Blogger: Etta Wilson
Location: Books & Such Nashville Office
Weather: mid-80s
While it’s tempting to talk about the excess rain and devastating floods here in Nashville, I’m turning to things more bookish–due in part to several proposals I’ve seen lately. Authors often present their project as having potential to be a series. Aside from the quality of the writing, several considerations shape my response.
For nonfiction, it’s important to ask:
Does the topic lend itself to further exploration? If an author has a nonfiction manuscript that covers a decisive moment in a person’s life, the chances are good that it’s a one-book treatment. On the other hand, if that moment was the first of several that impacted later generations, there’s opportunity for a series.
Is the author an authority on the topic or have lengthy experience that could reasonable be extended to a series? Churchill’s four-volume set History of the English Speaking Peoples comes to mind, but there are countless others, especially political and war accounts. However, note that David McCullough wrote the single 1776 and did not extend it to a series–or hasn’t yet. The Ansel Adams’ three-book series, The Camera, The Negative, The Print, is a perfect example of an authority writing three detailed books on a subject that perhaps no other person had the public’s respect or the fame to write in the early 1980s.
Is the topic one that would interest contemporary readers? This may be the hardest to gauge. I wonder how many people would have guessed that a book about marriage relationships like Gary Chapman’s The Five Love Languages would be so popular and so needed as to spawn three more books. In this case, it’s not hard to guess that love and marriage are interesting topics, but the approach and the analysis were new, and the author had sufficient credentials to back up his content.
But making the decision about the aptness of creating a series is the combination of reading tea leaves and praying that makes publishing the fun enterprise it is!
Tomorrow, we’ll look at fiction series. Stay tuned.
Etta, do you think that the success (or not) of book one plays into this? Do publishers scramble for a second and third if the first one did really well?
Absolutely yes to both your questions. Publishers seem to push more for a follow-on to a success in the fiction realm than nonfiction, even though fiction may take longer to create. I’m always curious to see how an author’s writing develops from the first book to the second in a series. Some get better and others have problems.
Etta, When pitching the concept of a nonfiction series to an agent/publisher, is it necessary to have more than one of the books finished? Is it better to make the first book stand on its own in the early going, without reference to a series, and make changes when necessary?
You’ve asked the question I often wrestle with, and the answer depends to some degree on the publisher or agent you’re pitching to. If it’s an agent, then I think you’d certainly want at least to make her/him aware that you have a series in mind. Some nonfiction proposals seem to call for a series, and I find publishers in the Christian market are more open to series. The general market tends to want only one book, at least until it’s a blockbuster.
Looking forward to your perspective with regard to fiction!
Hi, Etta–what if a book is meant to be a stand-alone book with the potential of ancillary products based on the brand of the book? Are publishers interested in that potential or would their interest be in just the book itself?
Great question! Decisions about ancillary products are usually made in-house, as a function of marketing and finance, and are based on the book’s perceived strength or its success if it has been published. Another scenario occurs when book packagers sell an array of products to publishers. As an author presenting a book proposal, I’d want to do a lot of research on several matters before I tried to sell ancillary product at the same time.