One of the worries expressed by people new to the idea of subscription learning is whether learners will actually stay subscribed to subscription-learning threads.

As evidenced in other blog posts here, getting people to pay attention doesn't have to be a problem, though it can be. Strategies that work include requiring learning engagement, creating relevant interactions, building interesting learning events, tracking progress, encouraging interpersonal competition, providing rewards, et cetera.

We know that people aren't hard-wired to avoid subscriptions. People have been subscribing to magazines and newspapers for more than a century. Charles Dickens had people subscribing to his books back in the 1800's. Steven King has done the same more recently.

Now we have more evidence. As reported in The Boston Globe, the modern serial novel is hot, hot, hot! Indeed, it says, "Wattpad is a leader in this new storytelling environment, with more than 2 million writers producing 100,000 pieces of material a day for 20 million readers on an intricate international social network."

If you're interested in subscription learning, Wattpad might be worth a look–not as a delivery device, but as a way to generate ideas for your subscription-learning efforts. Or, if you're lazy, you could just decide that storytelling is the key and incorporate elements of storytelling into your subscription-learning threads.

Here's an example of an author whose 110-part series has been read over 1.7 million times!

If you've seen anybody using story-telling for subscription learning, please let me know!