Promoting a series…
One thing I learned during the Covid pandemic (beyond staying alive!) was how important book series are! Forget about streaming video and computer games! The only TV series I watched were on PBS’s Masterpiece Theater, most recently Around the World in Eighty Days (highly recommended, by the way). I spent most of my time binge-reading book series and maintained my sanity in the process. (They helped me stay alive!)
It’s amazing how many good series there are. Most of them are “evergreen” in the sense that they’re as good as when the author wrote them. I’m well into a new one (new for me), and I know I can find many others. You can find lists of many British-style mystery series, for example, in my own collections, Sleuthing, British-Style (three of them, the last two free PDF downloads, and the first on Amazon), I keep adding to that list with every collection).
Series exist in many genres (I hate that word “genre,” but it’s a bit useful here). Sometime in the future I’ll binge-read all the Harry Potter books, one right after another. Um, that might be a bit masochistic because that series is a lesson in padding out a manuscript with a lot of superfluous verbosity. Maybe I’ll just do that with A. B. Carolan’s “ABC Sci-Fi Mysteries” instead, because A.B.’s young adult heroes are a lot more believable than Harry and his friends!
But that’s the key for readers: The best series are well-established or finished because you can binge-read them, one right after another. But for authors, there’s a problem with series: Most of the so-called “book marketing experts” out there either don’t know how to promote a series, or won’t, because they want to charge for each book’s promotion! Is there a conspiracy going on? I suspect the real reason is the first, but they have no desire to remedy the problem because of the second.
So what can authors do to promote their series? The only thing I can suggest now is to make a personal appeal to readers. Although those book marketing experts don’t often say it, I will: The best marketing tool is often word-of-mouth. So I’ll make this plea to readers of this blog: Please binge-read series (I have several myself—see below), and then tell your relatives and friends about those you like. Do this for as many as you can, please. As avid readers, you know other readers. Please help authors fight the book marketing experts who won’t promote a series!
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My series. I have a few. I’ll just list them here. You can find out more about them by perusing the “Books & Short Stories” web page. Welcome to binge-reading of series! Here’s the list:
“Detectives Chen & Castilblanco”—eight novels*
“Esther Brookstone Art Detective”—eight novels*
“Clones & Mutants”—a trilogy
“The Chaos Chronicles”—a trilogy**
“Mary Jo Melendez Mysteries”—a trilogy
“The Last Humans”—two novels
“ABC Sci-Fi Mysteries”—four novels***
*”Chen & Castilblanco” #8 and “Esther Brookstone” #6 are one and the same, because that novel is a crossover between two series
**Available in one ebook bundle
***A series for young adults and adults who are young-at-heart—the first three are set in my usual sci-fi universe, the fourth begins “The Denisovan Trilogy,” and all are by A. B. Carolan
Around the world and to the stars! In libris libertas!
