Should You Call It Book One?
A post at Kill Zone Blog: Should You Write a Series or Stand Alones?
I think my post title is more accurate. This post, by James Scott Bell, makes a really good point:
[W]rite book #1 as a standalone book. Keep any numbering off the title. Don’t include a series name. Just write a good story with a good ending…[I]t’s a lot easier to turn a successful standalone book into a popular series than it is to use a series to make the first book successful. … If you already have a tribe of readers and have learned how to write books they love, and you want to commit to a series, go for it! You’ve earned the trust of your readers to write a series. But don’t tell brand-new authors with no platform to follow your example. It hurts them by committing them to books that may not find an audience. It also hurts you by contributing to battered reader syndrome, which scares readers away from books altogether. New authors haven’t yet gained the trust of their readers. They don’t have the caliber of skills you have. If you encourage a new author to write a series, you may be dooming their careers without realizing it.
Bell is quoting this post by Thomas Umstattd Jr: Stop Writing Series!
There is interesting arithmetic in that post. But there is an inexplicable premise as well. Umstattd says, reasonably, that if 1000 people buy Book #1 in a series, the expected number that will purchase Book #1 is about half that. Yes, fine. But Umstattd then goes on to say that if you write a standalone, you can market it to the 100,000 readers looking for something new in your genre. Which you can. But you also marketed Book #1 to those 100,000 people, presumably, and 1000 people bought it. Therefore if you write a second standalone, it looks to me an awful lot like you can guess that maybe about 1000 people will buy that one too.
I don’t think you’ve dropped your expectations for your second book from 100,000 to 500. I think you’ve dropped it from 1000 to 500 — at worst.
Umstattd is assuming that if Book #1 isn’t a hit, then a series is a bad idea. But he’s also assuming Book #1 is probably pretty bad. Look at this:
When you start your career by writing book #1 in a series, the nature of the series sends all new readers through your freshman effort for the rest of your career. Before readers can enjoy your better, more polished writing, they must first read your oldest, sloppiest writing. When readers tell their friends, “Author Smith’s series gets really good around book 3,” Author Smith is in trouble.
And this is exactly what I’ve been told about two series: Ilona Andrew’s Kate Daniels series and Seanan McGuire’s October Daye series.
For the first, I started at book one, read the series in order, and I agree: the Kate Daniel’s series takes off about Book #3. One reason I think their Hidden Legacy series is better than the Kate Daniel’s series is that it’s great from the first book, not the third. For the second series, the one by McGuire, I started at book one, did not finish it, and that was it for me for that series.
I therefore agree with Umstattd, to an extent. It’s better if your first book in a series, not your third, is already really good. BUT, a lot depends on just how sloppy your first, oldest book is. And the answer should be:
It’s not as great, but it is genuinely good and it is not at all sloppy.
And if that’s not true, then why are you publishing it at all? Because “not stellar” is one thing, but “sloppy,” really? That’s something else, and that’s under the author’s control in a way that no other aspect of quality is. You may not be able to write something like Piranesi as your debut novel — though you might, who knows — but no one should read your first book and think it is sloppy. What an indictment that would be!
Not that I disagree about writing standalones inside a series arc. I think that’s good advice. I think series books should mostly stand alone and I think that is much more true early in the series than late in the series, so there you go, I’m basically agreeing. I also agree that it’s probably better not to put “Book One” on the cover of a standalone first book. “Book One” is on the cover of Tuyo, but that’s not the first cover for that book. Also, there’s nothing sloppy about it (in my opinion) (but I’m right).
The linked post offers advice for new authors and for established authors. I do think it’s worth reading that advice.
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