Continuity versus boredom

 When I started on my journey to seriously self publish my stories I joined a few Facebook groups for self-publishers.  These are authors you've never heard of, some of whom are quietly making £100,000 a year from their books.  You might think that's boasting, but often they share screenshots of their earnings.  And that makes them experts on how to sell books, and people to be listened to.

One of the most-repeated pieces of advice is to write a series of related books to build your visibility and brand. Everybody agrees that you need several works published before people start to take you seriously.  They also (mostly) agree that publishing multiple titles close together also helps to build visibility.  

That's why I settled for writing a series of novellas.  I can write a first draft of one of those in about five weeks.  Add in time for re-writes and edits, and I can have a new product ready to go live every couple of months.

Traditionally-published authors will be tearing their hair out at this marketing-based way of publishing.  But what about all the various editing stages? they'll splutter.  The truth is, some self-published authors don't use editors.  They edit their own work and put it out there.

Shock!  Horror!  This is just the thing which gave indie publishing its bad name.  Well yes, it was, in a way.  There are a lot of newbie writers shoving their first rambling novel it took them ten years to write out there without editing.  And yes, many of them are awful.

But I've been writing for around 50 years now.  I've written 27 (I think, at last count) full novels.  A dozen of these are re-written and edited to publication standard.  I've written six novellas so far.  Again, they've been re-written and edited to within an inch of their lives.  I've spent the last decade as a writer learning to edit my work.  And I've recently had a sample edit from a professional editor, and a reader's report on one of those novels, which both confirm that I know what I'm doing.

So I'm going to put the new novellas out there without employing an editor, and in (fairly swift) succession.  And that brings me to the continuity issue.

One of the Facebook group discussions I read this week was around when sales numbers start to tail off for series.  Many respondents said it was around book four or five.  That was gold-dust information for me.  I'd planned for five books in my first series, and that seems about right.

Readers like the continuity of reading about familiar characters, but if the storyline is just repeating the same actions each time they get bored with the series.  So it looks like my plan to have five novellas, each  focused on rescuing a different sister, is the optimum strategy.

I'm revealing new things about my characters in every novella, and the backstory builds throughout the series.  Martha Wells has done that very successfully with her Murderbot novellas, and where she goes, I can follow.