The Neverending Series

Try to say that title out loud and not hum the theme song to The Neverending Story. Yeah, I couldn't do that either, so if I burst into song during this post, you know what happened. ("Here we just sell small rectangular objects. They're called books. They require a little effort on your part, and make no bee-bee-bee-bee-beeps.")

As writers, we are often told 'Write a series. Readers love series. Series sells.' But how long should a series be? Should each book standalone? Do all the characters have to be in each book?

Series often make sense for writers creatively. For each book, regardless of genre, we create a world. People, including our main characters, live in this world. Some of them we meet yet don't talk about in our stories. Others are important to the story. All characters have histories and hopes and dreams. Some have romances of their own.

I, sort of, have a series. It didn't start out as a series. I didn't even know the first book, Breach Of Trust, and the second book, Invisible, were connected until I wrote the third book, Flawless. The characters lived in the same contemporary romance world, but I didn't know if they would ever meet. I don't know if they will meet again. Will there be a fourth book in this series? I don't know. It depends if one of the more interesting characters fall in love.

A series has more than one book so I suppose two books is the minimum. As a reader, I like three book series or, at least, three books in one chunk. Three, I can keep track of. I recently saw a 21 book series advertised. That was too intimidating for me. I didn't know where to start. I added up all the time it would take me to read all the books and winced. It is silly thinking because if the same author had 7 series with 3 books each, I likely would have read them all.

Do you like series? How many books do you prefer in a series? When you discover a new-to-you author with a series, which book do you buy first? The first book? The most recent?


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Every month, Kimber Chin gives away her fave romance eBook read the month before. For more details, go to http://businessromance.com/ .