Loose Change

You have a story that just cries for more stories after the first one is done.  Great!  Maybe.

If your readers love your first story, very likely they’ll want to give your second one a try.  Or your third.  Your fourth??  Fifth????

I have a love/hate relationship with series…unlike my colleague at Changeling Press, who highly encourages them.  When they work, they work.  Yippee!! Fans demand more, buy more, are very happy.

But they’re equally likely not to work.  The bad part is when readers aren’t interested.  Maybe they want to wait until the whole series is done before they buy.  Maybe the first one didn’t grab them and you’ll never get their attention for the second.

Or maybe the series doesn’t work for the author.  Publishers are wary about promising multi-book contracts unless they feel sure the author will be producing those multiple books.  Things happen to even the most reliable author.  Sickness, moving, writer’s block as a series goes on.

Books in a series have to work from the start right through to the last one and we have no guarantee that will happen.  Authors usually don’t want to wait until they’ve penned their last book in the series before they sell them.

At Loose Id we tend (with a few exceptions) to keep to a three book series rule.  If nothing else, we review how the series is going after three books and we prefer each book to be a stand alone as possible.

Treva Harte
www.TrevaHarte.com
A website that lists, as you'll see, many, many, many series. Few of them cutting off at 3 books.
/M whistles innocently as she fixes Treva's formatting...