Hi,
It is almost impossible to make money on a stand-alone book. In order to drive ads you need enough read-through to additional titles break even.
Whether it’s ads on Amazon, Facebook, Bookbub, Google, or buying newsletter placements.
Anywhere.
It is generally accepted that outside of thriller or romance, a series needs roughly 3-5 books to have a reasonable chance of breaking even.
This is because of series read-through. If a person reads one book, and it’s self-contained, they generally don’t continue reading books from the author.
However, if you have a 10-book series, some percentage of fans will keep going, which helps you recoup ad costs for the first book.
A single book that sells for even $9.99 on Amazon only received $7 in revenue. Meanwhile, a 5-book series, even selling for $4.99, would return $15 in revenue if somebody buys the whole series.
It’s just easier to make money on a series because there is more money to be made.
The simple fact is that, usually, it costs more than the revenue gained from one book to find a new reader. The more money a book makes, the more you can spend on advertising.
The more money you can spend on advertising, the more people know about your book, and the easier it becomes to make money on it because people know about it.
Depending on the series it can be quicker, but a reasonable expectation is 3-55 books. If you can’t turn a profit advertising 5 books, you have done something very wrong with your series.
I have written standalone books available to paid members of my Substack, but otherwise, very few people buy them because I can’t profitably run ads to them, or talk about them for long enough to get traction.
A 5-book series gives you five times you can talk about a series instead of one.
A major goal of a publisher is to build an author’s catalog so that when one goes into a bookstore or library they see several inches of work from an author taking up space on a shelf, and that makes them more likely to buy/read that author.
I have often seen publishers more in favor of stand-alone books once somebody has built a name. Until then, they tend to want something meaty they can use to introduce a new author and build their name.
If one looks at the history of publishing, the overwhelming majority of uber-successful authors have a long series they used to build their careers.
I used to do only standalone, but it is not feasible as an author or publisher to make a living that way.
That said, now that I am a known commodity, a stand-alone book is actually profitable for me, but only because people know my name and seek out my work.
It’s almost impossible to launch a career with stand-alone books.
The average book costs roughly $35,000 to get out the door. There are editors, proofreaders, audiobook narrators, printing, marketing, and dozens of other line items that balloon the costs.
By some metrics, books sell an average of 3,000 copies over time.
Research suggests that the “average” self-published, digital-only book sells about 250 copies in its lifetime. By comparison, the average traditionally published book sells 3,000 copies, but as I mentioned above, only about 250-300 of those sales happen in the first year.
Other articles state that books don’t sell more than 1,000 copies on average over their life.
Combine the explosion of books published with the flat total sales and you get shrinking sales of each new title. According to NPD BookScan—which tracks about 85 percent of bookstore, online, and other retail US print sales of books (including Amazon) — 789 million print books were sold in 2022 in the US in all publishing categories combined, both fiction and nonfiction (Publishers Weekly, January 9, 2023). Thus, the average book published today is selling less than 300 print copies over its lifetime in the US retail channels. Even if e-book sales, audio sales, sales outside of the US, and sales outside of retail channels are added in, the average new book published today is selling much less than 1,000 copies over its lifetime in all formats and all markets. What is skewing these figures down are the tiny sales of most self-published books that have flooded the marketplace. However, sales of traditionally published books are also shockingly small. Kristen McLean, lead publishing industry analyst for NPD BookScan, recently revealed findings from BookScan’s study of print retail sales in the US of new titles by the top ten publishers in the US trade market (Penguin Random House, Simon & Schuster, Hachette Book Group, HarperCollins, Scholastic, Disney, Macmillan, Abrams, Sourcebooks, and John Wiley). BookScan found that only 6.7 percent of the new titles released by these companies were selling more that 10,000 copies in their first year of sales, only 12.3 percent were selling more than 5,000 copies in their first year, and only 33.9 percent of these titles were selling more than 1,000 copies in their first year (Kristen McLean response to the blog “No, Most Books Don’t Sell Only a Dozen Copies” by Lincoln Michel, September 4, 2022).
A book needs to sell roughly 10,000 copies to be considered a success, and almost no books get there on their own.
Most authors need multiple books to get traction, and a series is an effective way to do that efficiently.
So, how do we even start thinking about a series that could define our career? Well, having written three major ones in my career (The Godsverse Chronicles, Ichabod Jones: Monster Hunter, and The Obsidian Spindle Saga) I have thought about that question a lot.
Before I get started, I will tell you these are my opinions. You might hate them all, but I don't care. You can plan a series any way you like, but this is how I do it and what works for me.
I will also specifically be talking about a signature series, which is one that has a million+ words in it and spans several books. For comics, this is at least a maxi-series, with 12+ issues in it.
First and foremost, there are many reasons to write a book, but the reason to write a signature series is to make money and define your career. There are plenty of smaller series and standalone books which you can write for fun, but a series is about pulling in the type of money that allows you to do this full-time.
It's an absolute mind-numbing amount of work and stress. There is no other reason to do a signature series than to define your career and create something that has long-term sales potential.
Here are the main questions you should ask before starting a signature series.
What genre do I want to be known for?
A good signature series might span many subgenres, but it needs to clearly be defined by a single main genre. Readers are looking for a specific genre when they search for a book, at least a first book in a series, and the more tightly you can define that genre, the better your sales will be, and since signature series are mainly about both short and long term sales, defining your series well is critical for success.
There are five main genres that indies can hope to have success in, and this is in order of probability of success, as defined by the popularity of the genre in the self-published space.
Romance - the most popular genre by far, and accounts for more book sales than all other genres conbined.
Thriller/Mystery/Crime - easily the second most popular genre, far ahead of all the others,save romance.
Science Fiction - the surge of sales from military sci-fi has vaulted sci-fi past fantasy in total sales.
Fantasy - close behind science fiction.
Horror - far behind all other categories listed.
Now, there are many subgenres and categories underneath each of them. You can have epic fantasy or urban fantasy, military sci-fi or alien invasion, contemporary romance or historical romance, but you need to define your main genre, the one that you will be placed by readers for the rest of your career.
If you write in another genre, find a way to make it feel like one of these genres, because those are the ones that sell.
Remember, though, that this is the series you will be known for and what you expect new readers to pick up first when they hear about you, so don't choose a genre unless you intend to write in it for a long time and are comfortable with the majority of readers knowing you are that lind of writer.
It is very hard to change the trajectory of a career once you have a signature series, so only go into one once you know for sure they type of thing you want to be known for by the majority of people who find your work.
That might take 5-10+ books before you figure that out, or maybe you already know it, but this is a big commitment. Don't go into it lightly.
What subgenre/tropes will define this series?
Every genre has some enduring tropes and subgenres that are timeless, and you will want to choose a timeless trope for your series as you want them to be bought for the rest of your life and beyond.
For instance, paranormal romance shifters or vampires will probably endure for at least the next decade.
The same thing with fantasy and fairy tales or dragon riders.
Military sci-fi and space opera dominate the sci-fi charts as well, so sometimes a small niche subgenre is responsible for an oversized part of a genre's success, and writing in any other subgenre would be folly.
Once you have your genre, it's really important to pick a subgenre that is robust and enduring as you want to make sales on this series for years into the future. Even if the sales are middling at the beginning, a signature series gains value over time, as every reader who sticks with it buys more books the longer the series goes on.
What kind of series is this going to be?
There are a few types of series that endure.
Serialized series - This is something like Mistborn or Game of Thrones. The books end on cliffhangers and need to be read in order to make sense. The Obsidian Spindle Saga is serialized series.
Episodic series - Mark Dawson and most thriller/crime books are episodic and star the same set of characters, but with different crimes to solve every book.
Anthology series - Christopher Moore makes anthology series, as do most romance writers. An anthology series follows different characters in every book, but in the same world, and often with ancillary characters becoming lead characters, and people showing up in multiple books. The Godsverse Chronicles is an anthology series.
Each of these has its own positives and negatives. Serialized stories are great because they have an immediate hook to read the next book, but people sometimes get pissed about cliffhangers.
Episodic stories are standalone, which people like, but because of that finality, people are less likely to continue to the next book, so you need to give them a reason to keep moving from book to book with an underlying story that bubbles under the surface for several books, or at least an epilogue that tease something to come in the next book.
Anthology series are great because each book is new characters, but because of that people are even less likely to finish than in other types of series, because every book is new characters they have to fall in love with. However, there are many more chances for people to fall in love, too, and get hooked on a series.
What is the POV of the main character(s)?
For me, often questions 3 and 4 go in tandem because I often need the voice of the character before I figure out the series.
Third person omniscient - This is a wide view of the world, where the narrator can see everything and knows everything about the world. The narrator talks in the third person about the characters that they are watching.
Third person limited - Like omniscient, this is about talking about the characters the narrator is watching, but they don't know everything, or anything aside from what they are viewing at this moment.
First person - We are inside the character's head, talking in the first person.
Second person - I haven't seen this much, but N.K. Jemison did it so beautifully that I have to add it. The narrator is talking about a character using YOU. I don't recommend this type of series unless you are really confident in your writing and already have an audience.
How many main characters will there be? I'm tipping my hat here, but I have a REALLY hard time writing a series from a single character's point of view. It's a LOT of words to stick with one character, so my books either have multiple POVs between the chapters (4-5 with The Obsidian Spindle) or are anthology series, where each book follows a different character.
Gods bless you if I can keep interested in one character for a million words, but I can't do it. Even with Ichabod Jones: Monster Hunter, which was a single-person POV, it was really hard not to cut away to different characters all the time.
Even if you are doing an anthology series, you need to get some sense of the scope of the book series, and who will be interacting with who over the course of it.
With romance, the king of anthology series, you will often follow each member of a family, or a workplace, or a dorm, or something, so you have to design each of those characters from the beginning, as they will keep appearing in multiple books.
What is the hook into your series?
The most important single element of the writing process is the hook into your series. How will they be introduced to your signature series. It needs to be in such a way that slowly brings them up to speed, and parcels out the important elements over time. Remember, this is a million-word series in a sprawling world. The instinct is to use a firehose to tell people about your world, but you need to dole the information out over time.
For The Obsidian Spindle Saga, I chose to use the character of Rose as the character who would introduce the audience to the world. When she falls into a diabetic coma, she wakes up in the Dream Realm, and we use her eyes to see everything that happens, and then fill in the world with the perspective of Chelle, Red, and the Wicked Witch, Nimue.
Sometimes you will get it wrong, too. With The Godsverse Chronicles, the first book has always been And Death Followed Behind Her. However, it's an awkward first book, as it starts in an Apocalypse and then cuts 10,000 years into the future.
I chose to write a new introduction book to the series, and that one introduction became four books that eased readers into the series before it got all nutso on them. Those books will release in January 2020, and I think they are a much better way to ease people into the series and make them understand the world.
It's not bad to go big, crazy, and wild with your series, but give people time to understand it, and parcel the big changes out over time. The audience will follow you, as long as you give them a reason, and the time to get acquainted with your world.
I recommend only introducing one new setting/world per book. My rule has been to spend a book understanding a single setting/conflict, and then introduce new settings/conflict in the beginning of the next book, and ratcheting the conflict up more and more with each passing book in the series.
The problem with And Death Followed Behind Her wasn't the writing, it was in introducing too much too fast before the reader had a chance to understand and appreciate the series. The longer your series goes, the more latitude a reader will give you.
What is your unique selling proposition?
Okay, so we've talked about falling into the tropes of a genre already, but a signature series also has to have something unique about it that will carry people and interest through for the long haul.
How do you take certain tropes and turn them on their head? How do you take everything that we know about a genre and turn it on its head.
Where will I be primarily selling this series?
A book that will sell on Amazon is going to be designed much differently than one which you plan on selling on Kickstarter and conventions.
That is because Amazon is based around the mass market, and the taste of the mass market is way different than people who come to conventions.
Everything from the blurb to the cover to the tropes you use will change based open whether you are hand-selling your book or running ads to it as well.
From here, designing a series is a lot like designing any single book, but you have to make sure your world and characters are robust enough to support several books in the same series, so it takes longer.
Usually, it takes me 1-2 years to design a new series because I need to find all sorts of new and interesting pieces for the universe that the series will revolve around, and conflict interesting enough to bubble over for several books.
Remember, this is your SIGNATURE series and the thing you want to be known for the long haul. It's the thing fans will tell their friends about to get into your work, and what you will be running ads to for the next several years at least, if not the next several decades.
One last thing I want to talk about is how series build on each other. Even though this is a signature series, you will likely have a few in your career, and each one will build on the next.
For me, I took a lot of the elements of The Godsverse Chronicles and smoothed them out in The Obsidian Spindle Saga, while giving my own spin on new things.
The goal, for me, is to expand my audience with every series, so that more and more people find me over time, and then it pulls them into a deeper and deeper relationship with me.
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I didn't realize I needed this advice until I read it. So thank you for this!