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Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/q/43277
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

I have been working on a _story_ for several years. The manuscript is now currently longer than 1,000 notebook pages (roughly 615 pages in print by my calculations) and it’s only a third of the way through the plot. So, I’ve known for a while that this is going to end up being multiple _books_ when it’s completed. I recently decided to take a break from writing the _story_ to finish the first _book_ in what will likely be either a trilogy or tetralogy. This first _book_ is around 315 pages. So my question is, **Is it a good idea to self-publish a completed first book in what will be a longer series even though the remainder of the story has not yet been written?**

To add some clarification, I am not writing the story as if it is going to be divided into smaller books, I’m writing it as if it is one really long book. I’m dividing it wherever it seems logical to do so based on plot and book-length. At this time I know where I want the story to go, I have an idea of what information I want to be covered in each book, and I’ve even gone as far as to create a detailed plot chart outlining what is going to happen and when. Most sections of the story I’ve already written and re-written in my head hundreds of times so now it’s just a matter of putting it all to the paper, which I fully intend to do.

Original score: 0