Lindsay - October 15, 2020Welcome to Six Figure Authors, the show that helps you take your writing career to the next level. Our guest this week is Sara Rosett, USA Today Bestselling author of light-hearted mysteries, co-host of the Wish I’d Known Then podcast for writers, and author of How to Write A Series: A Guide to Series Types and Structure plus Troubleshooting Tips and Marketing Tactics.
We talked about the types of series, how many books to write in a series, and how to market it depending on whether you’re in all the bookstores or exclusive to Amazon.
Here are some of the specific questions we asked her:
- What got you into writing and indie publishing?
- Before we jump into the nitty gritty, which of your own series has been most successful, and what do you attribute that success to?
- Are there any reasons why an author should or might want to write just standalone books?
- What would you say the primary types of series are, and how does genre influence which you might want to pick?
- This is a loaded question, but what do you think the secret is to a successful series?
- How do you keep information straight over a massive, dozen book-deep universe?
- I feel like characters are what keep my readers reading. What are your thoughts on dealing with character growth and relationship changes and the various things that keep characters fresh over a series?
- Beyond the genre of the series, what are some basic series patterns? In the book you mention things like duets, trilogies, and linked trilogies. Could you talk about patterns like that, and when to use them?
- We have people ask in our Facebook group how to handle books that end up being much longer than expected, and a suggestion that comes up frequently by other members is to divide the book in half or into thirds and turn it into a series. When would this work, and how should authors do it successfully?
- Cliff-hangers can be a divisive topic. What are your thoughts?
- What would you say is the ideal length of a series? What happens if it falls flat halfway through its run? Contrarily, what happens if you get to the end and there is still high demand?
- Direct feedback from readers can be misleading, especially if it’s feedback from super fans (or people who don’t like the books). So, how do authors know what constitutes high demand?
- We talk about read-through often and how good read-through on a long series means you can afford to spend more on marketing Book 1 (i.e. potentially use it as a “loss leader”). How do you track read-through, and what would you consider a decent read-through?
- I’ve experimented a great deal with spin-offs and side stories. How would you suggest things like that be handled? It seems particularly challenging when you release things like prequels or parallel threads, as I’ve received many emails over the years asking for a “definitive reading order.”
- What have been your most successful strategies for marketing a series? Conversely, what are things that haven’t work out so well?
- What are your thoughts on the different tactics you might use for a series that’s exclusive to Amazon versus one that is wide?
- What kind of advertising are you using for your series right now?
- Let’s say you’ve got an established series, or a completed series. Bundles/collected editions are a popular way to get some additional use out of a series and make it more accessible to new readers. How do you recommend people structure a bundle?
For more about Sara and her fiction, check out her website. If you want to hear more of her thoughts about series, please pick up a copy of How to Write A Series: A Guide to Series Types and Structure plus Troubleshooting Tips and Marketing Tactics. If you’re a mystery author, you can also check out Sara’s book How to Outline a Cozy Mystery.
