Anyone else reluctant to read...

[Christopher]

A lot of people are, and I have to believe it's at least part of the reason some great series never do finish.

[[deleted user]]

I've been in the situation before where series just haven't ended and I've always just ended up turning to fanfic. Recently this happened to me with a tv show, Bletchley Circle, and fanfic, that I and others wrote, helped fill the void somewhat. I think the wonderful thing about book series and tv shows as a medium is the gap between seasons/books and how it gives you time to really think about what you wrote and create your own theories about where the story will go.

But yeah, if you really want the author to say the final word, then starting an unfinished series is super stressful. Especially with webcomics where creators just decide they're not interested in the work anymore.

[Wade]

TTUalumni13 wrote: "Series that are still in progress?

One of my biggest reading anxieties is that the series I read will never be completed for one reason or another, and that all my interest and investment will jus..."

As long as they're good and you enjoy them...

[Dustin]

Not personally. Right now I'm in involved in the:

Locke Lamora Series, Name of the Wind Series, Temeraire Series, Way of Kings Series, Monster Hunter, Dresden Files, Rain Wilds, and Iron Druid. Those last four I am not caught up in.

If any of those were never completed I would be greatly disappointed but I invest in a series because I enjoy each book by itself and have nothing but a mild concern in the overall conclusion. I actually find a completed series to be depressing. Reading Temeraire and knowing the characters I have followed for eight books have one last performance is saddening.

I have never ended a series with a sense of WOW but only with a feeling of "Now what?". A completed series is worse because I am counting down to end with each book I read. I agree with The Doctor, endings suck.

[Tommy]

Christopher wrote: "A lot of people are, and I have to believe it's at least part of the reason some great series never do finish."

I can't back this comment enough. I don't judge anyone who waits for a series to end, since how you consume is your own prerogative, but if all those people who fully intend on reading the books bought them early on, those sells would only help the author out in between books, and would make the publisher less likely to pull the plug on the project.

[Heather]

Randolph wrote: "What if you die before the last book? Then what will you think?"

If I die before the next is published? I suppose I wouldn't think much of anything anymore.

I'm more intimidated by series that already have a dozen or more books already out before I start. My only reservation about publishing times is I worry that I might start forgetting important details between books.

[Aaron]

I like reading most books as they come out, then I can have fun with friends speculating between each book on events and letting things stew in your mind. I love a series to end eventually however, the thing I hate most is when I drop a series I used to love because it has ran out of good material. Plus I want the author to introduce me to another world instead of just writing in the same one forever.

[Michele]

The only thing that makes me mad is when I pick up a book, read to the end and then discover it ends with the story totally unfinished. This happened to me waaaay back when the first Wheel of Time came out. Then I got to the 3rd book and ARGH!! still not done!

I'm happy to discover a series after it's finished, but I'm fine with waiting, as long as I have reasonable confidence it will eventually be wrapped up. Also, I have no problem with rereading before starting a new release.

So currently I'm reading The Expanse, Dresden Files, Sandman Slim, Lives of Tao, Rothfuss, GRRM, and a couple others.

[Art]

I think I am the other way around, especially with long series. If it is all out it seems like a mountain to climb, but if I start reading it early on I love reading each book as it comes out and never feel guilty for having such a long list of books I need to read before I can join in the discussion on them

[Lindsay]

Michele wrote: "The only thing that makes me mad is when I pick up a book, read to the end and then discover it ends with the story totally unfinished. This happened to me waaaay back when the first Wheel of Time ..."

The only thing worse than this is where there's absolutely no indication that the book is a serial novel on the cover/blurb/marketing info. I would distinguish books in a series from serial novels. I'm always ok with not picking up the next book in a series, but committing to buying and reading multiple books when I only signed on for one makes me incredibly aggravated.

[terpkristin]

I'm not reluctant to read series in progress, I'll read them any day.

What I won't read is "writing in progress" like when authors post chapters from books before the book is published. It just gets me rev'd for more from the book and the waiting seems interminable!

[Trike]

If the books are coming out on a regular basis, I'll chance it. But they also need to have that track record of coming out regularly, so I definitely wait until there's at least three or four already on the shelves.

Of course, that method isn't foolproof. I got fooled by Martin's Song of Ice and Fire. The first one came out in '96, the second in '98, the third in 2000, so I thought, "I've enjoyed his other books and these are coming out every two years..." Ha!

Currently the only series I'm following are Destroyermen (started after book 5 came out), Iron Druid (started after book 4 was released) and The Warded Man books which I started accidentally, thinking the first one was a stand-alone.

I bailed on Locke Lamora for the time being, and I'm not even contemplating Rothfuss, since he seems to write at a glacial pace.

[Gerone]

I do have a fear of getting hooked on something (Song of Ice and Fire) and waiting so long for the next installment that I've practically forgotten where it left off. Of course, I'm willing to backtrack a bit to compensate. But, there are some very clever authors who write installments that participate in the overall arc while satisfying you with the individual stories as well. Patrick Rothfuss is very good at this, as is Scott Lynch.

[Rob]

I'm with the middle-ground people here, after being so badly burned by ASOIAF. I've started the Dresden Files, but there's a big backlog of those, so by the time I'm caught up a few more should be out, and they come out regularly enough that the wait won't be too terrible.

Length factors into it too for me; Rothfuss may write at a glacial pace, but we only have one left to go in that series, and we're getting bridging material in between releases. I'm not going to begin that free Sanderson I'm sure we all downloaded for years though, given that that would be a 15+ year and dozen+ book investment.

And in general, I just find single novels to be better reading experiences. The only series I can think of that's longer than 3 books and comes near my list of favorites is Hitchhiker's. I'm *really* loving Dresden, but that extremely long form experience just doesn't do it for me personally.

I guess it's like TV shows: you can have really awesome serialized fiction there, but the best shows are the ones with a planned, tight beginning-middle-end, and those that were cancelled before they could fall apart. Everyone loved the first few seasons of Freaks and Geeks, and everyone loves Firefly, but look to season 8 of, say, How I Met Your Mother, or Supernatural, and the failure to complete the story/ the extremely diminishing returns of enjoyment on your investment of time really harm the entire show as a whole.

[Tassie Dave, S&L Historian]

I can understand people waiting for a series to be complete, but if we all did that there would be no book 2.

I do like the book to come out regularly. 1 a year is a good rate. No more than 2 years apart.

[Trike]

If the publisher knows the a book is the first part of a series, they shouldn't make the publication of the second dependent on sales of the first.

Either have them write stand-alone novels or buy with the intent of putting out three of them. Don't put the onus for the continuation of the series on ME.

[Christopher]

That's never how that's going to work. Publishing any book is a financial risk. Why would they put out for several books until they know they will sell at least reasonably well? Bottom line if people want a thing, they need to support that thing. If you don't, it's not someone else's fault it goes away.

[Rob]

Which means that authors will put out less stuff like Epic Chronicle 15: Duffy the Vampwizard goes to the desert planet this time, where he will get the first of five keys that will open a door that will lead him to the final twelve quests that will prove he is worthy to take on the dark lord, itself a task of three novels, and more "Here is a trilogy that's completely written and will be out once a year for the next three years, with a satisfying ending and a total lack of pointless sprawl."

Support your authors, if they're putting out books in a way that you actually support.

[Tommy]

Trike wrote: "If the publisher knows the a book is the first part of a series, they shouldn't make the publication of the second dependent on sales of the first.

Either have them write stand-alone novels or buy with the intent of putting out three of them. Don't put the onus for the continuation of the series on ME. "

I wish I could agree with this comment, because I wish this is how it worked. Unfortunately, the logic here is similar to saying. "I know no one is watching this TV show, but clearly there was meant to be more episodes. They should just put out the next 2 or 3 seasons anyway." EVERYTHING that is put out to be consumed relies heavily on the consumers. To ask publishers to continue a franchise that isn't making profits instead of moving on to a more lucrative option is unfair. It's quite similar to asking them to just throw money away. Most, if not all, publishers would be out of business or much smaller than they are if they tried to work this way.

Plus, without even acknowledging the slew of people who work on making a book happen that need to be paid(with money the books aren't pulling in), who would buy these sequels? If you ran a book store and ordered, I don't know, 100 copies of a novel and sold 5-10 of them, are you gonna rush out and spend your company money on a bunch of copies of the next installment?
On a personal level, I'm with you. Unfortunately, it's just not a realistic request.

[Trike]

Tommy wrote: "I wish I could agree with this comment, because I wish this is how it worked. Unfortunately, the logic here is similar to saying. "I know no one is watching this TV show, but clearly there was meant to be more episodes. They should just put out the next 2 or 3 seasons anyway.""

Actually, I've argued that's how TV series SHOULD work. Some of the biggest hits of all time -- like Cheers or Seinfeld -- were successes precisely because the network put them on and left them on despite not being hits right off the bat. The audience had time to find them.

And now we're seeing the exact same method working spectacularly well for cable networks, where they order up a complete season -- whether that season is 6, 10, 12 or 20 episodes -- and put it on the air. Despite the few failures, most of those shows are actually making their money back. The Walking Dead's viewership has only increased over time as more and more people discover it, now up to 16 million from its original 5 million.

According to one recent podcast I heard (if I'd known there would be a quiz I would have taken notes, but I want to say SF Signal), we're also seeing this happen in publishing. Series sell best in genre fiction. So publishers are going out on a limb and buying those three- and five-book arcs from the get-go, knowing they'll make money on enough of them to finance the losers.

[Trike]

Alex wrote: "Yeah, that's not how it works, Trike."

I know that. I'm saying that's how it SHOULD work. As evidence, there are plenty of publishers and networks using these exact gambits with great success.

Go into a book store and pick up a paperback from someone like Angry Robot. More often than not there will be little ads all over that book for other books in that series which are going to be published in the coming months. Some are shared world standalone novels, but some are actual single-author series like what we're talking about.

This is happening more often in genre fiction as series books become the default. As it should be. Don't gamble everything on a single book's sales, proclaiming it "First of an Epic New Series!" and then never come out with the second one simply because the first one sold 70% of what you expected it to.

People are tired of that in TV and in books, which is why we have had annual threads exactly like this since Day One of the internet.

[Tommy]

Some of those shows may not have been hits right off the bat, but they weren't failures either. They were at least minor successes. Walking Dead is a particularly bad example of a TV show that started badly: "The first season was met with positive reviews from critics and gained 5.35 million viewers on its premiere. The finale garnered six million viewers and among adults ages 18–49, making it the most viewed basic cable drama series of all time." - wikipedia

You don't have to be a smash hit right away, all you have to do is make a little bit of a profit to be viable to continue. But can you think of a few(or even one) TV shows that no one was watching, that the network left on the air? A show with such a small audience that sponsors didn't want to pay for advertising? Those shows get canceled, sometimes within a couple episodes. Yes, the whole season is bought(just like whole series of books are bought up front), but the way the contracts work means the network(or publisher) isn't obligated to put it all out. If they were forced to keep putting out something that was flat out failing, there's no way they'd stay in business.