I am a series-minded writer. I didn’t ask to be, and I think my writing life would be a lot less complicated if I wasn’t, but the fact remains: When I write one book, there are five or ten or even twenty sitting in the back of my head waiting for their turn.
Publishers have a love/hate relationship with novel series. They love them if the first books in them are wildly successful. If they’re not, they will kill them without hesitation. While standalone novel writers are treated no differently, the impact on a series writer is much more damaging. Imagine planning fifteen novels in a series, and writing according to that plan, and then being told by your publisher after book five is released that you can’t write any more in that series (this happened to me with StarDoc.) It’s the same as telling a standalone writer that they can only publish one-third of their novel.
The three main problems with publishing a novel series are the same no matter what the genre:
Supply: series writers must publish quickly to sustain reader interest. Unless the author is a well-known and popular bestseller, this means releasing at least two books in the series a year.
Plateau: most midlist series hit their peak sales at book three and then begin to drop off. Readers who are new to the series don’t want to invest in more than three books to catch up, and readers who have been only casually following the series begin to lose interest.
Availability: It’s rare for any author to have a mass market title in print longer than two or three years. Also, if the early titles are released in hardcover, those are usually remaindered and go out of print as soon as the mass market edition is released.
Publishers have to make money, and if a series is not profitable for them, they will not continue publishing it out of the goodness of their hearts. That’s the biz. Series writers not only have to accept this, they have to plan for it.
I’ve found my own solutions to the problems of publishing a series, unorthodox as they may be. I’ve fought the supply problem and sustained reader interest by releasing my own promotional e-books that tell the stories that happen off stage or in between my print releases. I’ve also written prequels, sequels and alternative POV stories to my novels in print.
It’s difficult to get new readers to try out a series in mid-publication, but the promotional e-books also help me out there.
Availability is a real headache – I’ve had a publisher keep seven titles in one series in print but kill one of the titles in the middle (used copies of which are now selling for forty bucks on Alibris.) I’ve never stockpiled copies of my out-of-print novels, but some authors do and send them to readers who can’t find earlier titles. Another way to handle the OOP title problem is to ask the publisher to release the title in e-book form for a limited time as a promotion for new novels in the series.
Rather than wait and see what’s going to happen with our series books, I think writers need to plan ahead now. Recently I’ve been getting kicked around for ending my Darkyn series rather abruptly at book seven. What none of the drop kickers bother to find out is the reason why; after I turned in book six my publisher told me to stop writing it at book seven and do something new.
I hadn’t planned on ending the bestselling series of my career so soon, but after being handed the usual vague promises about the possibility of writing more Darkyn novels sometime in the future (this is basically what they told me when they tried to kill the StarDoc series) I knew I had to do something. I wasn’t putting my readers through years of hell again in hopes that maybe the publisher was telling the truth this time. So I made the very tough decision to end the series with book seven. The readers needed some closure, and that was more important to me than simply hoping they’d get it, maybe, someday.
Shared universes, settings and conflicts may be the way to circumvent the lack of publisher support for series writers. Historical romance writers have been doing it for years by writing in a specific time period; mystery writers use common protagonists like federal agents or private investigators. My next series, the Kyndred books, feature all new characters, conflicts and settings, but they share the same universe as the Darkyn novels. This welcomes new readers as well as offers something that will appeal to readers who enjoyed the earlier series.
I’m also looking at the way I’m planning series and changing how I write them. The Kyndred books will all be standalones set in the same universe. The stories will share a unifying series conflict through the world building, and feature some crossover characters, but they won’t have unresolved or interconnecting storylines. I’m also putting a choke chain on myself and keeping the series very short – I’ve sold two books, and I plan to write no more than five total.
I think we series writers have to be realistic and consider first the possibility of sustaining a series in print before we commit to writing one. This means taking a hard look at the market and the expectations of the publisher. No one offers or signs ten book contracts anymore; those days are history. These days midlisters are lucky if they get a two or three book offer. Your publisher can and will tell you what you want to hear, not what they’re going to do, so look at the series writers they’re already publishing. Talk to the series writers who are working for them, too – are they being built by their publisher through long-term support, or are they being hit with short-term performance expectations?
To date I’ve written seven series: Darkyn, Grace Chapel Inn, Heat* (the last two Jessica Hall novels) StarDoc*, Stranded (the first three Gena Hale novels) White Tiger Swords, and the Zangian* novels. The three I’ve starred have yet to be completed. This year I will finish StarDoc, and when I do, I will also finish the Zangian novels, because fortunately they share the same universe and I can use that to wrap up all the threads left hanging in both. But the series I was never permitted to complete still bother me — and I still hope one day to get back to them and finish what I began.
What are your concerns with writing novel series? Have you come up with any new ways to combat the inherent problems, or are you writing what you want and hoping for the best?
Related link: Laura F. Winner’s PW article The Series Still Rules
