First In Series Blues
I recently saw a post from a young writer wondering if he should abandon his planned series because the first book hadn’t sold as well as he had hoped.
Well, no. The reading public really seems to expect series these days, and books can take some time to find their audience. You can’t judge a series by how well the first book does, especially before any of the other books are published.
Advertising isn’t instantaneous, either, and there’s really no point to advertising a book until it has sequels. Someone can see a book, decided to buy it, and not get around to finishing it until weeks later. So you might not see a sale on the second book until weeks after someone buys the first one.
For example, FROSTBORN: THE GRAY KNIGHT came out in August of 2013, and the final book of the FROSTBORN series, FROSTBORN: THE SHADOW PRISON came out in May of 2017. FROSTBORN: THE SHADOW PRISON sold 18 times more copies in its first month than FROSTBORN: THE GRAY KNIGHT did.
So it’s good to keep at it. 🙂
-JM
Okay, Gray Knight purchased on 30th Jan 2016, Child Of the Ghosts 10 Feb 2016. John Schettler’s Kirov series wasn’t found until about book 15. Keep at it. As a reader I want to know that a new author is a stayer not a dabbler. Time helps build up review counts as well. No longer do new authors have to make it in the first quarter or be banished from store shelves. New readers can happily binge on a digital backlist that is stil available.
Exactly. Worrying too much about the first book is obsolete thinking.
I agree, there’s nothing I like better than getting into a series that I know I can binge read & to do that it must continue past book 1. Case in point, yesterday I finished Ghost In The Glass which means I am now COMPLETELY caught up on your novels! (Except Otherworlds but those are more short stories).
Furthermore, to me, there’s almost nothing more disappointing than reading a great first book (or two or more!) of a series and then have the author stop writing the series for whatever reason.
That’s one of the great things about JM. Pretty much no matter what, you can count on him finishing what he started!
Well, I’m stubborn like that. 🙂