The Return of the Serial Novel and My New Book Deal!

Hello, all. I know Fridays are usually reserved for my weekly links roundup, but I'm postponing that for a super fantastic announcement. :)

For those of you who get Publisher's Marketplace, you've probably already seen it, but this posted last night:

		Fiction: Women's/Romance		Roni Loren's next story in her LOVING ON THE EDGE series about an innocent vet school student who joins her sexy neighbors at a BDSM ranch for one weekend of freedom before she starts her professional life, to Kate Seaver at Berkley Heat, releasing in serial installments, for publication in 2013, in a nice deal, by Sara Megibow of Nelson Literary Agency (world).

Photo by Robb North (flickr cc)Yay! So for those of you who are closely following my series, you may be wondering whose book this will be. Well, this is going to be Ian Foster's (from STILL INTO YOU) and Cela Medina's (Andre's little sister) story. Originally, it was only going to be the novella, NOT UNTIL YOU. But things have changed and now Ian and Cela get their own full story!

AND it's going to be released in the new (or very old depending on how you look at it) format of the e-serial. This means it will be released in sections. We haven't decided how many segments yet. Most likely 6-8, but we're going to determine where the natural breaks in the story occur before we nail that down. Each segment will be released once a week.

I am so excited about this project and about this format. I wasn't sure at first when I heard about the e-serial because I'm a person to devour books all in one sitting. But then I gave Beth Kery's serial Because You Are Mine a try and am finding that I'm really enjoying this kind of reading. Because the segments are brief, I'm able to finish one in two nights of sitting by the bathtub while my son bathes. It's kind of nice to feel like I completed something each time. And it keeps me immersed in the story longer. Sometimes I read so fast that I'm sad the story is already over. So this kind of makes it more of an experience when it's stretched out piece by delicious piece over time. 

So I was won over to the format. Then my editor contacted me wanting to discuss the possibility of turning Ian's story into a serial. I couldn't have been happier. Ian's story (who is going to be called by his last name Foster now--since by coincidence, Beth Kery's hero is named Ian too, lol) is different from my others. I haven't written a heroine this young and inexperienced before (though she's no pushover, Andre is her brother after all). It was a new challenge and a whole lot of fun. 

Dates are still floating around but this will release after FALL INTO YOU in late Spring or Early Summer.

And be on the look out for more people releasing books this way. The e-serial thing was starting to buzz in a lot of places already, but now that Amazon has released their Kindle Serials, expect to hear even more about it.

Here are just a few places that have tackled the topic lately:

The Revival of the Serial - Dear Author

Books on the Installment Plan via The Kill Zone

Ebooks anf the Return of the Serial Novel via SeattlePi

Beth Kery on Writing the Serialized Novel via USA Today's Happily Ever After

So that's my news. : )  

How do you feel about the return of the serial? Do you think it's a format you'll enjoy? (It seems people either love it or hate it, lol.)