The picture above? It’s one of five such bookcases I have in the family room. There are another five up in my room. All are filled nearly edge to edge with books. I have about 30 books sitting on the floor waiting to be filed (fiction downstairs, non-fiction up, alphabetically by author). They will displace the few remaining pictures and nicknacks displayed on the shelves.
I have space in my room for one more bookcase, maybe another 20 linear feet of books can go there. I’m likely to fill that within a couple years, despite using a Kindle for books that are more fluff and fun than scholarly or literary. But there is a trend afoot in publishing that may impact how I fill that limited space, and how the art of white binding next to blue, tall book next to short looks once the new shelf is filled.
There are so many tiny gems of books — think On Chesil Beach, Steve Martin’s Shopgirl or just about anything by Margaret Drabble. Slim volumes that take up an inch or so of a shelf. You think there will always be room for one more of them. Or bigger works, like Shadows on the Hudson by Isaac Bashevis Singer that fill up multiple inches, whose covers you can spot across the room. If you turn it sideways, you can stalk a few Singer novels together and pack more onto a shelf. Increasingly, though, there are stretches of board-feet that have a similar look because authors are writing trilogies, quartets, even quintets of books. George RR Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire series is expected to be seven books before the author finishes with it. There’s the All Soul’s trilogy by Deborah Harkness, The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins, and the very fine Millennium Trilogy by Stieg Larsson.
In the past, series seemed to be for children’s literature — think Beverly Cleary’s Ramona books — but after Harry Potter, the trend started creeping up to young adult fiction — Twilight anyone? — and ultimately it seems to be bleeding into adult titles, too. Fifty Shades of Gray may not be considered literary by anyone whose opinion I respect, but it’s making money hand over fist and that matters to publishing companies and the agents who sign wannabe authors like me.
I have to wonder whether in the future an author with an idea for a single book, regardless of how salable it is, will be passed over for an author who might not be as fine a writer, but who has an idea for a series, probably involving zombie vampires and characters from Georgian novels. Or for an author who can turn one idea into 24 books, each starting with a subsequent letter of the Greek alphabet. How much space is left on the bookstore shelves for my book, or another slim stunner by some little-known writer from a cold northern clime whose choice of words and turn of phrase can strike even me dumb?
I have friends who are closer to the wheels that turn the publishing world, and I’m curious what they think. I get that I have to create a platform, develop my audience (I’m listening Christina Katz!), compose stellar prose, and market my product. But will I now have to have a handful of products ready to go before I can save a little slice of bookshelf for a book of my own creation?
I’m of the mind that the trend to series is being overdone, but I’m a writer, not a publisher. If one series is a hit, the publishers seem to think all series will go that way. I think the first book has to be of high quality before a series is considered. A mediocre book is going to end up a mediocre series.
I had a children’s story published in an online magazine, and more than one reader asked if I was going to write more stories about the main character. To be honest, it had never even occurred to me. Maybe readers are getting so that they want series. Makes me wonder.
Hi Lisa,
The answer to your question is not new, though I suspect that through the way you have led up to the question that it seems new.
It has ALWAYS made more sense for a fiction writer to have a body of work before approaching publishers. It may make even more sense now.
Therefore, yes, it MAY make sense for you to have a series idea working before you approach publishers, but then again, it won’t always be appropriate or work for what you are writing. And you should always go with what’s working for you as a creative and not merely serve the marketplace.
IF you can find the place where you can serve your creative soul AND the needs of the marketplace that’s when the magic happens. A good recent example is Cheryl Strayed. She had already written her topic as a novel years before and it was not a breakout, but then when she wrote it as a novel, worked with an celebrity-level writing group, and took a gig writing advice for the Rumpus, the best possible outcome for her book happened (think relaunching Oprah’s book club).
The primary thing is that a novelist have some momentum as a writer before engaging the publishing community. When you have a bigger body of work before approaching an publisher you have more to offer and therefore more leverage.
I have seen far too much pressure lately for authors of all stripes, who have a level of success with publishers, to become book-pumping machines, cranking out successful books beyond what is reasonable.
It’s not really a happy or a healthy way to live…for authors.
I would much rather see a fiction writer follow the advice that I pose in The Writer’s Workout, which is number one, to STOP waiting to be discovered by a publisher and start taking ownership from the get go.
I recently attended a conference and was shocked by how much writers still believed that publishers were going to discover them, sweep them up, and take care of them for the rest of their careers. Nothing could be further from this fantasy.
You are the business manager of your career. So if you don’t have a significant body of published or publishable work yet, then there is nothing to manage. Why writers insist on taking so much time to talk about hypotheticals when the real work is hardly done, is something I would like to see change.
You don’t take five steps up the mountain and then stop, sit down with your climbing party and say, “Let’s discuss what the view is going to be like when we get there.” And yet this is precisely what writers do…constantly.
By the time you have created a body of work, what is currently on your book shelves is going to be irrelevant in comparison. So my suggestion is to get back to the difficult work and that is building your own staircase to success as you are climbing up it.
I appreciate the time and effort you spent on your response, Christina. And I get that I should pay attention to writing, not to what’s going on in a publishing industry that doesn’t know I exist (yet). And I am well aware, in part thanks to you, that there is abundant work I can and should do to build brand Lisa Jaffe Hubbell before that happens.
But I’m also concerned as a reader about what might be crowded out by someone who creates an artificial series out of what is not series material. There will always be a book for me to read — a good book, a well-written book, by an author not someone who spits out product for a publisher. But what won’t be there for me to discover?
I think what concerns me about your perspective, Lisa, is that it sounds like you are dismissing writers who write series books as shallow or trite. And I just don’t think this is always the case. For example, my family is reading The Mother-Daughter Book Club Series by Heather Vogel Frederick right now and the books are just getting better, so far, as the series continues. This seems to have also been the case with Harry Potter. Because let’s face it, there are many amateurish gaffs in book one of Harry Potter that seem to explain why so many publishers took a pass in the first place.
But the nice thing for an author, if I could play devil’s advocate to my own comment, is that when you find a safe, productive place with a solid publisher and a supportive editor and a concerned agent, you really CAN focus on the writing at hand, instead of wasting creative energy with so many other concerns.
So rather than worry about publishers producing series, I think we need to just let publishers do what they are going to do (because they will anyway) and focus on what need to do. If you are a writer and that means more time on developing a body of work–so be it. If you are a reader and it means a little more time sorting the book wheat from the book chafe–so be it. There will always be an abundance of good writers and good books. Never fear!
Yikes! I’d hate for anyone to think that I don’t think there are any good series books. I had Harry Potter delivered by FedEx and sat at home the day the book was due to get it before my Wasband or son. And I’d be lying if I didn’t wish Game of Thrones book six would be out before the estimated 2014.
Part of the reason I called you out was that you have more insight into this than I do. I was reading these stories about Famous People being signed to multiple book deals, and stuff in Publishers Weekly about a trend towards series books. Add to that all the talk about book publishing going the way of the dodo and I start to wonder, as a reader and a writer, what will be out there for me — as a reader and a writer — in five years or 10 years or when I’m an old lady sitting on the porch with a stack of books on the table next to me.
As for Nick, who must be very very old to call me a fresh young girly, I’d like to say don’t get me started on Hollywood, which prefers to remake old successful movies and TV series rather than do something new and different. And if they can make a series of six books into seven movies, so much the better. Although I really appreciate how good the Harry Potter movies were.
Me? I’ll keep reading and writing, and despite Christina’s admonition not to worry about what the publishers will do, I’ll still worry. I think it comes with the Jewish Mother Genetic Makeup Kit that I was given at birth. It also keeps me from worrying so much about the things that are closer to me. Like Darling Son or Dating In Middle Age or How Will I Afford Retirement.
Thanks to all of you for your thoughtful input!
I think this discussion applies equally well to filmed media as books. In the age of high-end cable, we’re learning that a good series gives a world time to develop and mature, for characters to develop in a realistic timeframe rather than having to come into themselves over the course of a too-short 2 hours. And movies like Prometheus give ample evidence that sometimes you just can’t really develop a story within the limit of a moviegoer’s attention span.
Granted, there are certainly books that spin out serially like a line of dollar signs in their publishers’ eyes, with the sales figured growing as fast as the quality of the writing drops (do not, repeat do not get me started on Laurell K Hamilton!). But on the other end, there are well-planned series that spin out stories with a start, middle, and end (Harry Potter, Twilight, and Hunger Games, I’d argue, all fall into that bucket). And this is not a new phenomenon. I realize you’re a young fresh girlie, but us old timers remember series by brilliant and not yet forgotten authors… you may have heard the ancient names: Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, C.S. Lewis, J.R.R. Tolkien, Lewis Carroll… Not to mention Dante Aligheri, Alexander Pope.