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“Make them cry, make them laugh, make ‘em wait.”

St. NicholasOnce Dick­ens made seri­al­iza­tion pop­u­lar, and prof­itable, it became a 19th Cen­tu­ry pub­lish­ing norm. There was the work of Dick­ens of course, but think of Uncle Tom’s Cab­in, War and Peace, Sher­lock Holmes, and many, many more. They were issued in seri­al­ized form. Recall that most impor­tant 19th (and 20th) cen­tu­ry mag­a­zine for young peo­ple, St. Nicholas, which ran seri­al­ized nov­els. Grow­ing up, I read the seri­al­ized nov­els of Thorn­ton W. Burgess in the dai­ly pages of the New York Her­ald Tri­bune. All fol­lowed the cre­do of Wilkie Collins, who, when speak­ing of the method­ol­o­gy of seri­al­iza­tion, said, “Make them cry, make them laugh, make ‘em wait.”

The longest book I’ve writ­ten, Beyond the West­ern Sea, was my attempt to write a Vic­to­ri­an-like saga. At 675 pages there was noth­ing of that length in the children’s book world in the pre Har­ry Pot­ter era, 1995. Indeed I decid­ed to write the book in short chap­ters, with each chap­ter hav­ing a cliff-hang­ing end­ing, so as to pro­pel my read­ers to read just one more, as if had been writ­ten for seri­al­iza­tion. [In fact, the pub­lish­er was so ner­vous about the book’s length that they issued it in two vol­umes, which proved to be a mis­take.] When the book was done it came to my mind that I might try to do actu­al seri­al­iza­tion in news­pa­pers. That was the birth of Break­fast Seri­als.

Breakfast Serials logo

 

Why did seri­al­iza­tion become so pop­u­lar? In the 19th Cen­tu­ry, lit­er­a­cy was spread­ing among mass­es of peo­ple. Buy­ing ser­i­al install­ments was a lot cheap­er than buy­ing a book. More than that, a seri­al­ized sto­ry means, beyond all else, a shared sto­ry. Social read­ing. Think of the book club expe­ri­ence, but mul­ti­ply it by thou­sands! Think what a relief it is (say in a class­room) not to have the fast read­er spoil the book for the slow read­er by announc­ing what hap­pens next. They can’t, because no one knows. Read­ers are always on the same page.

To be continued …

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