First In Series Blues

I recently saw a post from a young writer wondering if he should abandon his planned series because the first book hadn’t sold as well as he had hoped.

Well, no. The reading public really seems to expect series these days, and books can take some time to find their audience. You can’t judge a series by how well the first book does, especially before any of the other books are published.

Advertising isn’t instantaneous, either, and there’s really no point to advertising a book until it has sequels. Someone can see a book, decided to buy it, and not get around to finishing it until weeks later. So you might not see a sale on the second book until weeks after someone buys the first one.

For example, FROSTBORN: THE GRAY KNIGHT came out in August of 2013, and the final book of the FROSTBORN series, FROSTBORN: THE SHADOW PRISON came out in May of 2017. FROSTBORN: THE SHADOW PRISON sold 18 times more copies in its first month than FROSTBORN: THE GRAY KNIGHT did.

So it’s good to keep at it.