You do not have to delete it if you don't want. You can delete the chapters, and then reupload them.
You can edit your chapters until reaching your last in number and then add new chapters. Before doing it, announce it to your readers, so that they know the change will appear and which chapter they have to go to continue the story. You can also add quote in the beginning of each chapters you will edit to said something like this chapter is part of the previous chapter (Number) and so on on each of them.
Or be a risk taker and go 500 per chapter?
Yes, and don't bother to complete the sentence. Let it be a true cliff hanger!
I think that is mostly due to the nature of the web novel genre (Is it a genre???) that tends to do very well with being short, thus faster to read between breaks or downtime, like commune or between-period. Longer chapter tend to take more time, and investment to complete, which most of SH demo don't really look for. I prefer to sit down and read anything that is 5-7k+, which only happens at either the end of my day or off day.
Most readers like chapter between 1/2k words, and I don't know how you related that to cut your creativity, look at the chapter you write and you will find some part when you could "break it" to make two chapters.
500 is short and useless, what do you want to complete with that, Updating 8 chapters in a days when you write one (in your previous number of word) chapter to have more visibility ?
I was joking.
We never know
I see such a method as cutting creativity because you're automatically limiting the story you want to tell in ONE chapter to 1-2k words, which isn't to say it can't be done, but it just feels like a destructive limitation. I write until the story of the chapter is complete- Like if you were watching an episode of your favorite show. Would you want it to randomly end smack dab in the middle because "oh, run-time limit has been reached, tune in next week!"
It depend where you cut it. You can write your chapter how you want and then try to find good place to cut IF you want to make shorter chapters. Most web novel are serial and published through time, you won't have the whole volume instantly when you read this type of story. On another note if you read a volume/book or a light novel who are often made into volume, then yes you have your full story in one go.
I released 8k word chapters for one of my novels that is now on hiatus. I don't think many readers liked the length.
