Hi! Has anybody tried to publish their book on Facebook, say, just post one chapter a day on your timeline? This is what I intend to do (my book is finished and this is not like write-during-publishing chapter-by-chapter). My aim is to have more readers for my book (I don't care for money). I just wanted to ask if anyone has any experience using this method. Thanks...
If you want readers, put it on Wattpad or one of those things. Even if you have lots of Facebook 'friends', they won't all see the post and not everyone who sees the post will read it.
That's exactly the thing I don't want to do! (I've had experience with self-publishing site like this). Wikipedia: Wattpad is a writing community. It is a community of writers, not readers. So your book will be read by authors like you, whose desperate dream is to get readers for THEIR OWN book. They will read your book only in hope you will read theirs in return. Now, I am looking for readers, not writers and I appreciate that it is hard to open a (thick) book of an absolutely unknown author and start reading it. So nobody will do it. But in Facebook (1) You publish chapter by chapter, so it is already not a 'thick' book. (2) Some people are your friends and will read (at least copule of the first chapters) just because of this. (3) They will share it and you'll get more potential readers. (4) There are a lot of idle people reading Facebook, but none idle people read 'Wattpad'. (5) There is hope that after reading first, second, third chapter people will like it and will get to the end. Yes, there are a lot of posts in Facebook, but once someone read your first chapter and got interested, he or she will seek for the continuation. So I am wondering if anybody tried it.
On the rare occasions I use facebook, it's only to see pics of friends with brief comments on their life events. I think I would scroll right past anything so large as a chapter. Do you have enough friends on your facebook to make the effort worthwhile? I know I don't.
I reject the premise that because Wattpad is a community of writers, no one will read on it. Even more do I reject the premise that because Facebook isn't aimed at writers, people are more likely to read stuff you put up. 1 - If it's free, I don't think thickness has much to do with people taking a chance on you. 2 - Friends are just as likely to not read your stuff as strangers, it'll just be more awkward for them to admit it. 3 - There's no guarantee of shares, and if they're only sharing it because they're your friends, the next wave of theoretical readers aren't going to care. If you saw someone share something on Facebook that said "Here's my friend's novel, take a look", would you read it? I wouldn't. 4 - There are idle people everywhere. I don't even know how to dispute something this unfounded. 5 - Hope is a weak foundation to build a readership. Facebook is probably only superseded in being the worst format for a novel by Twitter. If you don't want to go with Wattpad, go and do your research into alternatives. If said research is worth is salt, you'll still end up going with Wattpad anyway because A) There's a reason it's as popular as it is and B)Your objection to it is based on a fallacy.
I think you may be a tad overcritical of Watpad. I don`t have much experience with it as a writer, but there are people that use it for reading. Many writers are themselves avid readers, and while the if I read you`rs you`ll read mine mindset probably does exist it hopefully isn`t all consuming. I`ve also known people that just use Watpad to read the stories and have never posted a thing, or don`t even write. If you don`t like the specific community there`s other similar sites such as Figment and Scribe. Also, while yes it is labeled a writing community it`s where people go for stories and writing, people don`t necessarily go to Facebook for this. Most of my facebook timeline is memes, and four sentence posts or emjois. The larger ones are normally just pissed off people ranting. The few posts I actually pay atteoin to are pictures posted by family, pictures by various artists and photographers I have liked, and things from authors.I don`t go to Facebook to read stories, but I would go to Watpad for a story.
To be honest, I rarely browse Facebook myself, as I am pretty busy. But I know many people who spend there much of their time. No, I don't only look at photos. If I see someone shared an interesting story or an article, I start reading it and if it is interesting, I click 'more' and many people do like me, as I see a lot of 'likes' and 'shares' for texts, not just photos. Now make friends in Facebook costs you just several clicks. You can have thousands of them pretty quickly if you want. Youtube is a website for video, so people expect to see something moving and not just listen to a voice.
I haven't tried it so I'll bow out, but I very much doubt this will get you read more than Wattpad or even sticking up an e-book on Amazon.
The extended writings that I see people share are all about subjects that a lot of people are invested in already: politics, animal welfare, and so on. Novels, not so much.
Kinzvlle, sorry, just one question: if you were not an author yourself, but would love to read. Would you go to Watpad to read a book?
Facebook isn't designed for this sort of thing, like Wattpad is. When you post your chapters on Facebook, here is what you're giving Facebook (from their Terms of Service): For content that is covered by intellectual property rights, like photos and videos (IP content), you specifically give us the following permission, subject to your privacy and application settings: you grant us a non-exclusive, transferable, sub-licensable, royalty-free, worldwide license to use any IP content that you post on or in connection with Facebook (IP License). This IP License ends when you delete your IP content or your account unless your content has been shared with others, and they have not deleted it. In other words, as long as you leave your content up, Facebook has a broad license to it. And even if you delete it, if other people have shared what you posted, Facebook retains the license to publish the material (you'll have to look to see how much you can back off this in your settings, but this is the default, and based on how they operate I suspect the ability to get out from under it will be limited because it is essential to Facebook's platform that they be able to do this). Wattpad, on the other hand, is set up for this sort of thing. You can release your work under various types of licenses, and you can unpublish or delete your work at your own discretion (as I understand Wattpad, based on my reading about how it works).
Well, thanks for your posts and I see your points. I got this idea, as I saw some lady posted her book like this on Facebook and I saw many people shared. Also for me: I write children/family/youth fiction books, so I doubt my readers (or their parents) will find me on Watpad.
Honestly, license is the last thing I am worried about. Of course, if someone starts publishing my book under his or her name, I will be upset. But in any other case for me - the more readers the better and I don't want to earn from this.
I'm not saying not to do it, but always be aware of what you're doing and how it affects your rights in the work and your control over it. If you post your book on Facebook, you've basically lost control over it. That may not matter. I don't know how successful Facebook would be, but if posting there was to get an enormous number of people interested in your work, then putting one book out in the wild and losing control over it might not matter to you. Not something I'd be interested in doing, but these days you can try just about anything so long as you do it with eyes open.
My book is already published free in many websites in the Internet (all under my name, so I don' worry about it) and even if I wanted I couldn't remove it, because many sites copy from other sites. I didn't work with Wattpad, I tried other services, but I will also try Wattpad, thanks for this! (I don't believe I will ever earn from my books, so I prefer publishing them for free, and also I really write for soul, not money). By the way: I believe that having a full control over your book is only possible if once written, you put it in the drawer of your table. Once you released it to people, it starts living its own life and you (as a parent) have lost the control
I would say it's a bad idea - certainly that was my initial reaction when I read your post. Here's why: 1. People will miss chapters because not everyone will see all of your status updates. This means there's no continuity for the readers who might be interested, which means even those who started reading will lose interest. 2. It would be difficult to track the chapters. As a reader, especially if I'm not invested in the book, I'm just not going to go crawling through your Facebook profile looking for the chapters in chronological order. What if someone reads Chapter 10 and decides they wanna read from the beginning, only Chapter 1 was posted 5 months ago and well, you get the idea. You'll give up. And what if someone can't seem to find the next chapter? Or what if the reader isn't even sure what he read was the latest chapter? 3. Let's face it, no one's gonna read an entire chapter in a status. I'm guessing a chapter is at least 5000-10,000 words. How would you bookmark it? What if you read a few paragraphs, enjoy it, go away for dinner and come back and shit the Facebook wall has updated itself in the meantime and the chapter post is gone, somewhere! Are you gonna scroll through your newsfeed just to find it again? And how long do you have to scroll for before you find your place again, even once you've found the chapter? I hesitate to read the descriptions beneath the pictures that pop up on Facebook is they're more than a paragraph long - three paragraphs I would still endure but the moment I see a wall of text, I'm moving on. And I'm a writer, and a reader, and I love to read. The average internet population does not enjoy reading walls of text online - as a writer I already have a higher tolerance for reading a mass of text on the screen and still I wouldn't do it. All in all, it sounds like it'd be a waste of your book and all the effort you've put in. I wouldn't do it. Treat your book with value and others may value it similarly. But if you as the author rate your own book so lowly, what chance do you have of people who don't know it and don't love it valuing it highly?
Unless you want to also give up copyright to your work, I wouldn't. Facebook reserves the right to reproduce anything anyone posts for promotional purposes. If you hand them a novel, they could even publish it (saying it's the first novel ever released in full on Facebook) and not give you a cut.
I think that although, on the surface, it can look as if lots of people are reading a post because they like and/or share it, this is not always the reality. People skim read on Facebook and other social media sites. Clicking like, or share doesn't mean they have really read the post. Pretty pictures and memes work, as do profound sentences, but other stuff not so much. You may get some shares and some likes, but it doesn't mean anyone is reading what you are writing. One approach that might work is to make a video of your story - a sentence or two at a time - printed not sound as sound is automatically turned off on Facebook videos unless you turn it up. People may stop and read words that come up on a facebook video if it grabs them: but that is a lot of work and not guaranteed to bring any readers. I have put some of my short stories on soundcloud (read by me) and have considered making a video too, but the work involved in turning a 500 word story into a video has put me off (so far) I run two businesses (not writing related) that have Facebook pages and trying to get people to take notice of what you post is really difficult. Most people who subscribe to your page don't even see your posts. I also agree that seeing posts out of order would be annoying. Post it on a blog (eg wordpress) or Wattpad or whatever, something where you can easily click to the beginning of the story, the last chapter or the next.
Read the fine print (if you can even find it; it takes some digging). And even if they couldn't, would you wanna take that chance?
Unless we were close friends, I would unfollow you on Facebook. Even if we were close friends, I would still think it's weird. I don't know, maybe it's just me, but it comes off as desperate. There's a difference between marketing and soliciting, regardless of monetary gain. Why not post that your book is available, on FB, on your wall for anyone interested? PM certain people offering a free copy or be even more direct and include a link/attachment in your PM already. Anyway, good luck.
What about posting an attention grabbing heading and then the link to each chapter on your timeline? Maybe something like: "John slowly stepped into the light. Even after so many years had passed she instantly recognized him. How could she ever forget her..." Find out who John is here: vvvvvv.ijustmadeupthislink.com/ch7 While posting whole chapters will probably get you hidden or unfriended a little sneak peek and a link won't be a bother to anyone uninterested in reading your work, but it's just a click away for anyone who does want to.
Advertise like crazy on your facebook page? Sure. Post attention-grabbing snippets that just beg a closer look along with a link to the full manuscript? Definitely. Offer your book for free on every self-publishing medium available and make that known on facebook? Sounds good. Publishing chapter by chapter on your timeline? Not so good. Others have already said why. So you saw it work for one person, kudos to them, but one anecdote does not evidence make. Try it if you must, you probably wont see harm come from it, but I doubt you'll see much reward either.
I realize this is an old thread, but in case someone finds it on a search on the topic: Even if I were going to publish a book online for free, I wouldn't use Facebook; I'd use a blog or other website. I'm always irritated when someone's primary online presence is Facebook, because I don't really use it, I make a point of NOT being logged on to it, and when I'm not logged on I can't see most Facebook pages. A blog or website would allow anyone to see it, logged on or not. I suspect that it would be better catalogued by search engines--I say that not out of firm knowledge, but because I don't remember EVER getting a Facebook link as a direct result of a Google search. And you could still post links to it on your Facebook page. I don't see Facebook as a place to present material, I see it as a place to link to it and talk about it. Well, a place for other people to talk about it; I hate Facebook.
