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
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I can’t escape series writing, either. I once set myself a specific goal to write a standalone, but by the end of chapter three, I had two secondary characters who needed their own stories and five potential new plots to explore…
But because reality kills that new-idea buzz right quick, I’m trying to think in terms of three-book arcs now, rather than twenty-book epics. Even if the next three books are set in the same universe, they won’t be so intimately related the reader has to commit to six or nine or twelve books in a series to get the full grasp of what’s going on.
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If left to my own devices I’d likely never end one of my extended series, Kerry. Thinking in groups of trilogies the way you do is smart, and publishing three books is definitely easier than twenty.
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If you are thinking about writing a series, is it a good idea to know where it ends from the get-go? Like 3 or 4 books and say, that’s it — after this I’m doing something different?
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I think it’s a good idea to have a general idea when you want to finish a series, Bethany, but the flip side to this is that your publisher may want you to write more novels than you had planned. That happened with my first three romance novels: I only outlined a trilogy and then intended to move on to something different. The publisher then asked for three more books in the same universe with crossover characters from the first trio.
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Such a timely topic for me, and a good chance, I hope to get some advice.
Actually, my question is a two-parter. Part A – I have been working on a series for a while, and I’m up to ten or more characters/stories that I’d like to tell. But the reality indicates that this is not likely to happen. So how do I “convert” (for lack of a better word) those later titles in such a way that I can hang on to the characters and/or stories and perhaps use them as either stand alones or in a second, separate series? I simply can’t stand the thought of never writing these stories as the characters are already so real to me. So while I want to introduce them as part of the Series 1 world, I’m also feeling compelled to keep them under wraps so that they don’t get killed off as part of the end of the series.
Second part of the question – I’m having a really tough time deciding whose story to tell first because of the very fact that most likely I won’t get to tell them all. It’s like choosing between my children, and I can’t manage to focus. If I sit down to come up with an overall series arc in order to help me figure out who needs to do what when, I have no idea how many stories I would have to spread the entire arc through. I’d hate to think I had, say, five books, only to get halfway through the overall arc and get shut down after book 3.
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Lynn, you’ve got some tough decisions to make, and some of them are going to depend on the genre you’re writing in. Let’s tackle Part A of your questions first:
You can always use characters you planned for later books as secondary players in subplots of your early series novels, as long as they don’t prove to be more interesting than your protag and primary characters (if they are, they should be the protagonist.) Using subplot threads to tell the stories of secondary characters is a decent substitute for not being able to give them books of their own.
Another way to tackle the problem is to write their stories as free e-books to give away to readers as promotion for your print novels. I’ve had great success with that. You may not get paid for them (although some writers have done stories online for which they ask donations) but writing and self-publishing stories that NY won’t buy allows you the freedom to finish your work the way you want.
As for Part B, choosing among our cast of characters seems to be a universal problem for series writers. My method is to choose characters for later books who a) have the most appeal for me, because I have to be very interested in them to do a novel-length story and b) who I think will appeal to the readers based on their feedback. Sometimes those two factors are contradictory (often the characters I really love are the ones the readers seem to hate the most, or the characters I hate are the ones who get all the fan mail) so when it comes down to choosing between my personal preferences and reader feedback, I go with what the readers tell me they want.
If you’d rather not consciously choose between your characters, the old method of putting all their names in a hat and drawing one at a time still works, and will automatically relieve you of the guilty of having chosen one character over another. Fate will be to blame.
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One more thought — I mentioned what you decide will depend in part on what genre you’re writing in. Romance readers collectively do not like big casts of characters, more than one or two subplots at the most, and they definitely do not like continuation stories. If you’re thinking about writing a series that will be marketing as romance, you’ll have to trim down a lot of what you want to write to meet their expectations.
SF readers seem to have no problem with big casts or lots of subplots, but they hate continuation stories, too. And please, God, do not end your SF series book on a cliffhanger, because the hate mail is unending and vicious.
Fantasy stories fall into different categories — you can pretty much do whatever you want with epic fantasy as long as you keep giving them quests and dragons, but urban fantasy is like crime fiction, in that the readers don’t seem to want resolution or too much change or fluctuation in the characterizations or storylines. Some UF even reminds me of crochet directions: build it*, populate it, tell the adventure, kill the red shirt characters, repeat from *.
Horror you can do whatever you like. Horror readers are just the best, most forgiving readers there are, in my opinion. Just make sure whatever you do it’s scary and disgusting.
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I didn’t plan on writing a series. I’m one of the lucky ones in that my first book was popular enough to warrant sequels, and I had enough ideas to provide.
I’ve taken an episodic approach: I make sure each book has a stand-alone story. That way, readers can pick the series up in the middle and not be lost, and there’s at least some sense of closure after every book. I do have an overarcing idea, and threads that have continued from book to book, and I know what the last book in the series looks like. I just don’t know when it’s going to be.
Lois McMaster Bujold’s Vorkosigan saga is my model of how to write a good series.
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After what happened with Robert Jordan, may he rest in peace, I started thinking more about my final books in my ongoing series, and how ticked off I’d be if I couldn’t write them. I started writing the last book in my SF series soon after that. It was finished before the two books I had under contract were even outlined, but it was a relief to finish the manuscript, mark it “If I get hit by a truck, make sure the readers somehow get this one” and put the backups in the safety deposit box.
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Interesting topic Lynn. I wrote my first book hoping it would be a series, but actually had the story for a standalone worked out in case it didn’t sell. Thankfully THE MARK sold, and I was able to take the story for book two and drop my characters into it pretty seamlessly.
Right now I’m at work on my fifth book in the series, and while I’m contracted for seven total I’m wondering where to go from there. I’d love to write a true stand alone (among other things), but right now I’m writing to books a year and just don’t have much time for that.
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Going from one series to another for me feels a bit like changing jobs, Jason — I always want to have a new job lined up before I even think about resigning from the old one.
Deciding which direction to take after you finish a successful series is stressful, too. There will always be readers who loved series #3 but hate series #4, and if you go too far out in left field with your new work you’ll lose a big chunk of your established readership. But to churn out the same thing over and over isn’t the solution, either; then you’re locked into a particular genre/story style and you end up a cookie-cutter series novelist (and surely we have enough of those in the biz.)
These days I definitely plan my proposals according to where I think the market is going and what I want to write that I think could do well in that uncertain future. But no one can predict what will appeal to readers two, three or ten years down the road. I think we all just have to write what we feel passionate about that is also marketable, submit it intelligently, and roll the dice.
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I wrote a stand alone, then a new character, new era, new settings popped into my head and I started that one which, I thought would be a stand alone as well but as I got to the end, one of the secondary characters was shouting too loud to ignore so it’s turned into a two book ‘series’. There won’t be a third unless some rogue character shows up in the middle of the second and I highly doubt that.
I have several people in my head, but none who know each other. I admire writers who have several characters, all from the same world, and an overall story arc that will take four, five, six books to write.
I found your statement regarding plateaus very telling though. I hadn’t thought about it, but as a reader, I’ve found myself in that mindset at times. If the author is *very* good, I’ll happily read on, but yes, I do see where the ‘three book’ thing can easily come into play. Which could explain why I see so many ‘three book deals’ when the publishing deals announcements come out.
Thanks, Lynn. Great article!
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Theo, I think most really interesting series characters are the fictional equivalent of attention sluts. In my books they just will not go off and live happily ever after no matter what I give them. Of course I’d probably hate them if they ever did.
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Remember ‘Thieves’ World’?
That was a good idea.
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I’ve gone completely blank here, Rachel — but that’s nothing new.
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*sigh* speaking as the person who consistently has sequels rejected and then has to tell readers it isn’t coming, I either need to get better at endings that resolve or kill off other characters, or make sure a 2-3 book set is contracted together, no blind contracts. It’s not really that easy to avoid reader disappointment, though; if they like the characters in a story, they want to know what happens to them next. I think ebooks can be a good solution to that “rock and a hard spot” author position. Readers want them books, traditional publishers don’t, bring on the promotional free ebook or straight e-release.
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I can sympathize, Charlene. And then there are the stories that readers want that aren’t at all what I want to write. Over the years I’ve probably received a hundred requests for a book about a character from the ‘Zangian books; the readers adore this woman. They have no idea how much I loathed her, or how often I nearly killed her off while writing the books. I still want her dead, in fact.
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Sorry, that should be “readers want the books” not “them books”.
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I like getting a glimpse of characters before they take the lead in a later book. It is another way a writer builds anticipation. (I loved Lucan the first time he dropped in on Michael and Alexandra. I also loved the glimpses of Acheron in Sherrilyn Kenyon’s books.)
I also appreciate authors finishing off series instead of leaving the readers hanging. I realize it is not always their choice. Thank You for explaining it better. But I think it is a great idea to be able to buy a series that has been discontinued as an ebook. It is very hard to be patient and wait until the next book is released. (like Valentin) It is horrible to find out there will be no more of a series without some kind of finale that ties up most of the loose threads.
Thanks again to All of You for sharing Your Worlds. I appreciate it.
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I hope more writers will consider writing and self-publishing series novels that they’re not able to sell otherwise, Jo. I think it’s the only viable solution to the problem at present. But sometimes our contracts with our publishers prevent us from selling those self-pubbed books (for example, I can’t self-publish any Darkyn novels for profit because of a competing works clause in my contract. However, I can still give them away for free.)
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Interesting reading, the comments as well.
I want to write a series, but I find it difficult to plot one book, let alone a series, so part of me thinks it will never happen.
Then the stubborn part of me that says I can do anything steps up, and shhh, I think I might have one. Well, a trilogy anyways. I’ll work up to a series. LOL
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You’re making me wonder just what wires us to be series- or standalone-minded. I can do both, and have, but I prefer series novels. I don’t like building a playground only to abandon it after one visit. I want to keep going back and hang with all the cool kids there until they make me leave or go with me to build a baseball diamond in the empty lot next door.