Business - Overheard at Bouchercon in Florida last month: "I don't write series *or* standalones; I write books." Do you love/hate/mind/notice/use/ignore the publishers' and booksellers' classifications of your work?
Well now, isn’t this an interesting one…and something I’ve been giving a great deal of thought to over the past few months.
I definitely write two series: The Cait Morgan Mysteries with eight books in it to date; the WISE Enquiries Agency Mysteries with four books in it to date. Each individual book within each series has a beginning, middle and end, and I don’t write any cliffhangers at the end of a book to “encourage” readers to read the next one…I don’t like it when authors do that to me as a reader, so I don’t do it to mine.
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| Definitely a series, all the Cait Morgan Mysteries feature Cait Morgan and Bud Anderson |
Each book has a satisfying conclusion to the case/s within it, and readers can choose to share the company of my recurring characters again, in another book, if they choose.
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| Definitely a series, each book features the four WISE women, and the inhabitants of both Chellingworth Hall and the village of Anwen-by-Wye |
There can be no doubt that each of the two “sets” of my work to date is, in fact, a series, as both were planned as such from the start. I was delighted to work with two different publishers, one for each series, and we were all pretty certain from the outset that the idea was to bring recurring characters to books to allow for a “series” to be promoted to readers.
That said, the most recent book I’ve been working on may, or may not, be the first in a new series. Why don’t I know yet? Because I don’t know how the book will sell. If it sells well, and if readers want to know what happens to “some” of the characters within it (I cannot say which ones, because that would involve spoilers) then I am more than happy to write future books featuring said character/s. But if there isn’t the appetite for that from readers then…no, I won’t push it, I’ll allow THE WRONG BOY to become a de facto standalone (it will be released on January 9th 2019, so if you read it you can help me make a decision!).
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| My new "novel" will be released on January 9th 2019 |
As a reader I enjoy series books, but I also enjoy standalones. I also am not especially bothered by which it is when I begin to read; I don’t need to start a series at the first book. If I enjoy a series book I am likely to go back to the first in the series and work my way forward from there if I have the time/ability to do so, but I use the library a great deal, so that’s not always possible.
I don’t mind my books being categorized as series or standalone…the classifications that bother me more are the “cozy”, “traditional”, “suspense”, “thriller” type labels that are assigned to books. That’s where I would say “I am writing a book, not a classification”, rather than railing against “series or standalone”…which, to me, is a pretty obvious differentiation.
I'd be honoured if you'd consider reading my work - you can find out about it, and me, here: cathyace.com
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