If you’re a Yankees fan, probably not; if you’re a Red Sox fan, most certainly not.  If you’re thinking that the new college playoff plan is better than the BCS, you’re right—almost anything would be—but it’s really nothing like the NCAA tournament (you’d have to start the football version back in late August or early September when college teams begin their seasons!).  In the sports world, no matter the playoff that takes place, being number one after a lengthy season is largely irrelevant—it’s the series that counts.  Having a winning series in the book world is altogether different.

Take Patterson’s Women’s Murder Club mysteries.  I’ll give the old boy credit.  It was an original idea, and he avoided the cardinal sin of making each successive book dependent on the previous ones.  You can jump in anywhere.  Looking back over the titles I read in the series, I’ll confess that the order I read them in was completely random (yeah, I used to read Patterson).  Sure, the characters and setting were familiar from book to book, but you can pick up any book from the series and enjoy it.  At a higher quality level, Ian Rankin’s Inspector Rebus series also has that positive feature too.  I started with Resurrection Men when I brushed up on how to write mysteries and police procedurals (some of his books take on new meaning—I’m hoping the Scots vote for independence).

One of the worst offenders here is Sue Grafton with her alphabet-intensive mystery and suspense novels.  She started with A is for Alibi, and she’s up to W is for Wicked.  Just waiting to see how she’ll handle X, although I certainly won’t read the book.  Who knows what she’ll do when she gets to Z?  But that’s not the point.  It’s pretty hard to jump around in that series.  Moreover, each new book in the series looks like the previous one—they’re repetitive and formulaic.  Dean Koontz, with his Odd Thomas series; Lee Child, with his Jack Reacher series; and David Baldacci, with his Camel Club series aren’t first-degree serial killers like Grafton, but they’re right up there in the sense that I’d have to recommend you read the books in their series in order—if you’re willing to put out the money, that is.  Patterson’s Alex Cross series suffers the same fate.

One advantage of a series is that it allows the author to develop his characters more.  I’ve used my “Detectives Chen and Castilblanco Series” to develop the protagonists, the detectives, over the five books in the series (I’m counting The Collector, soon to be released).  At the same time, I’ve used it to develop some antagonists, the villains, more too.  In fact one, Vladimir Kalinin, overlaps two series and his actions even affect the third.  One disadvantage of a series is that maybe it allows the author to develop his characters too much—they become stale, too well known to the reader (although I think some readers find repeated characters to be old friends, like in Child’s Reacher series).

One reviewer thought Aristocrats and Assassins, the last book in the detectives’ series, was a great example of a series book that stands alone.  I go to great pains to write them that way.  In fact, part of the fun I have with a series is to pick a book at random and then read prequels and sequels (sometimes in random too).  I’ve read Child that way, so series-like flaws were only apparent after reading multiple books.  Readers can try that.  Linear writing can be tiresome; linear reading can be too.  But writers screw things up more along the lines of making the next book in the series too dependent on the previous ones.  You have to put in enough stuff to make the series fan smile at his privileged knowledge; you have to make the story new and fresh, though, so that the new reader doesn’t feel swindled.  It’s the Goldilocks Principle all over again (I’ve spoken often about that in my writing posts).

When I pursue a story idea or ideas, they don’t necessarily fit into a series.  (In fact, I never know whether it will lead to short story, novella, or novel, in general.)  My original plan for The Collector didn’t call for it to be part of the Chen and Castilblanco series, but that’s where it ended up.  On the other hand, I was tempted to tie Mary Jo Melendez, the protagonist of Muddlin’ Through, back to Castilblanco in the time of The Midas Bomb, but then decided that would be a distraction (I’d have to say something brief about the connection, at least).  Now Mary Jo might end up having her own series.  (After what I put her through, she probably deserves it.)

Do readers like series?  If Grafton’s and some of the other previously mentioned Big Five authors’ successes are any indication, the answer is yes.  There are certainly many successful series.  Some are blockbusters, like the Harry Potter, Twilight, and Fifty Shades series, so much so that authors have to wonder how essential the series nature is for success, or whether successive books are just riding the waves generated by the first hurricane.  An original series can really take off; copy cats of that not so much.  If you’re a reader more than author, what’s your take?  Do you prefer a series?  If you’re an author as well as a reader, what’s your take?  Do you set out to write a series?  If so, has it been successful?

I can’t determine whether series are important to my own readers because I don’t have many readers to begin with—in other words, my statistical sample size is small!  One oddity from the reviewing standpoint is that I have some excellent reviews for Survivors of the Chaos and none for Sing a Samba Galactica or Come Dance a Cumbia…with Stars in your Hand!  These books belong to the “Chaos Chronicles Trilogy.”  However, the number of readers seems to track that too.  It appears the more expensive book, Survivors of the Chaos, does better than the other two, which doesn’t make sense.  (Survivors is more expensive because it’s published by Infinity Publishing, although the ebook is less expensive than most Big Five ebooks.)

That brings up the question of pricing a series.  I’ve noticed a trend among authors where they price the first book in a series low (they sometimes even give it away), apparently “to hook” the reader.  I’d think readers resent and resist that; I do.  I’ve stopped series in midstream, especially in my casual reading, when the price of each successive book rises.  What do you think?  (My “Chaos Chronicles Trilogy” seems to be the reverse, but I’ve already explained that.)

I have a different philosophy: When I first release a book, it has an introductory price.  I could call this the “new car pricing plan.”  If the reader wants the latest model, he pays a wee bit more (my ebooks are generally competitively priced, though, even new).  After a few years (years, mind you!), some prices are reduced (they’ll go to a nonzero minimum, usually $2.99 or $3.99, depending on the length of the book).  This is series-independent, but it does have that hook flavor when the reader looks at a series.  (I wish I could do it for The Midas Bomb and Survivors of the Chaos.  For Full Medical and Soldiers of God, I pulled that off with ebook second editions—those books had no ebook versions.  Midas and Survivors do have Infinity ebook versions, though.)

Given that my books can stand alone—I make sure of that—you can start the Detective series and the Chaos Chronicles series at the second ebooks of the series (Angels Need Not Apply and Sing a Samba Galactica, respectively) and not miss much (except some entertaining writing, of course).  I don’t know if readers realize that.  Of course, you can also pick up a complimentary copy of The Midas Bomb (ebook version only) by casting some Hollywood actor in the role of Castilblanco.  So far I’ve only had one taker on that offer.  You have only three days left!

So, do you like series?  Here are mine: mystery/suspense/thriller + some sci-fi = “Detectives Chen and Castilblanco”; thrillers more than sci-fi = “Clones and Mutants”; and sci-fi more than thrillers = “Chaos Chronicles.”  Ebooks not in these series are either a bridge between two series or stand-alones.  You can read any and all ebooks in any order, though.  I didn’t write them in any particular order either.  Consequently, I don’t expect readers to read them in order either, but you can if you want to—if you want to “follow the series.”

In libris libertas….

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