Series readthrough - how far can it go?

[Hopscotch]

For those who write longer series, say, 10 novels or more - how far does a profitable readthrough stretch after the first couple of books?  Ie, does book 10 pull in as much as 10-20-30% of your book 1 earnings?  Might several short series (3 books) in the same genre do better than one long series as ea short series offers readers a fresh start?

[Simon Haynes]

Readthrough is a bit tricky with my ten book series, because I also have three omnibus editions (1-3, 4-6, 7-9) and two 'megabus' editions with 1-5 and 6-10. Therefore, someone might read books 1-3, then get omnibus 2 and finish with Megabus two.

Having said all that, according to SalesScanner -- and based on pagereads alone -- the sellthrough from my first omnibus to the second is about 90%, and it's 100% from 2 to 3.

With the novels it's about 60% from 1 to 2, and then roughly 100% from there to 10. (Based on those figures I should be paying about $3/click for AMS ads...)

The megabus editions are only a couple of weeks old, so no relevant figures yet.



With my Dragon and Chips series, the first three books are a trilogy, and I plan to release the second three as a new, separate trilogy with books 1-3 instead of 4-6. That increases my footprint, which I think is what you were referring to.

[Crystal]

Generally, I see about 90-95% sellthru between book 2 and 3 and every book onward (when I'm no longer advertising later books in the series).

So, yes, that 5-10% adds up, but a lot of people make it to the end.

[TimothyEllis]

For those who write longer series, say, 10 novels or more - how far does a profitable readthrough stretch after the first couple of books?  Ie, does book 10 pull in as much as 10-20-30% of your book 1 earnings?  Might several short series (3 books) in the same genre do better than one long series as ea short series offers readers a fresh start?

If book 10 is pulling only 30% of the income of book 1, then you did something seriously wrong somewhere down the series.

As a general rule, each new book will see about 95% of the readers of the last one, assuming you don't goof.

My first series has 13 novels and a novelette. Books 6 and 10 change the PoV character, and were written at times of major health issues, so are very different. They broke the series, particularly 10, so 12 and 13 which were my best work to date at that time, never did as well as they should have.

BUT

Then you do the spin off series, the sequel to the first series, and now you have a universe.

So now you bring in a new set of characters in that universe, interacting with the old ones, and learning what went on before they came into things. This brings in new readers, and some of them go back and binge read the previous series.

The fall off from these readers is very low, because they're invested in finding out what already happened before where they entered the universe.

My spin off series 2 gets the least love, not the least because book 3 totally changes pace and focus. But I'm going to address that soon so readers of my current main character will want to go back and read the backstory of his latest.

I don't worry about fall off between books in series anymore. You always lose someone.

The trick is to continue writing in a way that you attract more new readers to replace the ones you lose, and those new readers go back and read everything.

Not writing universes though, if you write in trilogies within a long series, you tend to only lose people at the beginning of a new trilogy when you jump the shark. Elizabeth Moon did that for me with the new Vatta novel. The blurb makes it clear most of it is set on a planet, but the MC is best in space. Shark, meet jump. No. The moment you change things too much, you lose readers.

My series 5 is sending new readers back to book 1, and it keeps leaping back into the 30k range. The rest of series 1 also keeps jumping into the 30-50k range as people read through.

But the really interesting thing now is, the flow in series 1 is completely different now than when I was writing it, or even for 2 years after.

[Crystal]

I should note I'm taking about sales after all books are published when I'm advertising book one. IME a pretty small percent of readers return for book two (or three or four) on their own when it comes to series of standalones.