What is your opinion on publishing a full novel here?

[Goodalphamale]

Depends on what you expect from publishing it. If you are a new author without a great following, it might not be the best idea to publish the story as a whole but rather to divide it into chapters. It takes time to get to know the intricacies of this place so you might want to consider all of the angles.

I'm kinda working on a novel

 

[Ms_Macabre]

I'm in a similar boat; I have a story that I started for fun, but a handful of trusted people I know are pushing me to finish it and publish it for real, and I'm not sure if having it on Lit would cause me problems down the line. I would obviously take it down before I speak to publishers but I'm not sure what to do.

 

[PennameWombat]

I have two stories here that are essentially novels. Adrift in Space and Predators. First one is 70K words and the latter is 74K. I published them here because they tie into one of my extended universes ("Mel's Universe," see my author page if you're interested), and until I get around to retiring (oh, oops, that happened last week!) and reworking that for 'mainstream' publication, it's all here. I released both as single stories, not as installments, because I didn't write them to serialize. I do have other chaptered stores which in aggregate are novel length, but those are explicitly written to be released serially, in usually 15-20K word chunks.

The scores for "Adrift in Space" have generally kept it in the 'H' range, "Predators" just below. One key is that the former is in SF&F and the latter First Time, and IMHO, Category has an effect on folks diving into longer stories, like the SF&F audience.

 

[PennameWombat]

I'm in a similar boat; I have a story that I started for fun, but a handful of trusted people I know are pushing me to finish it and publish it for real, and I'm not sure if having it on Lit would cause me problems down the line. I would obviously take it down before I speak to publishers but I'm not sure what to do.

Just as general advice, if you "plan to speak to publishers" (and I assume, traditional publishers or agents and not vanity presses) DO NOT post it on LitE. At all. Not anything that you want to query. Why? Posting it on a public site means it will be "published," and publishers want First Publication rights. The exception, of course, is if you self-publish it and it turns into a massive hit ("The Martian," Colleen Hoover's work, etc.), the publishers will find you.

Post other stuff? Sure, if it's not directly tied into what you plan to send into the query churn.

If you expect to self-publish it later (for example, via Amazon's KDP), up to you. Posting on LitE doesn't affect ownership of your copyright. And that's what's important to KDP, if it was publicly available, so long as you own the copyright, you're okay. Whether it's a good strategy to post here first is a broader discussion. Some folks put it into the 'marketplace' and eventually post it here as well, if they feel the commercial potential has waned.

 

[Ms_Macabre]

Just as general advice, if you "plan to speak to publishers" (and I assume, traditional publishers or agents and not vanity presses) DO NOT post it on LitE. At all. Not anything that you want to query. Why? Posting it on a public site means it will be "published," and publishers want First Publication rights. The exception, of course, is if you self-publish it and it turns into a massive hit ("The Martian," Colleen Hoover's work, etc.), the publishers will find you.

Post other stuff? Sure, if it's not directly tied into what you plan to send into the query churn.

If you expect to self-publish it later (for example, via Amazon's KDP), up to you. Posting on LitE doesn't affect ownership of your copyright. And that's what's important to KDP, if it was publicly available, so long as you own the copyright, you're okay. Whether it's a good strategy to post here first is a broader discussion. Some folks put it into the 'marketplace' and eventually post it here as well, if they feel the commercial potential has waned.

This was exactly what I was looking for. It's so hard to know or find out. Do you work in publishing? Thanks for this.

 

[Blind_Justice]

I do have at least three novel-length stories on the site and I like the large reader pool and relative lack of effort which goes into publishing here. No cover artworks to worry about (which is kinda tricky for a blind dude like me) and the only thing I really need to focus on is having my shit decently edited.

Not getting paid isn't a big deterrent. I'm not nearly prolific enough to have the amount of stuff in the paid market needed to nudge the needle anywhere. I do get some tips through my Patreon (for which I'm super grateful considering how little I've posted in the past three years).

 

[PennameWombat]

This was exactly what I was looking for. It's so hard to know or find out. Do you work in publishing? Thanks for this.

Not really. But my professional life involved me with intellectual property matters, my name's on a bunch of patents and I collaborated on the odd technical article in journals and wrote ridiculous amounts of software. Unfortunately, I also am very familiar with the concept of 'work for hire,' so I don't actually own any of it . In my waning years of employment I've upped my attention to fiction writing and have taken the odd but resolutely unsuccessful run at trad publishing.

So on that note, not sure what resources you've used. Rather than me explain things, I like these articles (just ignore the offers to sell you stuff for now, the info is good, also, I have no connection to Reedsy, just use it for info):

Basic steps to go through to publish, publishing paths, editing, covers, launching: https://blog.reedsy.com/how-to-publish-a-book/

Dive into self-publishing versus going traditional: https://blog.reedsy.com/guide/how-to-self-publish-a-book/pros-and-cons/
This article also has a section going over publishing rights, which is what I touched on in my previous post. Publishing on LitE uses up first publication (making a work public), but unlike working with a mainstream publisher, the conditions here are:

"By publishing at Lit, you are simply granting us a non-exclusive right to publish your story on LitErotica."

Which means you can publish it anywhere else that doesn't expect exclusive rights (and mainstream publishers almost always will only do exclusive) and is happy doing a reprint.

Small presses and the Big 5: https://blog.reedsy.com/small-press/

A listing of publishers: https://blog.reedsy.com/publishers/
This last list has a key line, "Accepts unagented submissions". This is whether the publisher only accepts queries through agents, or will accept direct from authors.

 

[Ms_Macabre]

Not really. But my professional life involved me with intellectual property matters, my name's on a bunch of patents and I collaborated on the odd technical article in journals and wrote ridiculous amounts of software. Unfortunately, I also am very familiar with the concept of 'work for hire,' so I don't actually own any of it . In my waning years of employment I've upped my attention to fiction writing and have taken the odd but resolutely unsuccessful run at trad publishing.

So on that note, not sure what resources you've used. Rather than me explain things, I like these articles (just ignore the offers to sell you stuff for now, the info is good, also, I have no connection to Reedsy, just use it for info):

Basic steps to go through to publish, publishing paths, editing, covers, launching: https://blog.reedsy.com/how-to-publish-a-book/

Dive into self-publishing versus going traditional: https://blog.reedsy.com/guide/how-to-self-publish-a-book/pros-and-cons/
This article also has a section going over publishing rights, which is what I touched on in my previous post. Publishing on LitE uses up first publication (making a work public), but unlike working with a mainstream publisher, the conditions here are:

Which means you can publish it anywhere else that doesn't expect exclusive rights (and mainstream publishers almost always will only do exclusive) and is happy doing a reprint.

Small presses and the Big 5: https://blog.reedsy.com/small-press/

A listing of publishers: https://blog.reedsy.com/publishers/
This last list has a key line, "Accepts unagented submissions". This is whether the publisher only accepts queries through agents, or will accept direct from authors.

This is amazing, thank you so much for this! It's so hard to know where to start.