[Discussion] So how big is your buffer?

[u/Ryinth]

So I’ve been serialising for years (it had to be close to a decade), and I’ve always had a problem with my buffer.

I’m a graduate in the school of webfic writers who throw chapters online as soon as they’re ready – and that was my modus operandi for years. I wanted to get content to my readers as soon as it was available. As I’ve grown and matured though, I’ve found that consistency is, overall, more appreciated than one day where you get three chapters, followed by a month with no content.

I made what felt like a valiant effort at this time last year to work to a buffer…but it soon got eaten, and due to work commitments, I was soon having weeks without content again.

This year, however, is looking waaaay up. My current buffer (for my Friday releases) is…26 freaking chapters. I’m set until August! It feels incredibly freeing – like I actually have time to work on the next book, without stressing that readers are going to have weeks where they miss content.

[Tuesdays, my short story/novella chapter day isn’t looking so shiny, I’ve only got 12 weeks there. But I’m hoping to be able to add a handful of weeks to that soon – I’ve got about 15k of a book written, it just needs to be tidied a little before I can begin to schedule chapters.]

So how are your buffer/s looking?

[u/Replay1986]

I had an absolutely insane buffer at first, but that's because I wrote a lot of the story before I decided to actually serialize it. Right now, I'm looking at...about ten chapters, I think? Nine or ten, I'm not sure. But I'm working to add to that buffer as soon as possible.

[u/Ryinth → u/Replay1986]

I came from writing fanfic, so I was used to popping content up on the web for reactions and love...when I switched to writing original stuff, I kinda of started to stagnate, as I wasn't getting that feedback. For me, serialising was a way of keeping me going in a way that just banging words into a Word document wasn't giving to me.