Series are Scary + Numberwang

[renegadefolkhero]

I'm now knee-deep in the first book of an SFF trilogy (I'm tentatively describing it as Science Fantasy, I don't know if anyone actually uses that term), and I have a lot of uncertainty. Not about the books per se, I'm committed and confident I'll finally be able to write this story. I'm a little nervous about writing my first series, because I've only written standalones.

This is probably technically a good time to be switching to a new genre with lots of ????, since a lot of things are changing across the board anyway and the old conventional advice may no longer apply (ranks slowing/freezing on amazon means some of the old promo strategies might not be as effective, etc etc). But I feel like I've gotten off the bus on the opposite side of town and have no idea where everything is.

I've taken steps to reassure myself.

• I did a full series outline, and confirmed there's plenty of meat and the broad strokes are there. I waffled about it, and gave myself permission to write a duet if needed, but I am confident the story needs to be told in 3 parts, and thematically, characterization-wise, etc, etc, it all works.
• I have set no length restrictions. The books can be 30k, they can be 150k. They can be 90k/30k/50k. Doesn't matter. If they're short, I'll probably bundle them together into one big honking book. And if they're long, I'll publish two or three volumes, whatever makes sense.
  • There are massive benefits to publishing these as 3 separate volumes. We regularly see readthrough dropoff at the 4th, 7th, etc. volumes even on subscription services. This applies regardless of trad/indie. Trad publishers will sometimes push a duet author to expand to 3 books for this reason. It's not JUST that it's "one more book to sell," it's also that a lot of readers instinctively expect and look for about 3 parts to a story. Trilogies "just work" sometimes in terms of being approachable to readers and providing plenty of real estate for writers.
• I will not publish the first book until I've written most or all of the series.
  • I'm doing this for my personal sanity, understanding my brain as I do. I don't want any sort of stress or discouragement from how the books initially perform to impact my ability to finish the series, especially since this is my first one.
  • There's also a marketing reason for this. I will need to use a preorder strategy for this trilogy. As a debut/new author, setting up early preorders will help reassure readers the series will be finished and when they can expect that to happen. For readthrough > preorder purposes, the second preorder needs to be live when the first book launches, and the third preorder needs to go live before the second book comes out.
  • You can upload placeholders and the vast majority of authors do, but I've found it personally beneficial to have the entire book done when I set up my preorder, so I can fully disengage and move to the next book.
  • Marketing is gonna be dicey on this one, lol. If I were getting covers to market, I might want to wait and see how well the first cover works and go from there. But generally speaking, preorders seem to do best when you have a finalized cover and not a placeholder. I have plenty of time to decide what I want to do.

The only way to figure out how to market an entirely new type of book is to simply wade in and see what everyone's doing. Note what resonates with you, and if there's some ideas and signals you can use to help readers understand they want (or equally importantly, don't want) to read your stuff. So I need to figure out who the heck is writing something comparable, vibes wise, and how they're conveying that to readers.

Time for numberwang! It's always fun when my "big counter" ticks up to a milestone:

This is just for active titles on D2D. I've actually sold over 5,700 books across platforms. My bestselling book has sold 320 copies in like 2 years (and in case you're wondering, YES, it is emphatically one of my stupidest books!). I think I've published 50 books so far, but I delisted the stinkiest ones sales-wise so IDK.

As you can see, even if your books don't sell "a lot," especially up-front, over time it adds up if you keep on truckin'.

I know someone whose recent pen-debut novel sold more copies in one week than I sold from my entire catalog in one year. It would be foolish of me to compare myself to them, even if we were in the same genre doing similar things, because you never really know what's going on under the hood. Even if they TELL you what's going on, you're taking their word for it, not only that they told the truth but that they actually understand what made the difference (oftentimes, we don't unless you've got years of experience in a genre and you keep meticulous records).

You decide what you're asking your pen name to do for you. You decide what's cool. My first year I sold maybe 250 books. I decided 5.7k books in 3 years is cool. YMMV.