You would still think this would scale better online than doing the promotion in person. Also the publisher is there to make a profit so presumably an author ca

You would still think this would scale better online than doing the promotion in person. Also the publisher is there to make a profit so presumably an author can spend the same amount on promotion a publisher would have spent for them and still get a better return. Maybe the answer is more akin to how bloggers gain a big following, writing shorter stuff regularly. Maybe if you started telling a story online in this format you could gain a following for your first full length novel.