Inquisitor's Promise After Action Report (Article)

With 'Inquisitor's Promise' finished as a web novel, I want to reflect on the whole process. Also, an update on Germanicus Publishing moving forward.

On June 13, 2023, I finally posted the final chapter of my space opera web novel, Inquisitor’s Promise. Aeneas and his friends can now rest easy as their story is finally completed.

My own hard copy of Inquisitor’s Promise.

With that part of my project taken care of, I wish to talk about the whole process. This article will be a personal reflection on my experience with writing a web serial in Substack. Furthermore, I also want to use this opportunity to give an update on my plans moving forward with Germanicus Publishing.

The Origins of Inquisitor’s Promise

Though I only started putting pen into paper around January/February 2023, the seeds of what would eventually become Inquisitor’s Promise had been percolating for years. But I don’t want to get into the details since it’s way off topic. The point is that this project had been a long time in the making.

Once I finally started writing in earnest, it took me around two months to actually finish the first draft. Looking back, I am honestly surprised that I was able to do it that quickly. Of course, much of the story itself had been in my head for years as I implied. But even so, it was still surreal at how quickly I was able to write once I decided to commit to it.

Part of this is the fact that I had a lot of free time. But this by itself isn’t sufficient since I’ve had a lot of free time before, but I’ve never been able to write an entire (completed) novel before.

But once I actually got a whole manuscript with me, I was at a crossroads.

Substack

By the time I finished the first draft for Inquisitor’s Promise, I was quite familiar with Substack for quite some time. But it was only much later that I started to get the idea of writing fiction in my Substack.

However, my initial plan for Substack was to write shorter stories like flash fiction. Meanwhile, I was hoping to release my entire novel traditionally in places like Amazon (or perhaps even pitch it to a publisher).

But I was itching to get this story out - I didn’t want to tarry. I had a whole manuscript with me, and I didn’t want to simply keep it to myself. I’ve already spent years doing that with my fiction-based endeavors. At some point, I discovered people who publish novels as a serial in Substack. Being used to reading serialized fiction before, I finally decided to serialize Inquisitor’s Promise in Germanicus Publishing.

Publishing an Epic Novel as a Serial

But even after I decided to post Inquisitor’s Promise in Substack, I was still tarrying. At first, I intended to start releasing the first chapter after Easter – April 9, 2023. But as readers can discover from this Substack’s archive, by the time Easter rolled around, I’ve already posted 25 chapters.

I’ll spare you the details, my point in all this is that I was advancing at such a rapid pace. Even though I slowed down somewhat after Easter, I was still posting very rapidly – daily with the exception of Sundays, five of the posts being the novel’s chapters.

Though I don’t have hard evidence to prove it, I’m pretty sure that I had lost subscribers because of my overly prolific posting. I think some readers unsubscribed because they were overwhelmed by all the emails they received.

And that’s the problem. It’s not that I was rushing – by the time I posted a chapter, it had already gone through two rounds of editing. No, it’s that I put out so much stuff in so little time that readers may feel burned out.

Moral of the Story

One reason why I wrote this article is that I’m hoping to give my fellow Substack novel-writers some insight based on my experience in completing a serial novel in this website.

The first insight I can give is that having a backlog is good. Perhaps an obvious point, but my experience is Exhibit A for this. The reason I was able to consistently post chapters almost daily was because I’ve already finished the book itself. All the work I did since were editing. Of course, there were some significant editing, but having the whole story written down before I started publishing allowed me to maintain this rather tight schedule.

The second insight I want to give is that there is such a thing as posting too much. When you have a backlog, the temptation is to rush them out. I’m not saying that I regretted releasing Inquisitor’s Promise the way I did – if I had gone for a weekly schedule, it would have taken me over a year to finish the web novel¹. And I couldn’t have that.

However, there is probably a golden mean for the frequency in which one should release his novel’s chapters on Substack. And getting someone to follow your serial as it is being released instead of following from behind through binge-reading remains to be the prevailing issue for serial writers².

Germanicus Publishing Moving Forward

This brings me to how I want to take Germanicus Publishing moving forward. From this point on, this Substack publication will have a weekly release schedule – there will be a new post every Thursday, starting with this one.

My aim is to rotate between three weeks of fiction and one week of nonfiction. Nonfiction refers to articles and long-form reviews. Meanwhile, fiction refers to standalone flash fiction pieces and a future project that I will outline below.

Though all the chapters of Inquisitor’s Promise had been posted, my work with the novel in terms of Substack is not done yet. I intend to expand on this novel’s universe with the use of standalone shorter stories ranging from flash fiction to novelettes; these stories will all take place in the ‘Holy League Universe’. My prequel short story, A Princess of Lepanto, gives an idea on how this project will work. However, most of the stories will be even more removed from Aeneas and co.

But in the meantime, I will still be working towards a proper release for Inquisitor’s Promise. Amazon seems to be the likeliest place though I’m considering putting it on Lulu also. Thus, I’m by no means finished with Inquisitor’s Promise even as it is finished as a web novel.

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Thanks for reading. Before you leave, please consider leaving a tip for the author. Inquisitor’s Promise and Germanicus Publishing came from my labor of love, but labor nonetheless. Thus, I appreciate every bit of support.

1. Inquisitor’s Promise has 73 chapters. There’s about 52 weeks in a year. Do the math.

2. Not that I’m against binge-reading. But the ideal for serial fiction should be for readers to follow along instead of catching up from far behind.