Post History

Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/3724
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

I personally don't like books that force me to buy another 2 books to get the whole story (and maybe wait months or years if the books haven't been published yet).

More and more, whenever I see something like "Part 1 of the Foo Boy trilogy" I just put the book back on the shelf, unless the author is someone I know and enjoy really well(which is very rare).

I think expecting your readers to buy more books to get the whole story is a bit condescending. I prefer something like the "Hitchhiker's guide to the galaxy" series, where each book is independent, can be read separately.

So my advice is to carry elements of your first book into the second, like some of the characters, the Universe etc, but keep each book independent, so that readers can read any part and still understand the story.

You can have a common underlying theme or plot that runs through all the books, but each book must contain enough information to be read by itself. Like many people, I read the Harry Potter series out of order (at least the first few ones), but had no trouble understanding the whole plot. That, I think, is one of the reasons the series was so successful- I went back and read the other books because I enjoyed them, and not because the author left the story incomplete.

Original score: 5