Julian Fellowes to Serialize His New Novel

Julian Fellowes: Member of the House of Lords, Actor, Screenwriter, Director, Novelist

Julian Fellowes, creator of the popular television series Downton Abbey, has decided to introduce his new novel, Belgravia, to the world as a serialization via an app especially designed for the novel.  According to The Telegraph, subscribers will have a new chapter of the book delivered to their device of choice on each of eleven successive Fridays.

 Each instalment will be delivered in text and audio formats, and come with multimedia extras including music and family trees. Customers can either subscribe for £9.99 or pay £1.49 for each instalment which will be sent to their device every Friday. Alternatively, fans who prefer can wait until the printed edition of the book is published in June.

It is not all that surprising that Fellowes has come up with such a different way to market his novel.  His timing could not be more perfect because striking while the iron is hot is never a bad thing in marketing a product - and the Julian Fellowes iron will probably never be hotter than it is today.  The six seasons of Downton Abbey recently ended in the U.K., and the period drama's final season is currently being aired in the U. S. (episode 3 of season 6 has just been broadcast).  

You would be forgiven if you think this is Fellowes's first novel, but  according to the linked article, he published one called Snobs in 2004 and has two romance novels to his credit  (under the pen name Rebecca Greville).  I'm a bit curious to see how this all works out for Mr. Fellowes and whether or not it might serve as a model to be used by other writers in the future.

In this video, Mr. Fellowes points out that this is not a new television series...but in my mind I can't help but add the word "yet" to the end of that sentence.  It just seems inevitable.