publishing, series, fantasy, an announcement of a personal nature, and a big helping of wtf

[truepenny]

So here is the thing about which I am thinking--and I should note that I am genuinely puzzled. This isn't sarcasm or rhetoric.

One of the things that the unimpressed Publishers Weekly review of Corambis mentioned was that it probably wouldn't make sense if you hadn't read the first three books in the series. Which, you know, is absolutely true, and I don't deny it. What puzzles me is (a.) why anyone needs to be warned about it, and (b.) why the reviewer seemed to feel it was a defect.

This seems to me to be related to one of Ace's marketing decisions that still puzzles me, namely the absolute, vehement refusal to indicate anywhere on any of the books that they are part of a series. I actually asked about it, back when Mélusine was in production, because the series has a name and was never conceived of as anything but a series, and my editor told me that we couldn't put Book One of the Doctrine of Labyrinths on the cover or in the front matter. Marketing wouldn't let us.

She explained their reasoning to me: if a person buys a book and then discovers it's part of a series, they are more likely to buy the other books, whereas if a person picks up a book in a bookstore and sees it's Book Two, they won't buy it. (I think there's a self-defeating flaw in this reasoning, since it assumes that Book One will not be near Book Two on the bookstore shelves, but that's neither here nor there.) Never mind the fact that a person who buys a book only to discover it's Book Two is likely to be an unhappy person, and never mind that, since the damn thing ISN'T LABELED as Book Two, the person has no immediately obvious and easy way of figuring out either which series it's a part of, nor which books in the series come BEFORE it . . . Marketing said, Thou Shalt Not Label The Books Of Thy Series, and lo, the books were not labeled.

And reviewers and readers bitched up one side and down the other about how Mélusine ended and how they should have been told it was Book One of a series and so on and so forth.

But that's not actually my point either, although it's obvious I'm still more than a little bitter about it. My point is that both Ace's marketing department and the PW reviewer seem to think that fantasy series are a bad thing, that it's bad for a writer to build a story from one book to the next. And to that I honestly have nothing more intelligent or articulate to say than, What the fuck?

Two different reasons that this baffles me:

1. It's the fourth book in the series. Why should anyone want to read it without reading the first three? I'm sure this idea got ported over from mystery "series," in which every book is intended to stand alone, but IT DOESN'T APPLY HERE. Fantasy writers do not and have never pretended to write that kind of series. We write stories that are too big for one volume. Completely different.

2. Never mind fandom and what fandom thinks. I understand that "fandom" is not the audience PW is writing for and not the audience that Ace's marketing department is trying to reach. But the evidence is that people who read fantasy want series. They revel in series. Case in point--and I don't think we need to go any farther for examples, although George R. R. Martin can also stand up and testify here--Robert Jordan's overwhelmingly popular and infinitely expanding¹ Wheel of Time series, which have, from the publication of the very first doorstop of a volume, been labeled as part of the Wheel of Time. And publishers want series. They buy series. My four books were bought in two two-book deals, always on the understanding that the books went together. You see it every time you look at Locus. Readers want series. Publishers want series. But apparently, bookstores don't want series--because that, of course, is who Marketing has to sell to: buyers for chain bookstores and their computers.

Other authors, including most recently to my knowledge, Tobias Buckell, have blogged about this and the ugly Catch-22 in which chain bookstore computers can kill an author's career, and I don't want to rehash it now. What I want to say is that it's doing more than that, and worse than that: it's putting a No Man's Land, full of barbed wire and landmines, between the readers on one side and the writers and editors² on the other. In other words, much of the business of publishing is being driven by factors that have nothing to do with what people want to read.

And I wonder--I can't help but wonder--if the attempts to pander to the computers and their apparatchiks actually produce the phenomenon they're allegedly trying to avoid. That is, I wonder if my numbers would be better if my books had been labeled as a series, if people could look at one and TELL it belonged to something larger than itself.

And, yes, this is a very pointedly personal question for me. I haven't been blogging about it, but in fact Ace chose several months ago not to offer me another contract. My numbers aren't "good enough." This feels, in case you were wondering, like the moment in "Hansel and Gretel" when they turn around and realize that, not only have their parents ditched them, but also the birds have eaten their bread crumbs.

I'm hoping that the witch who shows up in my story is Glinda the Good Witch of the South.

---
¹And it's spread to the next generation, too. (I'm a fantasy author. We have trouble with the concept of brevity. Brandon Sanderson, I adore you.) I move that this phenomenon now officially be known as Jordan's Curse.

²I have never met an editor who was not also a passionate reader. I have never met an editor who did not sincerely love the books he or she edited. It's all too possible for the relationship between an author and an editor to feel adversarial, but it shouldn't.

Comments

[stephanieburgis.livejournal.com]

I just wanted to say that I adore the Doctrine of Labyrinths series, and I'm really, really looking forward to whatever you write next, no matter which publisher is the one smart enough to buy it.

[truepenny.livejournal.com]

Thank you. Believe me, I appreciate your saying so.

[sasha-feather.livejournal.com]

Word. It's also frustrating when the bookstore has multiple copies of the second book in stock, and zero copies of the first. (For instance).

[truepenny.livejournal.com]

YES.

[sovay]

I haven't been blogging about it, but in fact Ace chose several months ago not to offer me another contract.

Ace's marketing department is composed of idiots.

Let me know where to find your books next, because I am going to want them.

[clarentine]

Yes, definitely.

[clarentine]

Oh, bugger. There has got to be a better model for this publishing thing.

[libskrat]

You will keep writing. You will keep selling your writing. I believe this.

[veejane.livejournal.com]

I picked up a Holly Black novel from the library last year, just because I'd never read anything of hers, and discovered when I'd got it home it was third in a series. Nowhere on the dustjacket, in the acknowledgements, or anywhere else was it labeled as such, and I double-checked, because 10 pages in, the story wasn't making any sense to me. (It was McElderry, not Ace, although who knows one of them might own the other.)

If I'd purchased it, I would have returned it unread. I'm... not sure how this benefits bookstores? I don't even like series books all that much, but if I'm buying a series book, I'd better damned well know it at the cash register.

(Also I have a crazy whereby all the books have to match, so on the occasions that I do buy series, I want to buy them all in the same shape, size, and general interior and exterior design.)

[toneils.livejournal.com]

I got the first three books of the series from the library, and have only purchased all of them now that Corambis is coming out. Except... I don't think it was purely due to my own stupidity, but I somehow managed to read the Mirador BEFORE I read the Virtu.

(In all honesty, I probably could have figured it out somewhere into the second chapter, but I'm an idiot like that sometimes, so I read it to the end.)

On that note, I EXPECT fantasy authors to write series. No one is going to buy a 1200 page book, let alone write one all at once, which is WHY series exist. And, as a fantasy reader, if I happen to pick up the second book of a series instead of a first, and it looks interesting, I WILL FIND THE FIRST BOOK. I think the marketing department and publishers underestimate how much readers actually LOVE reading, and, in all honesty, good books these days are getting harder and harder to find.

[casacorona.livejournal.com]

Let me try to answer a little bit of it.

1. Books do not stay on the shelves of bookstores very long. Eight weeks, usually, unless the book is selling unusually well. So thinking that the first three books of the series will be there along with the new fourth book for a reader to buy is not realistic.

2. We'd like for someone who sees book two or three or four, and is intrigued by it, to purchase it and read it and enjoy it. And then go looking for the earlier books in the series to fill in the mysteries they didn't get. So each book of the series should be sufficiently grounded in itself, and have enough self-contained plot, to be a satisfying read for someone coming on it first.

3. There's plenty of evidence that readers just won't buy a book that says "book three of the XXX series" on the cover, unless they have already read books one and two. Even if they'd like it. Even if it's self contained. And if they won't buy it, then how can we get them to read it and special order books one and two?

4. And this is key: Selling books only to people who bought and enjoyed the previous books in a series is the road to the sales death spiral. In successful series, each book is an entry point.

OK, yes, there are great honking exceptions to this. Jordan. Tolkien. Martin. But they are exceptions that surprise everyone. On the other hand, look at Novik. Look at Brust. Look at Butcher. Look at Harris and Kenyon. Look at Meyer. Even Harry Potter can be entered at any point -- there's enough back story, and each book has a self-contained plot as well as the over-arching one.

I know that it makes a writer feel like she's repeating the same thing over and over. But the new reader hasn't read it before, and the trick is to embed a little something new for the reader who's seen it before.

Anyway, that's what it looks like from this side of the sales reports and marketing meetings.

[truepenny.livejournal.com]

So, in fact, what publishing wants (if I'm understanding you correctly) are series on the mystery "series" model, with recurring characters but self-contained plots (more of the same, only different!)--or installments on a plot coupon type overarching narrative (like Harry Potter, with each novel being one year at school and with progressively escalating end bosses)--not series on the Tolkien/Jordan model, in which each novel continues and connects to and builds on the previous novel, telling one inextricably integrated story from Book One to Book N.

I don't know why I feel so saddened and betrayed by this. Not by you, Beth. Not your fault.

[mcurry.livejournal.com]

I've really never understood the idea of not clearly revealing on the cover (or at least on the inside of the cover) that a book is part of a series. Readers whose preferences tend away from series (like me) aren't going to want to buy the remaining books just because they've been tricked into buying one random part of a continuing story, and readers who do prefer series aren't as likely to pick it up because they can't tell it's a series, so it seems like a lose-lose proposition. I also find it hard to believe that the buyers for the big chains are actually being fooled often enough for it to matter.

Sorry that you're currently orphaned. I hope that changes soon!

[scribblemoose]

More reasons why I lost all ambition to ever become a published author.

The fantasy-series-marketing 'logic' is simply ridiculous. It's a bit of a cliche, for which I apologise, but what of Lord of the Rings? That is, if I'm not mistaken, a series name for three sequential fantasy books. This is the work which all publishers wish to rediscover. It's supposedly our template. (Of course there's a host of reasons why that's not a good idea, but bear with me.) Well-written fantasy stories are by their very nature often detailed, progressive and complex. Very often they require detailed world-building which takes up space (and which readers love to wallow in if done well) and an epic quality which all but defines the genre.

Short version: ACE are asshats and it makes me very sad that they might have put anyone off reading Doctrine of the Labyrinths with their idiotic 'policies'. I hope next time you get a publisher that fucking deserves you. And a marketing department that deserves your sales.

Corambis is my Easter treat for myself and I can't wait to read it, by the way!

[pnh.livejournal.com]

"but what of Lord of the Rings? That is, if I'm not mistaken, a series name for three sequential fantasy books."

Bad example. The Lord of the Rings was written as a unitary work and delivered all at once. Splitting it into three volumes (published in fairly quick succession) was a decision made subequently by the publisher.

The problems being discussed here have to do with a different, and more common, situation: the long work of fantasy which is delivered and published in individual volume-sized chunks.

[stotangirl.livejournal.com]

You are, really, an amazing author. I've loved everything I've read of yours, and I'm another person who will keep reading your work, whichever publisher puts it out.

[imayb1.livejournal.com]

I'm an avid reader and up until recently, I worked in a book store. I must say, it's very frustrating to try to look up book series and figure out which titles go when if the store computer makes no record of series! I never understood this. If you look at Library Thing, readers love to tag, label, number, and classify series. Why haven't book store databases caught on?

As far as your original question goes, I like to be 'warned' about a series because (as you pointed out) readers like series. If I see a book two on the shelf and it looks interesting, it's quite likely I'll buy book one. In a manner of speaking, yes, I'm less inclined to buy book two, but I'd still be a sales statistic.

I think the reviewer phrased the lack of stand-aloneness as a defect out of sheer tradition. One of the things I adore about your writing is that with each new book, you don't attempt to rehash and recap everything that came before into the first chapter. For a lot of series I read, I can almost skip the first chapter of the new book as a waste of time. I already know what came before. I would rather be able to jump right into the story's continuation.

[shana.livejournal.com]

As a librarian, I take that as a cue to buy it if I've got the earlier books, and a warning that if I don't I may get complaints from patrons. (In your case, I knew to buy the earlier books, and Corambis is sitting in the 'buy as soon as we get book money' cart.)

[mamculuna.livejournal.com]

The shelves are full of labeled series of fantasy books. As a reader, I definitely prefer it. I don't mind something like Bujold's The Hallowed Hunt standing alone--it is the third book of the Chalion series, but the plot is not continued from book to book. But accidentally reading part of Martin's ASOIAF series out of order would make me furious. After it made me thoroughly confused. The same with your series.

[wl551.livejournal.com]

I always wondered why they didn't print series numbers on books sometimes. I purposefully look for books in a series. Top of my head: C.S. Friedman, Carol Berg... both their series, (that I have), are clearly indicated on all three novels. To pick up a book, get it home and find it is a part of a series sends me through the roof. I hate that. It's a complete turn off.

Aside: I'm pretty sure you will be snapped up right quick by someone else. You have a strong and loyal fanbase and the pubcos have to know that. ;)

[anderyn.livejournal.com]

For God's sake, marketing is craaazy.

I hate hate hate buying a book and finding out it's the first one in a series (if the story doesn't end satisfactorily, a la the mystery model), or, worse, the middle one in a series. In fact, I cannot tell you how many books I have not bought because I picked them up, looked at them, and realized, "hey, this is book x of a series, and I can't find the first one!" Now, if I could in fact buy the preceding books, I would buy all of them right then, but since I can't, the book goes back on the shelf, and the author unread. If I'm really interested, I might note the name and see if I can buy the books at Amazon, but that is rare. Grrr.

I will say that I bought the first book in the Doctrine of Labyrinths on the strength of your writing, and that I enjoyed it immensely. I did not like finding out it was the first of a series, but since you'd captured me with your writing, I have been a fan/buyer ever since. I think I own every book you've published thus far. I intend to continue that trend, no matter what publisher eventually picks your work up.

[sleary.livejournal.com]

YES.

Just yesterday I found a book in Barnes & Noble that looked intriguing, but I'd come in there to buy two and only two books, so I noted the title and looked it up later. Lo and behold: book #4 in a series. God, I would have been pissed off if I'd bought it unawares. (I'm now looking for the first one.)

Look, I understand marketing's point of view on this. I do. However, as a reader, I resent LIKE HELL being lied to -- such that I note which publishers are really bad about this (Ace and Roc, for the most part) and I'm extra-careful to research before buying. (This book yesterday? Roc.) They're sacrificing a fair number of potential impulse purchases from me because I can't trust them.

...wow. Evidently this whole non-labeling phenomenon makes me even angrier than I thought it did.

[rarelylynne.livejournal.com]

One of the problems here is using LOTR as an example of a series. It's not. It was originally written as one stand-alone, epic novel, and Allen & Unwin, the original publishers, chose to break it up into a trilogy because printing it as a single hard-cover was too expensive. Tolkien wanted it to be one big book. He wasn't happy about it being broken up.

As far as non-contracting, well, that's Ace's loss. :-(

I read both proper series and stand alone type series, and either is fine by me--but I'm a voracious reader in lots of different genres. If you really want to irk me, though, make it impossible to tell which order to read things in if it's necessary to do so. I *like* series books to be labeled with numbers.

The real problem is that continuing-story-series don't have quite enough market share to dictate ordering and numbering that makes sense.

This (idiotic) method of not having back titles available in Big Box stores just means that if I am intrigued by a series in a Big Box store, I'm more likely to go order the first volume from Amazon (hey, that comes to my house) than to go back to the Big Box store to pick up a special order. Which leads to a cycle of Big Boxes thinking that it's not worth having the full series on the shelf. Which is stupid.

I mean, I came to Jacqueline Carey's Kushiel series pretty late in MMPB, but bought the whole initial trilogy at once in my local Borders because it was in stock.

It's messy.

ETA: edited for clarification.

[casacorona.livejournal.com]

What you said about LoTR. It's almost impossible for the general reader to know when a series is actually something that was written as a single book and then broken up, or when it was written book by book. Though speed of publication is a good clue.

[alamaris.livejournal.com]

A rousing YES to everything here.

I don't usually buy books without reading them from the library first (some authors excepted, like you) but even then, it's phenomenally irritating to go through the SF/F rack and come across a handful of books that look interesting -- but give off a niggling 'this is the third book in a series' feeling. There are usually no indicators, and the fact that the book is in a series is often not even alluded to on the first page, where the author's previous books are listed. Not making it clear on the cover is bad enough. Sometimes there's even direct befuddling, in the case of a book that says, "Award-Winning author of Book A and Book B". Book B is in fact the third book, but seeing as it's listed on the book you're holding, that must mean it's the second one, right? Nope.

If I buy a book that I discover is the second or third in a series, I usually take it back and request the first book. All the booksellers who I've encountered this problem with have been good about it when I point out that there was no possible way (unless I was hiding a laptop with internet connection on my person) that I could have known.

I'm so sorry to hear that Ace ditched you! You deserve far better than that. Here's hoping another, better publisher sees the promise and talent in your work.

[oracne.livejournal.com]

You will sell more of something, even if it isn't this series yet. And eventually, this series will be reprinted in prestige format.

[themadfish.livejournal.com]

There's been occasions when I accidently bought the second or third book in the series, read it through without knowing, and because it was confusing, decided it was a bad book. Only to find out that there were previous books. I may or may not buy the previous books, cause how do I know the books are actually good?

I hate it when books aren't labled. If I find a book that's not labled, yet clearly still in a series, I won't read it until I find out. The worst part of that is, yes, some books are standalone. I'm fine with reading standalones, but now with series not being labled, I no longer know if it's truely standalone or not. So chances are I'd put off buying a book where I can't figure out where in a series it's supposed to be until I find out.

[shuki-ai.livejournal.com]

I'm a huge fan of your books and I will continue to purchase them from whatever publisher puts them out. Marketing and all that is crazy...they do things that never seem to make much sense. Just know you've got many loyal fans out there that will definitely continue to read what you put out!

[electricland.livejournal.com]

I agree with you and all the comments. (Yes, even the contradictory ones. I'm flexible like that.)

I've never refused to buy a book on the basis that it's first of a series, although if it ends in a particularly maddening place I may refuse to continue. (OK, I lie, I'll only refuse to continue if I don't much care what happens next.) I do think each book should have a satisfying arc of some sort. I thought Melusine did that perfectly well. At the end of The Virtu I did have a "Must read the next one NOW NOW NOW! -- oh darn, have to wait a month" reaction that was rather trying, but I think that was just because I'd gotten fonder of the characters.

Not having some indication that a book is part of a series, or a grouping, or whatever drives me NUTS. In some cases, I happen to hit a series at the sweet spot where either it's the first book and I know there will be more, or there are 2 or 3 out and available at the same time. In other cases, particularly older series, if it weren't for the Internet I'd be in hopeless shape. (I just started reading Diana Wynne Jones' Chrestomanci series -- my local bookstore had Charmed Life on remainder for $1 and by pure dumb luck it happens to be first in the series. I can see being quite confused if it'd been another. And I had to Google for advice on what to pick up next.)

And plenty of series do have that information on the cover! "The Sharing Knife" for one. Although I suppose there's a where-are-you-in-your-career comparison problem there -- maybe people are more reluctant to pick up series from new authors that are unknown quantities?

All of this to say, I'm very sorry to hear about your Ace contract and I do hope this problem is only temporary. Very much looking forward to Corambis.

[ejmam.livejournal.com]

It's interesting that electricland mentions the Crestomanci series, because I consider that a good example of a series where each book does stand alone. I think I read WITCH WEEK before any of the others, and Crestomanci is still awesome. Of course, going back and rereading after I've read all the others gives some added depth, but the kids at the school don't have that information and the reader doesn't need it either.

And honestly, I was delighted to read VIRTUE, and I felt it completed MELUSINE, but I also felt that you left the characters at an honest point at the end of each of your books. If you had been run over by a bus I would have mourned you deeply but not cursed your name, if that makes sense. I ran out and got the next volumes as soon as I could because I loved the world and the characters, but I didn't feel cheated by any endings. Waiting for Corambis is difficult but not grating.

Also, your books do tend to assume the reader is paying attention. I bet I could start in the middle, but I wouldn't get the same effect. If I ever suffer complete amnesia, I hope someone gives me VIRTU to read so I can see what I think of Mildmay and Felix if I meet them without watching Felix through his madness and Mildmay through the amazing rescue journey. But people not paying attention would be lost no matter where they started.

[papersky.livejournal.com]

Tor took out my note in Ha'Penny that it stands alone but that you should read Farthing first. I expect if I'd had a screaming fit they'd have put it back in, but I didn't.

The thought that anyone might read The King's Name without having read The King's Peace so horrifies me that the dedication reads "Here's the rest of it".

Nobody ever told me you should write series books to stand alone. You'd think it would be the kind of thing editors would mention. You'd think if it's true about the not selling thing then they wouldn't buy books spread across volumes in the first place.

[casacorona.livejournal.com]

Readers love series. They adore the ones they adore.

Editors mostly just try to edit the books of series so that a reader who picks up the third or fourth volume has a hope of figuring out enough of what's going on to enjoy the story, and even to go back and buy the earlier volumes and read it all.

One of the questions that editors have to answer about books is "does this book stand alone"? If the answer is yes, then we can discuss an increased sales target for it. If the answer is no, then the sales targets are automatically set at the net of the previous volume in the series. Because you have just limited your potential universe of buyers to those who read and liked the previous book.

All these beliefs go out the window, of course, when your universe of potential buyers is big enough. When you're looking at pre-pub orders of 100,000 copies or more, you don't have to fret too much. But when it's the difference between 5000 and 7500, then you do what you have to do.

[callunav.livejournal.com]

1. I am fussy when it comes to buying books. I don't have a big budget. I don't buy new books speculatively. It is 100% true that I won't buy a book that says it's book #3 in a series if I haven't read and liked the other two. This is - I thought - why we have two different conventions which, if used properly, can clear up this problem. If we have lots of books that have the same main character and world, which can stand alone but are enriched by reading the others, we have a note on the front which says, "A ______ book". It could be A Mervyn Hitherbottom book! or "A World of the Festering Sun book!" (Or even, I don't know, let's see...A Novel of Discworld. That sounds like something that a few readers might pick up, doesn't it?) If, on the other hand, we have a series which should be read in order starting with the beginning, we number them and call them a series. And if it's not Narnia, we usually number them correctly. ::cough::

In other words, yes. I am your hypothetical very unhappy reader who gets home with book #3 and didn't know anything came behind it.

And I'm sorry that editors, publishers, and bookstores are having these problem with each other, but I don't feel that it's my job as a reader to adjust my reading style to suit the bookstores marketing practices. In fact, I kind of thought it was the reverse, in the event that "I" turns out to be a significant enough "we".

And I'm also sorry if I happen to be in a minority, but I'm not going to stop reading well-written, complex fantasy novels just because the majority of the people in my country aren't reading anything they haven't seen on the rack at the local Walgreens.

2. I admit that when I see "book One of ___" on the first printing of something, I have a pang of cynicism. I like to know that Book Two is going to make it into print before I pick up a Book One. On the other hand, I have much more than just a pang of dissatisfaction if I think I'm reading a self-contained novel and come to the last page only to discover myself still halfway up a cliff. I seem to remember being really disoriented and dissatisfied when I finished Melusine, until Julian told me there was supposed to be a sequel, and I was only half sure that there must be more coming at the end of The Virtu, and only because I had started reading your journal did I know that I wasn't supposed to just fill in the gaps for myself at the end of Mirador. I would have been a much happier and secure reader if I'd known from the start that it was going to be a four-part series and that you'd known that before the first one ever hit the stores.

In fact, although you bring up the HP books cynically, I think they're a good example of books which should be read in order and which suffer badly if they're not. I did observe Rowling taking care in the first chapter of each to sketch in the most relevant points from previous books, but this is something I expect particularly from good YA writers, because I think one of the things YA demands as a special skill-set is creating even more continuity than usual. Moreover, one of the first things that made me really respect Rowling as a writer, even though there are problems with all the books, was learning that she had, in fact, outlined the entire seven-book series before starting writing the first. That made me feel like I was in good hands. I wish your publishers had permitted me to have the same comfort in reading your books.

3. I am really, really sorry Ace has had to be so self-injuriously short-sighted on this. I'm not surprised that you don't have huge, vast, it-would-take-a-Cray-to-crunch-those-numbers numbers, because your books are A: complex, B: fantasy, C: full of queer sexuality, D: written with a finely honed appreciation for the English language and its capacities, which some readers will miss out on. And that's the thing. The publishing crunch means the suppression of books which will not appeal to the broadest audience possible - which sometimes (though heaven knows, not always) is precisely because they're so well-written.

My fandom is a fucking publishing ghetto. I have numbered this entry, but I cannot begin to number the ways in which this pisses me off.

[razziecat.livejournal.com]

WOW. YES. WHAT YOU SAID. ALL OF IT.
And to add my two cents: I don't care what the publishers think...As a reader, I do not want to start reading at book 3 or 4 or 14 or even 2. I should think the reason is obvious, but I'll explain anyway: SPOILERS. I don't want to read book 3 which explains that Queen Freda is really the reincarnated Matriarch of the Clan that the main character spent all of book 1 and 2 looking for, because it spoils the surprise, it spoils the whole damn story, and with the cost of books these days I want to get the full experience of wonder that the author spent time, effort and blood to put into that book. If I had read JRRT's The Two Towers before The Fellowship of the Ring (yes I know LOTR was intended to be one book by the author)...then seeing Gandalf seemingly destroyed with the Balrog in Fellowship would have lost all of its impact, and his return in Towers would have lost its impact, as well. This cheapens the whole story and frankly, it spoils my fun. This makes it extremely unlikely (read: impossible)that I will go back and find the first book unless I freaking loved it...an experience that doesn't happen that often. Luckily I found Melusine, The Virtu and the Mirador all at the library on the same day and I am now waiting for Corambis to show up at my door, which cannot happen too soon. I did receive my copy of The Bone Key earlier than Amazon first promised, which is nice, and after reading the first story I can tell that Mr. Booth and I are kindred spirits (no pun intended) but that's another post....:)

[jaylake.livejournal.com]

Fascinating thread. And, well, I'm sorry about the Ace thing. :(

[truepenny.livejournal.com]

Thanks.

[kateelliott.livejournal.com]

I'm very very sorry to hear this.

As you might expect, I have a lot of thoughts on this issue but will have to sort them out.

As a reader, I generally do not get as much enjoyment out of the episodic series (like the mystery series template); I prefer the multi volume series (like Doctrine of Labyrinths) because I enjoy the complexity of the landscape. So I'm torn: I still see examples of the multivolume series being launched, but also perhaps more examples of something midway between, where the volumes build on each other but each one has at least some manner of internal shape. I am working harder myself--and I am absolutely a multivolume writer--to give each volume a strong enough internal shape that it could conceivably function on its own. But it's unlikely I will ever be an episodic writer in that other sense.

[truepenny.livejournal.com]

It is a quandary.