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Unless you are a famous author with a track record of finishing books, publishers are going to judge you based on the first book, alone. Each book in a trilogy (or longer series) has to stand on it...
Answer
#5: Post edited
by
Amadeus
·
2020-01-17T20:16:35Z (almost 5 years ago)
Unless you are a famous author with a track record of finishing books, publishers are going to judge you based on the first book, alone. Each book in a trilogy (or longer series) has to stand on its own, in particular the first book, it must be a complete story in itself.You can have a plan, an outline of your whole series, or not. You don't actually have to worry about how many books it might be. Rex Stout sold 45 Nero Wolfe detective novels, one at a time.Publishers want to sell books one at a time; especially from beginning authors, for business reasons. They want to build an audience with the first book; if they fail and it doesn't sell well, they can reject any sequels. If it succeeds, they can tease the sequel, grow the fan base, and sell even more of the sequel. And so on. They don't want to go to the expense of producing **three** books, or the risk of **promising** three books, and sell them all simultaneously.You have to prove yourself with **one** book. You can talk up the potential of sequels, your plans for sequels, but for exactly the same business reasons on the author's end, I suggest you tackle the **first** book and getting it published as a standalone story (with obvious potential for a sequel) before you write the second book, or an epic series.If you can't sell the first book by itself, then having two or four more in the drawer won't help: The publisher must have a reasonably positive experience with your first book before they will consider your second.
- Unless you are a famous author with a track record of finishing books, publishers are going to judge you based on the first book, alone. Each book in a trilogy (or longer series) has to stand on its own, in particular the first book, it must be a complete story in itself.
- You can have a plan, an outline of your whole series, or not. You don't actually have to worry about how many books it might be. Rex Stout sold 45 Nero Wolfe detective novels, one at a time.
- Publishers want to sell books one at a time; especially from beginning authors, for business reasons. They want to build your audience with the first book; if they fail and/or it doesn't sell very well, they can reject any sequels. If it succeeds, **and** your sequel is up to snuff, then they can tease the sequel, grow the fan base, and sell even more copies of the sequel. And so on for the third, 4th, 5th. They don't want to go to the expense of producing **three** books, or the risk of publishing three books at once. That is not how the business works!
- You must prove yourself with **one** book. You can talk up the potential of sequels, your plans for sequels, but for exactly the same business reasons on the author's end, I suggest you tackle the **first** book and getting it published as a standalone story (with obvious potential for a sequel) before you write the second book, or an epic series.
- If you can't sell the first book by itself, then having two or four more in the drawer won't help you at all, you have just wasted your time: The publisher **must** have a reasonably positive experience with your first book before they will consider anything else.
#4: Attribution notice removed
by
System
·
2019-12-19T22:13:53Z (almost 5 years ago)
Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/47630 License name: CC BY-SA 3.0 License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/
#3: Attribution notice added
by
System
·
2019-12-08T12:50:20Z (almost 5 years ago)
Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/47630 License name: CC BY-SA 3.0 License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/
#2: Initial revision
Unless you are a famous author with a track record of finishing books, publishers are going to judge you based on the first book, alone. Each book in a trilogy (or longer series) has to stand on its own, in particular the first book, it must be a complete story in itself. You can have a plan, an outline of your whole series, or not. You don't actually have to worry about how many books it might be. Rex Stout sold 45 Nero Wolfe detective novels, one at a time. Publishers want to sell books one at a time; especially from beginning authors, for business reasons. They want to build an audience with the first book; if they fail and it doesn't sell well, they can reject any sequels. If it succeeds, they can tease the sequel, grow the fan base, and sell even more of the sequel. And so on. They don't want to go to the expense of producing **three** books, or the risk of **promising** three books, and sell them all simultaneously. You have to prove yourself with **one** book. You can talk up the potential of sequels, your plans for sequels, but for exactly the same business reasons on the author's end, I suggest you tackle the **first** book and getting it published as a standalone story (with obvious potential for a sequel) before you write the second book, or an epic series. If you can't sell the first book by itself, then having two or four more in the drawer won't help: The publisher must have a reasonably positive experience with your first book before they will consider your second.
#1: Imported from external source
by
System
·
2019-08-28T11:12:05Z (about 5 years ago)
Original score: 9