Event Recording
September 27, 2022
Serial publication was once fairly common, with novels such as Madame Bovary and Uncle Tom’s Cabin first appearing one chapter at a time in periodicals. Today, tablets and digital subscriptions have helped revive the format. With representatives from Kindle Vella and Substack along with authors who have succeeded at serialized fiction, this panel will discuss the process, platforms, and best practices for publishing episodic fiction or a complete serialized novel.
Mary Bly is a Shakespeare professor and chair of English at Fordham University, as well as a New York Times bestselling author of historical romance novels written as Eloisa James (world sales of 7 million). In 2022, she launched a story on Amazon’s Kindle Vella, which reached #3 on a leaderboard with over 20K likes. She is on the board of directors of the Authors Guild.
Sophia Efthimiatou is the head of writer recruiting at Substack. Previously, she was the Humanities Director at Onassis Foundation New York, and has worked as an editor at McGraw-Hill, Bloomberg, and Princeton University Press.
Elle Griffin writes novels and a newsletter about being an artist in the age of the internet called The Novelleist. She is the author of Obscurity, a gothic novel she serialized for her newsletter subscribers in 2021, and Oblivion, a utopian novel she is currently serializing. Subscribe at ellegriffin.substack.com.
Virginia Milner is a senior manager of product management for Kindle Direct Publishing, leading the Kindle Vella product, business, and marketing teams. Virginia’s previous projects at Amazon include Great on Kindle and helping independent brands build their business selling on Amazon. Virginia started her career in the Bay Area working in public relations at LaunchSquad helping early stage startup companies, including Okta, Mindflash, and sharethis, tell their stories. She has a BA from Columbia University in New York and an MBA from the Haas School of Business, UC Berkeley. A San Francisco native, she now lives in Seattle with her husband, son, and lhasa apso dog Lola.
Erica Ridley is a New York Times and USA Today bestselling author of witty, feel-good historical romance novels, including the critically acclaimed Wild Wynchestersbooks. Other popular series, The Dukes of War, Rogues to Riches, and The 12 Dukes of Christmas, feature roguish peers and dashing war heroes amid the splendor and madness of Regency England. When not reading or writing romances, Erica can be found eating couscous in Morocco, zip-lining through rainforests in Costa Rica, or getting hopelessly lost in the middle of Budapest.
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