Serialized novels used to be common, though. Many of Dickens's novels were famously serialized weekly. Alexandre Dumas' famous novels The Count of Monte Cristo and The Three Musketeers were also published as serials. There are plenty of other examples. More recently, apparently In Cold Blood and Bonfire Of The Vanities were both initially published as serials.
Even today, comic books are effectively serialized narrative stories that are pretty reliably published on schedule and have writers who have to keep up for months at a time.
> Authors tend to have phases of inspiration, and lulls in between.
Different writers have different approaches to work. Some writers work in highly productive sprints with long fallow periods, and you're right this model probably wouldn't work well for them. But some novelists do work steadily (Stephen King I believe still tries to write for a couple hours every single day and only takes relatively short breaks between novels), and the fact that this model used to work for a number of books that are now considered classics seems to indicate it can still work in at least some cases.
I'd actually be more worried about the consumer side - the death of magazines makes this model tougher. A given author can reliably produce a novel over the course of a year or two, perhaps, but probably not indefinitely (comic books solve this problem by having writing teams do arcs and then swap out the writer). Magazines used to bundle multiple authors, so subscribers weren't affected by the break period of a single author. In a world where people subscribe to individual authors on Substack and there's no bundling of many authors writing, yeah, it's a tougher sell.
Even today, comic books are effectively serialized narrative stories that are pretty reliably published on schedule and have writers who have to keep up for months at a time.
> Authors tend to have phases of inspiration, and lulls in between.
Different writers have different approaches to work. Some writers work in highly productive sprints with long fallow periods, and you're right this model probably wouldn't work well for them. But some novelists do work steadily (Stephen King I believe still tries to write for a couple hours every single day and only takes relatively short breaks between novels), and the fact that this model used to work for a number of books that are now considered classics seems to indicate it can still work in at least some cases.
I'd actually be more worried about the consumer side - the death of magazines makes this model tougher. A given author can reliably produce a novel over the course of a year or two, perhaps, but probably not indefinitely (comic books solve this problem by having writing teams do arcs and then swap out the writer). Magazines used to bundle multiple authors, so subscribers weren't affected by the break period of a single author. In a world where people subscribe to individual authors on Substack and there's no bundling of many authors writing, yeah, it's a tougher sell.