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Rating:
Archive Warning:
Fandom:
Additional Tags:
Language:
English
Stats:
Published:
2021-10-01
Words:
539
Chapters:
1/1
Comments:
11
Kudos:
118
Bookmarks:
15
Hits:
762

Reasons to post oneshots in a series instead of as chapters of a single work

Summary:

If you’re an author who feels awkward or guilty about posting one shots as standalone fics instead of adding them as chapters to a single story, here are some reasons why readers love it when you post them one by one. I've also included reasons why authors might want to post them separately for their own benefit.

Notes:

I'm going to preface this work by being very clear: authors can choose to post their writing in whatever format they prefer. This work is not meant to shame or belittle anyone, nor is it meant to be used to harass an author into changing their posting style. This is intended to provide authors with perspectives to consider. The final decision is and always remains theirs to make.

Work Text:

In no particular order:

  1. Readers can only kudos a story once, and if you have multiple stories in the same fic, they can only give you that heart one time even if they want to give you more.
  2. Some readers search for works based on word count. Readers who are looking for short fics won’t be able to find yours because the word count will look large. Readers who are looking for longfic won’t want to click into yours because they can see it’s a bunch of short stories instead of one long one.
  3. Having multiple stories in the same fic means creating a large wall of tags to cover all of the stories and characters. Many readers find it difficult to find the information they’re looking for when there are too many tags.
  4. This can also lead to your work looking like a crossover when it is in fact separate stories. Readers who are looking for crossovers will find your work and be disappointed. Readers who avoid crossovers will filter yours out and not even see it. 
  5. Posting your oneshots as a single fic with a single set of comprehensive tags also means that readers won’t have any idea of which chapter a particular tag belongs to, so warnings are less effective and rare character/rare pair lovers won’t know which chapter contains the person/people they most want to read.
  6. If a reader wants to bookmark one particular oneshot, they need to bookmark the whole collection of stories that you've posted as one fic. This can make it hard to find the chapter they’re looking for later.
  7. If a reader wants to recommend a particular story within your work, they’ll need to direct friends to that particular chapter of your fic. If they are recommending it to someone who isn't an AO3 user, that new reader will be confused. 
  8. It all gets more complicated when a reader is an AO3 user and has their default view set to Entire Work. 
  9. Subscribing to a series is just as easy as subscribing to a fic.
  10. Readers can see the full list of tags on the series page, but each fic will only have the tags associated to that individual story.

And now for some reasons why an author might want to post their works as separate standalone oneshots instead of as a single chaptered fic (again, in no particular order):

  1. As mentioned above: more kudos 🎉 (and other stats, if you like that kinda thing).
  2. Sometimes you get an idea to turn a oneshot into a twoshot or more. If it’s already a standalone fic, that’s so much easier to do.
  3. You can gift specific fics to individual people instead of gifting them a fic with a whole bunch of stories in it and telling them which one of those 30 stories is for them.
  4. It gives you more freedom to experiment because you’re less hung up on what you did in the chapters before and feeling like you need to "be consistent" in some kind of way.
  5. When you allow yourself to take up more space, you feel more confident in yourself and your abilities.
  6. You get really fast at filling out the metadata on the new work form.