You have to lead them in on a trail like candy corn or else they turn tail and run from word overdose. I know this both because A) I released the first five chapters of Songs of the Spheres at once, which was a mistake and B) because I currently have like four updating major fics and it's diverting traffic between them and C) my prereaders complain to me that I write too fast. Heh. Yeeeeah...

So, basically, rope them in with a few fast updates when the story first goes live to get that sweet-sweet first-page bonus and then update like once a week. I prefer to update every six days and (sometimes) at different times in the day to get maximum exposure. Different people log on at different times of the day. Work with that if possible.

-GM, master of Qs.

To Follow Up on That...

Reasons to put an edited chapter on hold:
Primary reason: I just posted a chapter yesterday and my chapters are 10k words long. Overflow danger.
Other reasons:
> Other stories need updating.
> Don't want to conflict with something else.
> I suspect now isn't the best time to do it / have a good time in mind to do it.
> I'm experimenting with the timing of publishing to see which times are the best to do it. (These tests are still inconclusive, by the way, the masses seem to have no pattern.)

On people wanting to get a bit more meat:
The people who will really, REALLY like the type of story you write will probably like a meatier start. Something to get them going. Those are the people who will defend your work to its dying breath.
Unfortunately most of the people on this site like short one-shot fics. I put hours upon hours of effort into 100k word monstrous books and my most upvoted fics are the jokey one-shot fun-time ones. Granted, they are GOOD, but they deserve less praise than the books. It's just the audience you've got - they like short and sweet, so you gotta rope them in with a noose or old-timey comedy cane.
What grabs their attention: Good concepts, well written introductory blurbs, and an interesting eye-popping image. What does not grab their attention: word-count. They want small stories. Unless they're specifically looking for longfics, at which point your story usually doesn't register until around a few hundred thousand words. (cross 1 million, you get new readers, it's a curious effect.)
And if you want more views, spread it out. Rushing a story to its end quickly means fewer people are going to see it. Updating once a day is a tricky proposition because it gives you the limelight and the rush of activity but it dries out quickly. You want to draw it out, but keep giving them more. (I still recommend the every-six-days schedule if you are able to give yourself a "hold" backlog).

And to end it all...

Actually having a oneshot that ends at about 10k words is still fine, one of my most popular stories sits around that point. I guess that's still a short story length. But yes, too much larger than that, people can't read it in one sitting, yada yada...

I do recommend writing MORE for your enjoyment than for the people here, only trying to get the numbers in relation to the writing you enjoy doing. I could probably make a lot with a bunch of short stories. I still spend all my time on monstrous books because they mean more. What matters is that you enjoy what you're doing.

Views are just a bonus, really.

-GM, master of views.

This helps me a lot. Hopefully, it'll help inspire you too! Check out their work!