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> Not sure if there is some way to iterate given online feedback.

There have been a some novels and novel-length works written a chapter at a time in public. The Martian by Andy Weir, for example is probably the most commercially successful. Many works by qntm (https://qntm.org/fiction) that are popular in this community have been written that way too.

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Weir may have invented a new genre: STEMcore. His narrator-protagonists face a series of puzzles which they resolve with imaginative STEM skills and... well, that's most of it. I mean, he sets up a pretty good near-future world and gives the protagonist one big problem to resolve that helps drive tension (making it a quick read), but ultimately you're reading a short story that ate a physics textbook.

What differs between STEMcore and classic Hard SF?

STEMcore (which, to be clear, is just a term I made up) mostly solves problems with STEM. Contrast with something like The Expanse which builds the setting from (some) realistic physics (plus a few enabling premisses) and mostly solves problems with politics and tactics.

I think Fifty Shades of Grey has had more commercial success than The Martian. It was originally published as an episodic piece of Twilight fan fiction (Master of the Universe)

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fifty_Shades_of_Grey

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