Fascinating discussion about trends in fiction for the coming years.
Series are not just for girl detectives and babysitting clubs anymore. Hardcover series are all the rage.
Recently some bloggers were voicing their disgust with the series trend in YA fiction. But the publishers, apparently, plan to keep it up.
“It’s very rare for a book to start out as a single volume these days,” says Katz. “Most of the proposals we get for teens and tweens now are proposed to us from the first as series, and trilogies are very common.”
I’ve been pitching a stand alone for the last several months, because I’ve heard for years that you write a stand alone and then add to it if the publisher asks for more. I’ve moved on to writing a different stand alone in a different world, and my sister has been having a fit. She knows nothing about writing, of course, and she doesn’t even read fiction except for what I write, but she’s sure I need to write a sequel so I have one ready when all the publishers snap up my book and clamor for another. I’ve been ignoring her the way I ignore all control freaks who want to tell me what to do. (This is the same sister who read my first novel and said, “This is not just going to sell. This is going to be a blockbuster.” Yes, THAT first novel. The one in the drawer.)
But now this article makes me wonder. What stories can I set in the world of my last novel? What further adventures can my character go on?
As far as reading goes? I love series, myself. When I find a world and a set of characters I love I hate to let them go. I close the books I love with sorrow, feeling like I’m losing a good friend. Or losing a magic world. I didn’t want Anne Shirley to grow up and I hated to leave Narnia.
So this should be encouraging to those of you with trilogies gathering dust on your hard drive.
The article discusses the possibility of series moving into adult fiction, even, and I have to laugh. The CBA may be ahead of the curve on this one. They launched Jan Karon’s Mitford series and then there are all those Left Behind books.
