[GCA10]

A lot of 19th century fiction was done this way. Authors (Dickens, etc.) tended to work from a loose outline and construct the details as they rolled along.

Peer at those books closely and you can see some odd detours that were shut down. Also some padding to get more segment-by-segment payments. But it's workable

[ellegriffin]

Absolutely, but it was completely profitable for the author. Alexandre Dumas earned about 10,000 francs ($65,743 today) per installment when he was poached from The Presse by The Constitutionnel in 1845. And it's estimated he was making about that much per installment writing The Count of Monte Cristo. People followed it like it was Game of Thrones!

(More on that here if you're interested: https://ellegriffin.substack.com/p/publishing-industry-truth

[kingsuper20]

Serialization was quite common in science fiction pulp magazines also.

It's interesting to consider the meta-version of serialization..novel sets. Nothing new here, the Oz books being an obvious example, but it's funny how it plays into a human need to both read about familiar characters or places and to have physical sets of books that match.

[Mauricebranagh]

Which is why there are page long descriptions of horses and carriages in the count of mote cristo.

[kesselvon]

The second half of Count of Monte Cristo felt like some serious word count padding