no sequels here
Can someone explain to me what it is about books, particularly YA books, most particularly YA books of the fantasy genre, that requires them to be released in series form? What ever happened to wanting to write a book about topic X (say: sparkly vampires), and then writing it as a complete book, and then moving on to another subject? Now, everywhere I look, all I see are series. The Twilight series: 4.5 books. Scott Westerfield's Uglies series: 3 books. Libba Bray's Gemma Doyle trilogy. Christopher Paolini's Eragon books. Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials trilogy. Even non-fantasy books: Gossip Girls, The Princess Diaries (and really, everything Meg Cabot has written, ever), Maureen Johnson's new Scarlett series. And of course, the one that rules them all: Harry Potter.
There's nothing wrong with series, and I know they've always been a part of YA literature (Babysitters' Club, Sweet Valley, RL Stine), but it seems like now that's all that is available. And where those other, older series could be read as standalone (every BSC book I read, I just skipped the second chapter, where they'd describe the characters and their relationships), the books that come out today demand being read in a chronological order. This creates problems when one's book source is a public library - they don't always have the earlier books available. It's an annoyance for the reader, yes, but it's enough to keep me away from bothering to start one of those series.
This also creates a problem for the author, however. What happens when some of the subsequent books are not as good as the first one? Twilight, for example. I liked the first book, in spite of all its flaws. The second and third, however, I could barely get through by skimming; they just weren't that good. And that turned me off of the entire series - I never bought anything besides the first, I didn't bother even skimming the fourth or the leaked half of the fifth. Scott Westerfield's books are another example. Uglies was decent as a standalone (although very 1984-ish), but it didn't really need to go further than that. Pretties was really just more of the same, from everyone involved. No one learned anything from their previous adventures, they continued to behave the same way, even the basic themes of the books were the same. I really have no desire to read the third book, at this point.
There's also the issue of maintaining readers. There is always a gap between book releases; the author has to write the second book, get it through editing, and so on. This gap can be anywhere from a year to several, depending on how the author writes. With the Harry Potter series, for example, Rowling originally released one book every year. But then she had a three year gap between Goblet of Fire and Order of the Phoenix. As a reader, it became very hard for me to really care about that fifth book, just because so much time had passed since the prior book. I had gone on to other books, started college, so on. Harry Potter, as a series, managed to survive that gap solely because the books were so appealing to adults as well as children, particularly with the later books in the series. Other YA series can't say the same. Gossip Girl is really only interesting for girls of around 15 (and me, but that's a separate post) - the book series centers solely around the teenagers. Girls who started reading the books when the first one came out are probably not still reading them. So there has to be a little bit of a drop off in the number of readers for any series.
So what exactly is the reason for this current trend of series? Is it because the publishers figure that once they get a good book, the next one will be a sure money-maker as well? That, while the current set of readers may grow up, their younger siblings will grow into the series, continuing, and maybe swelling, the reader base? Is there a certain amount of...not laziness, but...do the authors maybe find it easier to continue a story line rather than start a new one? After all, their main characters are usually the same, their world is the same - there's less creation involved, in a sense, and it must be appealing to have to do less work and still be able to sell. But, as someone who likes the stuff she reads to be in order and complete, the current popularity of series is really baffling me.
*note: I have had no caffeine for the past two days, so any incoherency can be attributed to that. Or, you know, just my normal state of being.
There's nothing wrong with series, and I know they've always been a part of YA literature (Babysitters' Club, Sweet Valley, RL Stine), but it seems like now that's all that is available. And where those other, older series could be read as standalone (every BSC book I read, I just skipped the second chapter, where they'd describe the characters and their relationships), the books that come out today demand being read in a chronological order. This creates problems when one's book source is a public library - they don't always have the earlier books available. It's an annoyance for the reader, yes, but it's enough to keep me away from bothering to start one of those series.
This also creates a problem for the author, however. What happens when some of the subsequent books are not as good as the first one? Twilight, for example. I liked the first book, in spite of all its flaws. The second and third, however, I could barely get through by skimming; they just weren't that good. And that turned me off of the entire series - I never bought anything besides the first, I didn't bother even skimming the fourth or the leaked half of the fifth. Scott Westerfield's books are another example. Uglies was decent as a standalone (although very 1984-ish), but it didn't really need to go further than that. Pretties was really just more of the same, from everyone involved. No one learned anything from their previous adventures, they continued to behave the same way, even the basic themes of the books were the same. I really have no desire to read the third book, at this point.
There's also the issue of maintaining readers. There is always a gap between book releases; the author has to write the second book, get it through editing, and so on. This gap can be anywhere from a year to several, depending on how the author writes. With the Harry Potter series, for example, Rowling originally released one book every year. But then she had a three year gap between Goblet of Fire and Order of the Phoenix. As a reader, it became very hard for me to really care about that fifth book, just because so much time had passed since the prior book. I had gone on to other books, started college, so on. Harry Potter, as a series, managed to survive that gap solely because the books were so appealing to adults as well as children, particularly with the later books in the series. Other YA series can't say the same. Gossip Girl is really only interesting for girls of around 15 (and me, but that's a separate post) - the book series centers solely around the teenagers. Girls who started reading the books when the first one came out are probably not still reading them. So there has to be a little bit of a drop off in the number of readers for any series.
So what exactly is the reason for this current trend of series? Is it because the publishers figure that once they get a good book, the next one will be a sure money-maker as well? That, while the current set of readers may grow up, their younger siblings will grow into the series, continuing, and maybe swelling, the reader base? Is there a certain amount of...not laziness, but...do the authors maybe find it easier to continue a story line rather than start a new one? After all, their main characters are usually the same, their world is the same - there's less creation involved, in a sense, and it must be appealing to have to do less work and still be able to sell. But, as someone who likes the stuff she reads to be in order and complete, the current popularity of series is really baffling me.
*note: I have had no caffeine for the past two days, so any incoherency can be attributed to that. Or, you know, just my normal state of being.