: Re: Would it be better to write a trilogy over a much longer series? I'm planning out a long series (more than five books as is). It's very optimistic, I know. But I'm just wondering: Would

@Gonzalez219

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Unless you are a famous author with a track record of finishing books, publishers are going to judge you based on the first book, alone. Each book in a trilogy (or longer series) has to stand on its own, in particular the first book, it must be a complete story in itself.

You can have a plan, an outline of your whole series, or not. You don't actually have to worry about how many books it might be. Rex Stout sold 45 Nero Wolfe detective novels, one at a time.

Publishers want to sell books one at a time; especially from beginning authors, for business reasons. They want to build an audience with the first book; if they fail and it doesn't sell well, they can reject any sequels. If it succeeds, they can tease the sequel, grow the fan base, and sell even more of the sequel. And so on. They don't want to go to the expense of producing three books, or the risk of promising three books, and sell them all simultaneously.

You have to prove yourself with one book. You can talk up the potential of sequels, your plans for sequels, but for exactly the same business reasons on the author's end, I suggest you tackle the first book and getting it published as a standalone story (with obvious potential for a sequel) before you write the second book, or an epic series.

If you can't sell the first book by itself, then having two or four more in the drawer won't help: The publisher must have a reasonably positive experience with your first book before they will consider your second.

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