Any tips on self-publishing fiction on the web?

[jjharley]

Hello all!

I've been considering putting up a couple of full-length stories on my personal website. They're not fanfiction or anything like that, all characters and storylines are of my own creation so I feel the only relevant place to put them on the web is from my own website, considering it's the only place I have almost complete control over.

Having said that, has anyone got any tips for how best to format these stories on the web? Should I give the contents of each story it's own HTML page with hyperlinks to each chapter formatted in HTML? Should I have the whole story on one page with each chapter under a seperate heading, or should I publish the files as an EPUB or PDF?

Any recommendations or guidance on how to do this would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks!

-- Joe

[ThunderPerfectWitchcraft]

While I have no experience in the release of fictional texts, I would recommend to do both: Put them onto separate HTML pages and link them - this is the way to make them available easily to every visitor of your page. Then put them on as PDF/epub and search for places to post them, as you'll a hard time to route traffic onto your page.

[jjharley]

While I have no experience in the release of fictional texts, I would recommend to do both: Put them onto separate HTML pages and link them - this is the way to make them available easily to every visitor of your page. Then put them on as PDF/epub and search for places to post them, as you'll a hard time to route traffic onto your page.

Seems like the best course of action, thanks for your help!

— Joe

[ThunderPerfectWitchcraft]

You're welcome. Gonna check back for your stories ;)

[TheFrugalGamer]

Also if you do both as suggested above, the contents of your stories will be indexable by search engines, which can be either good or bad depending on what you want. It'd certainly help if you have characters with unique names that people would be likely to search for.

[ThunderPerfectWitchcraft]

It'd certainly help if you have characters with unique names that people would be likely to search for.

Don't want to derail the thread, but: If I would become aware that a author is SEOing his works I'm likely to stop reading instantly. But probably I'm somewhat of an fogey in this aspect.

[TheFrugalGamer]

Don't want to derail the thread, but: If I would become aware that a author is SEOing his works I'm likely to stop reading instantly. But probably I'm somewhat of an fogey in this aspect.

Well I'm not sure what genre the OP writes in, but it's normal for Fantasy and Sci-fi characters to have unusual names. I figured it would come in handy naturally, not on purpose.

[ThunderPerfectWitchcraft]

Well I'm not sure what genre the OP writes in, but it's normal for Fantasy and Sci-fi characters to have unusual names. I figured it would come in handy naturally, not on purpose.

You are - ofc - right. Was just a thought that itched me after reading your post ;).

[erikhoudini]

I've been self publishing a novel on neocities since the start of the summer. Biggest issues I had was really understanding it's about readability, I had to take a different approach to than to my mainsite. Things like reading fonts on as many different screens as possible, mobile first design actually making more sense in this context.

Feel free to use any of my source code to help share your writings!
https://gaslightchronicles.com/