SciFi and Fantasy Book Club discussion

I am a first-time writer. My SciFi novel is about 300K words in non-English language. As it is not easy to get people to read a long novel, I am thinking about showing synopsis of about 7 thousand words in my personal blog or in a form of short novel in amazon. The long synopsis will contain almost all key stuff in the novel. If readers are interested it, they can purchase the ordinary novel for details.
I have never seen writers do it yet. How do you think about the idea?
Thanks for comments

To be honest, I don’t think this will work- I can’t imagine many people are going to want to read a 7 thousand word synopsis of a novel. I certainly wouldn’t!

I think you’d be better off working to edit the novel, either cutting it down or splitting it up into a series of shorter novels.

Why would anyone bother with the novel after reading a 7000 word synopsis?

What's left to learn?

I heard it could be a strategy. i.e. writers can send 7000 words to a magazine to be published, if it is good.
Regard it a WAY of promotion.

I would definitely look into a free glimpse of a very long novel, say, the first few chapters, to see if I want to read all of it. If the story seems interesting to me in the first place, of course.
It's not very likely that I would read a long synopsis, though. Catch my interest with the first three sentences of the blurb.

James wrote: "I am a first-time writer. My SciFi novel is about 300K words in non-English language. As it is not easy to get people to read a long novel, I am thinking about showing synopsis of about 7 thousand ..."

Hi James,
I have a similar problem, which I posted about here :-

https://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/...

I have decided to split my writing up, leaving me with Book 1 around 170K words.

I do not think your idea of a long synopsis as a free sample will work well from a sales p.o.v.

My first thought for my series was to write a short novel as an introductory free offer. I don't think that will work for me, as the events in the story do not fit that approach. As an alternative, I am considering writing a parallel story about the back history of one of the main characters who appears later in my books. If I do, I will put it out there as a free novella.

Of course theorising about all this is one thing, finding the time to do it is another.

Happy writing - Nick

A novel that size is a big ask, even for an established writer like a King or a Sanderson. You've got to have a great beginning to get a reader hooked and a relationship with a publisher to get something so long to print.

Write what you want to write, and I wish you luck in your pursuits, but what you have described is a challenging path to publication.

Ines wrote: "I would definitely look into a free glimpse of a very long novel, say, the first few chapters, to see if I want to read all of it. If the story seems interesting to me in the first place, of course..."

Tor does this for even their successful authors (Scalzi's new book has the first few chapters on tor.com for example). I'd put up the first several chapters - enough to give people a feel for the book, ending at a decent breakpoint.

I'd also ask yourself a) why is this book 300k words and does it really need to be about 1000 pages and b) whether there's a natural break point about 1/3 to 1/2 of the way in that allows the story to be split into 2 or 3 books. Asking people to read 1000 pages in a single go is intimidating. Asking them to read the first 350 page book in a trilogy that's completed is not.

James wrote: "I am a first-time writer. My SciFi novel is about 300K words in non-English language. As it is not easy to get people to read a long novel, I am thinking about showing synopsis of about 7 thousand ..."

I post the first few chapters of my books here on goodreads. You could do the same. Give the reader a bit of insight of how you write, if its to their taste and see if that helps generate any movement towards your book.