Ideal Series Length a Moving Target?

[LilyBLily]

Nick Stephenson recently posted a video claiming you need to publish 12 or more books in a series to make it profitable enough to advertise heavily--in the thousands of dollars of spend.

In 2014 and 2015, what I heard was the recommended series length was 3 books.

Then people started talking about the series not really hitting it until Book #4 or #5.

I'm getting the idea that the ideal series length--that is, the number of books one has to write to get enough attention and a decent sell-through--is a moving target. A moving target that is always out of my reach.

I'm about to end a series at Book #6. Book #4 has not done well. I don't have a clue as to whether Book #5 and Book #6 will sink like stones or encourage more read-through.

[Post-Crisis D]

I know the feeling.  The targets always move just when I'm about to finally reach one.

I don't know the answer and I have no firsthand knowledge as I don't even have a series going yet.

But, I will contend that a series needs to be as long as it needs to be for a satisfying story regardless of what current trends may dictate as far as being a certain length.

If there is a story arc, the series needs to be long enough to fulfill the story arc without wrapping too early or stretching things out for too long.  I have a series I planned ages ago, long before algorithms and such things were even a concern, and I had it mapped out for ten stories.  So, ten books and done.  I have another with an arc that spans ten books and is done as well as a second series of ten books with a different arc.

I have another that I plan as a trilogy.  Three books, done.

If there is no story arc, the series can continue as long as you have ideas for stories or as long as you want to continue with the characters or as long as people keep buying the books.  Nothing wrong with not having a story arc and basically having a series of standalone novels with the same characters.

Of course, none of that helps with sales.  But I tend to think that a good marketer finds a way to turn a profit with the product he has, not the product he wishes he had.  If you have a six book series, listen to a marketer that knows how to profitably sell a six-book series.

[Maggie Ann]

My four book series (a novelette and three novellas) is my most popular series. Whenever I run a promo, there's a decent amount of sell-thru plus audio sales ... in a prawny sort of way, of course. I really think it's not so much how many books there are as it is the genre. It's mystery/romance.

Right now, I'm working on another four book mystery/romance (more romance than mystery) but so far, the books are turning into full length novels. I'm hoping the genre will help sell the books but I know I won't have as much success with this series because I won't be doing audios.

[PermaStudent]

"Advertise heavily" is relative, but 12 feels like overkill. Some of my series are years old and no longer enjoying algo love, but even at as few as 3 books I can turn a positive ROI with advertising. I don't spend thousands at once, though. Outside of PPC ads, I'd be hard pressed to find a place to spend that much on a single advertising push.

If you can command the ROI, a small advertising budget can be just as good as a large one. It also depends on your overall marketing plan and whether the series is "best read in order" or "enjoyable in any order". The former, IMHO, is a higher risk where advertising is concerned.

[Simon Haynes]

After I self-pubbed my first novel in 2000, which I believed to be a one-off event before I went back to computer programming, two of the approximately twelve people who read the thing asked me for a sequel. (Okay, begged.)

As long as there's some kind of interest, I'll keep writing books in any one of my series.

Doesn't stop me beginning a new series with a standalone from time to time. Best of both worlds.

[Crystal]

Longer series are easier to advertise at a profit. To an extent. Yes, you have more books worth of sell through. But you also lose a few more people every book. Which adds up.

With a cliffhanger series, you have fewer entry points. With a series of standalones, same deal long term. (Short term, you can advertise new books as standalones, but when readers see #3 or #6 or whatnot, they assume they need to start at one). It's also much hard to keep your series tightly connected. So you start getting less sellthrough from new books to older books.

You have the same problem of less entry points.

IMO, 4-5 is the perfect series length. It's a great compromise between profits advertising book one and fresh content. Readers do get tired of series. At a certain point, each new book will do a little worse. I just finished an eight book series. All of the books have done well, even the one that flailed at launch. But after two years of heavy ads, I've exhausted a lot of the audience for book one. And I started to see a decline around book five or six. It wasn't a huge decline, but I did see the new releases doing a little less well. As if people had gotten tired of my series. (And I switched up my covers with book four). I also got less and less sellthrough with every book, since I was further and further away from the first in series. And I'd exhausted more and more of my audience.

There's also the burn out factor. At some point, I was a little tired of my concept.

It's not a cut and dry think. It's somewhat risk management. Do you prefer the sure thing or the risky bet? A new book in a series is a sure thing. Lower ceiling, lower floor.

With a totally fresh book, you have a new chance to hit... or flop.

I spend thousands advertising my series. And my new releases. I spend a lot on advertising, in general.

IMO, the key to backlist series ads is a very strong book one. Great packaging, great hook, great set up of book two. Unfortunately for me, my two strongest performers have the worst set up of book two. There's really no way to correct that with a small rewrite, so I'm focusing on setting up book two very well for future series.

[idontknowyet]

I have no idea the profitability but I love this question.

I have structured all of my books in trilogies except for a few random standalones which I plan on using for reader magnets on my website/newsletter. All of my books exist in the same world, but each trilogy can be read out of order. They do read better if read from book 1 - book 73. Ack even saying I am up to a 73 book series makes my head hurt. This is probably a dumb move, but staying in the same world just seemed to make sense. Each of the main couples in my series have been touched upon in a different or a couple of different books. Hopefully this will invest readers in the character before they've gotten the next book. I very much try to change up my stories. I've even added a few characters I don't like in the beginning.

How well this will work I don't know.
I thought by giving multiple entry points I could advertise and interest different people. Maybe then they would go back and start from the beginning or just continue on with the story till the end.

[Jeff Tanyard]

I'm in the midst of a seven-book series, but my next series will be a trilogy.  It's just easier to manage.

[cecilia_writer]

Thanks, idontknowyet - I was hesitant about confessing I have a 19 book mystery series. It's a kind of Miss Marple type thing where there are old and new characters in each book. Sometimes the characters develop, occasionally into murderers! I don't think i've ever spent anything on advertising it but I've had 2 permafrees in it for a while and am just trying to get another one set to permafree.
I have some readers who are really engaged, two of whom recently re-read the whole series, and the best thing ever is when you sell a whole set at once, although I will never get rich from it unless some tv company wants it.
I've fallen into a pattern of writing 2 books a year in this series and either one or two different ones to stop myself getting bored.

[DrewMcGunn]

I just finished a six book series. Book 4 was the high-water mark for sales - meaning that my read through from book 3 to book 4 was very high and I was still getting lots of new readers on book 1 with some promos that I ran. Book 5 was a bit of a disappointment, with more fall-off from book 4 than what there was from 3 to 4, and a far smaller number of new readers to the series. Book 6, which came out a little more than 2 months ago has sold ok, with a slight fall-off from book 5.

I pay decent attention to the sell-through rate of longer series (which basically means looking at the Amazon ranking) in the speculative fiction arena to see how longer series are performing. Most seem to follow a similar trajectory to my series. I suppose if one has a dedicated fan-base large enough to support you or the time to crank out more than 2-3 books a year, then a longer series might produce enough sell-through to justify writing beyond 4-6 books.

Of course, standard disclaimer... YMMV.

[TimothyEllis]

My experience is if the series is a serial, once you get to book 9, the reader drop off becomes major. My book 12 and 13 in my first series were among the best I've written until this year, and yet, never performed very well because they were the tail end of a long series.

Series of stand alones can go on forever.

The other issue is changing directions in mid series. Like one series I've been reading, suddenly changed the pov to a character introduced in the 3rd book, and totally bounced me out without buying it.

I did that twice in my first series, and I can see the disconnects when people get to them and decide not to continue. I've done it again in my 4th series, but this one is being fan driven, so I'm not seeing any disconnect this time. And I'm setting the universe up for more stand alone type books in an open ended series.

Personally, I think 9 is a practical maximum for serials, being 3 trilogies within an overarc. After that, you start a new series in the same universe.

[Ash]

Nick has made a great career for himself flogging courses, but the last time he released a fiction book was 2016, it got no more than sixty crappy reviews, and as far as I can tell he hasn't released one since. Like David Gaughran, he's just another "guru" who doesn't seem able to apply the same tactics to his own success.

I currently have a series that is running at 100% profit with just two books, sometimes more than that, and I'm advertising it with the low thousands of dollars in spend per month. Frankly the first book is profitable on its own, the second one though is where the major chunk of profit comes in. Once I get another couple of books out, it will be a gold mine – no need to release twelve!

I think if you aren't breaking even on the first book, that would be a pretty strong signal to me that I should just move on. I think this book has 65-75% read through, although book 2 has only been out a few weeks so hard to drill down exactly. If I wasn't hitting at a very minimum 50% read through, then either go and fix the first book, or just try again. The idea that something magic is going to happen once twelve books are out is just crazy.

You can do the math for yourself – create a readthrough calculator on a spreadsheet that takes into account royalty rates, KU rate, #of Kindle pages in the book, and readthrough rate, and you'll see that it's very possible for a series to be profitable with only a couple of books. Increasing the number of books in the series should be about massively increasing the ROI, not getting to a point where you are eking out some profit!

What worries me so much about many of these course peddlers is that by saying something like this, they can justify to their customers why a) they need to continue to pay for their services and b) that the only reason they haven't found success yet is because they haven't tried hard enough.

[Simon Haynes]

Nick has made a great career for himself flogging courses, but the last time he released a fiction book was 2016, it got no more than sixty crappy reviews, and as far as I can tell he hasn't released one since. Like David Gaughran, he's just another "guru" who doesn't seem able to apply the same tactics to his own success.

David runs advertising campaigns for others, as he says in many of his newsletters and books. He's also admitted to a few bloopers with the marketing of his own books (eg. selling his novel to a crowd of people who buy his non-fic stuff, messing up the also boughts.)

I wouldn't judge any expert on whether they can sell their own work, necessarily. Not in this game, at least.

Marketing fiction is a total crapshoot, and the lessons I get from people like David are more along the lines of improving my approach to ads, not 'here's how I sold $squillion of my own novel'

Also, a lot of these self-help books (ams ads, marketing, fb ads, release scheduling you name it) are as cheap as chips. If I get one or two ideas out of them, they're easily worth the cost. And if I learn the things that someone else has tried that DON'T work, so much the better.

[Ash]

Nick has made a great career for himself flogging courses, but the last time he released a fiction book was 2016, it got no more than sixty crappy reviews, and as far as I can tell he hasn't released one since. Like David Gaughran, he's just another "guru" who doesn't seem able to apply the same tactics to his own success.

David runs advertising campaigns for others, as he says in many of his newsletters and books. He's also admitted to a few bloopers with the marketing of his own books (eg. selling his novel to a crowd of people who buy his non-fic stuff, messing up the also boughts.)

I wouldn't judge any expert on whether they can sell their own work, necessarily. Not in this game, at least.

Marketing fiction is a total crapshoot, and the lessons I get from people like David are more along the lines of improving my approach to ads, not 'here's how I sold $squillion of my own novel'

Also, a lot of these self-help books (ams ads, marketing, fb ads, release scheduling you name it) are as cheap as chips. If I get one or two ideas out of them, they're easily worth the cost. And if I learn the things that someone else has tried that DON'T work, so much the better.

I'm just calling it as I see it. I don't always think that Mark Dawson's advice is the best, but at least you know that he's in the trenches, selling well and even posting his own income reports.

People like David, by comparison, say that they do other people's advertising. Well – anyone can say that, but there's never any proof.

And frankly, I look at a lot of his advice and in my view it's pretty iffy. There are definitely some interesting points and I think he grasped a lot of the early information about the Amazon system, but I'm not sure how well that has translated to the present day environment. And I've comfortably spent half a million dollars on ads in the last two or three years, so that's coming from at least a point of some expertise.

But then – I haven't offered any proof either!

[TimothyEllis]

I think if you aren't breaking even on the first book, that would be a pretty strong signal to me that I should just move on.

That's fine if its a stand alone book.

But if it was planned as a trilogy, with more potential for expansion, you owe it to the book 1 readers to finish at least the trilogy in a way which keeps them happy.

It's not about breaking even on the first book. Its about finishing what you start, and being seen as a credible author who will finish what they start.

If it doesn't work, at least you can point to a finished trilogy, and then you move on.

Otherwise, if you want to test the water with a first book, it must be pitched as a stand alone, and stand by itself with nothing outstanding.

Way too many authors putting out book 1 and then failing to complete because #1 didn't perform up to their expectation. Its giving authors a bad name, and making it damned hard for new authors to be taken seriously until they finish book 3.

[Simon Haynes]

Not disagreeing with you ;-)  I'm really just presenting an alternative viewpoint.

For authors with no background in advertising, no experience in running their own business, no real idea about marketability and so on, a couple of how-to books are probably a wise investment, even if they only give the reader enough confidence to fire up an ad or two. If they spend five or ten bucks it might save them a hundred on beginner errors.

On the other hand, someone with a single book in the works should not be investing $$$ in a marketing course, imho. They should be writing more novels. After all, it's easier to make ads work when you have a substantial backlist.

[Simon Haynes]

Otherwise, if you want to test the water with a first book, it must be pitched as a stand alone, and stand by itself with nothing outstanding.

That's what I'm doing with my current WIP. Self-contained, just the one novel planned but I will write more if I believe it's worthwhile. The cover, interior, etc will not mention 'book one in the xyz series'.

I did this with my first space opera novel as well, and when I published book two I updated the first to mention the series.

Neither have cliffhanger endings or unresolved plot points.

Way too many authors putting out book 1 and then failing to complete because #1 didn't perform up to their expectation. Its giving authors a bad name, and making it damned hard for new authors to be taken seriously until they finish book 3.

I recall at least two fantasy trilogies published by major trad houses back in the day where book 3 was never released.  Cliffhangers and all!

[Ash]

I think if you aren't breaking even on the first book, that would be a pretty strong signal to me that I should just move on.

That's fine if its a stand alone book.

But if it was planned as a trilogy, with more potential for expansion, you owe it to the book 1 readers to finish at least the trilogy in a way which keeps them happy.

It's not about breaking even on the first book. Its about finishing what you start, and being seen as a credible author who will finish what they start.

If it doesn't work, at least you can point to a finished trilogy, and then you move on.

Otherwise, if you want to test the water with a first book, it must be pitched as a stand alone, and stand by itself with nothing outstanding.

Way too many authors putting out book 1 and then failing to complete because #1 didn't perform up to their expectation. Its giving authors a bad name, and making it damned hard for new authors to be taken seriously until they finish book 3.

Oh yeah, I agree with you. My point wasn't that you should just ditch a series completely, I would still close it out, I just wouldn't invest another ten books in finishing it off. And to be honest even if I had initially planned it as a trilogy, if the first book underperformed, I would probably just do my best to make the second book close out the story, and call it a day at that point.

[TimothyEllis]

That's what I'm doing with my current WIP. Self-contained, just the one novel planned but I will write more if I believe it's worthwhile. The cover, interior, etc will not mention 'book one in the xyz series'.

That's what I did with my first Spacemage book. No series name at all, and just gave it an ending.

But the fans loved the character so much they hated the ending. So 2 more followed, with identical endings.

But I put it out as a stand alone as I had no idea if it would work or not. And didn't actually have 3 books worth of ideas at the time. So if it hadn't worked, I'd have just gone on with something else. But it did work, so I had to scramble to fill 2 more. During the 3rd one I finally figured out how to tie it into my universe. So it worked out brilliantly.

Oh yeah, I agree with you. My point wasn't that you should just ditch a series completely, I would still close it out, I just wouldn't invest another ten books in finishing it off. And to be honest even if I had initially planned it as a trilogy, if the first book underperformed, I would probably just do my best to make the second book close out the story, and call it a day at that point.

Which would work. Very uncommon now to be 2 books long, but if the story is properly ended, nothing wrong with that. And rather than book 1, book 2, you could use part 1, part 2.

[Simon Haynes]

Closing off a 'trilogy' on the second novel works. There's no law against a 2-book omnibus either.


I'm in a situation now where I have people asking for book 4 in three different series, another book in the 10-book series, and the third-book in my current space opera series. Fortunately, none of the current 'final books' have cliffhanger endings.

So what am I writing? A NEW series... in a different genre. Hah.

[Betty Blast]

If your motivation is money, then the ideal series length depends on how much success you are having with sales. I know of several authors who have gone back to write more books for an earlier series after having disappointing sales on later projects.

[LilyBLily]

For me the choice to write six books in a series was tempting because it was in a well-defined romance subgenre, contemporary western. There are too many thousands of romances in the general contemporary pool. It’s too easy to be lost with just a stand-alone title (tried that). However, in the years since I wrote Book #1, my approach to storytelling has shifted. I think it’s much easier to have a series of clones, but that is not what I wrote. I’m not sure I could write clones even now, which is why I plan to switch my efforts to women’s fiction.

[Lu Kudzoza]

Nick has made a great career for himself flogging courses, but the last time he released a fiction book was 2016, it got no more than sixty crappy reviews, and as far as I can tell he hasn't released one since. Like David Gaughran, he's just another "guru" who doesn't seem able to apply the same tactics to his own success.

David runs advertising campaigns for others, as he says in many of his newsletters and books. He's also admitted to a few bloopers with the marketing of his own books (eg. selling his novel to a crowd of people who buy his non-fic stuff, messing up the also boughts.)

I wouldn't judge any expert on whether they can sell their own work, necessarily. Not in this game, at least.

Marketing fiction is a total crapshoot, and the lessons I get from people like David are more along the lines of improving my approach to ads, not 'here's how I sold $squillion of my own novel'

Also, a lot of these self-help books (ams ads, marketing, fb ads, release scheduling you name it) are as cheap as chips. If I get one or two ideas out of them, they're easily worth the cost. And if I learn the things that someone else has tried that DON'T work, so much the better.

David, Nick, and Mark (and several others) all have some good ideas and some that don't work... for me. The key is to evaluate the idea regardless of who it's coming from and if you think it might have a possibility of working, then test it. It might work for you, but not for me.

They all have mentioned things the "definitely" don't work, but work just fine for me.

[Lorri Moulton]

I just realized my planned trilogy is going to end up being five books and a Christmas novella.  Sometimes, the story dictates the length no matter what we have planned. 

[ashleycapes]

I've seen the conventional wisdom around series length change over the years too, yeah - the shifts in where folks believe reader fatigue will set in are interesting especially, and as everyone has already said, it's often genre-dependent (like so much else in publishing).

To add a tiny bit of data to the thread, I've got two main worlds that I've planned 6 and 9 stories for respectively.


The 6-book one is actually a pair of trilogies that I joined together earlier this year (Bone Mask Cycle): it's in KU, longer books, epic fantasy, sells okay but the recent launch and subsequent performance of #5 has shown a pattern of diminishing returns. It's also my oldest series, first book released in 2014.


The 9 book one (Book of Never) started out as novellas, then climbed to short novels: it's wide, shorter books, epic fantasy, outperforms all of my other series and the recent launch and performance of #7 shows steady sales and even growth. It's not my newest series, and the first book was released in 2016.

[angela]

Optimal length depends on a lot of factors, and a big one is whether you go KU strategy with paid ads versus wide strategy with permafree. Read-through on a KU series is often much stronger than sell-through on paid books.