There are many reasons to love series and they happen to be one of my favorite kinds of books to follow. If you find a great series, it’s gold! I tend to look for series – paranormals mostly – so I can stay with an author and characters I like. So I don’t dislike series in any way.
That said – it seems sometimes that’s all there is out there.
Recently I went searching for some new m/m books to read. I found a dozen or so that interested me only to be stymied by the additional line that denotes the book as “Book # in series Z.” I appreciate the warning for sure but really? UGH.
Now I have to go to the author’s website and hope I can find the series listed in order to suss out the first book. Then go find the first book, which in m/m can sometimes be difficult. Ebooks tend to go in and out of print lightening fast. They switch publishers and disappear from online stores faster than you can read them sometimes. So it’s not always easy to follow ebook series. Not impossible but not always easy. These days I’m kind of lazy. Sorry!
Because of all this I tend to give up on ebook series pretty easily. Thus I was shocked and frustrated to find that the majority of books that seemed interesting to me were part of existing series. So I’m curious – is this a new trend or did I just have bad luck on the last book binge?
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I find that some publishers tend more towards series than others. I don’t often shop at Extasy but it seems 90% of their books are in a series. I think pubs like series because in theory you have a built in audience for the successive books rather than having to create a new concept to pull readers in. Granted, that presumes that people like the first book.
I’m kind of neutral on them. I don’t seek them out, but don’t avoid them. But usually if it’s already on book 3+, I’m unlikely to go back and start. I also find series that go on forevah I just lose interest in and never finish. 3 or 4 seems to be a good number, but of course there are no hard and fast rules.
Yea I tend to be the same way with huge series. I don’t usually finish them and eventually I give up. I lasted the longest with JD Robb (I stopped a few years ago with that one) and the Anita Blake series (stopped 5 or more years ago). I don’t really want to get invested in huge series again as I can’t remember all the things that happened and follow whether the characters make sense anymore.
It might be certain publishers true but I also feel like m/m authors tend to stick to series a lot. Maybe they’re easier to write than stand alone novels but if I miss the first 2 books, I’m highly unlikely to go back to the beginning unless I have a good reason.
So I like them in some genres but for m/m, I tend to prefer stand alone books.
Funny, that’s about the same time I gave up on both of those series. 🙂
I’m with Tam on this. Some publishers lean toward series because it means building a readership/audience, but like Tam said, that’s assuming people even like the first book. And I totally feel your pain about having the ebooks at different publishers. We’ve taken books that weren’t the first in a series, and while they presumably bring their readership with them, I know I as a reader feel the same as you, wanting it to all be in one place with one publisher. XD
I like series when they’re really well done, but I have, like, such a low attention span that, paired with my abysmally slow reading speed, just makes series difficult for me to enjoy. Unless I have a HUGE amount of time to devote to reading the series, I always stall and forget half of what was happening by the time I pick the book up again or get to the next book.
It really does seem like everyone is doing series books now, and a LOT of them are doing series of short stories. Not exactly serialized fiction, but just pumping out a shit-ton of short stories that are either in the same world or have the same theme… and then overcharging when the length is beneath 20K words. I don’t mind well-crafted shorts, but DAMN there are a lot of short stories being thrown about lately. Add that to the crazy amount of people co-authoring now, and it’s just… getting kinda crazy to me. XD I remember when S.L. Armstrong and I were one of the few pairs of co-authors who mostly co-wrote their work. Now, it seems everyone is doing it. Not saying it’s a negative, but it’s something that’s caught my attention lately. 😉
It’s easier to get all the books at once if it’s with the same publisher but another problem is that sometimes the stories don’t necessarily follow very well. Ebooks tend to turn over very quickly so by the time the 3rd book in the series is out, the first one is republished and refined. Thus making it hard to decipher if it’s a new one in the series or not. Often times I figure out series order by publication date (authors tend to not want to make it SUPER easy on readers for reasons I’ll never understand).
While I’m a pretty fast reader and go through books faster I still have the same problem you do. If I’m interested in a series, I’d rather read them all at once because otherwise I can’t remember where the characters are, the important relationships, details, etc. If I don’t love a series enough to remember it, I’m sunk.
Series short stories drive me insane. I’m sorry, this is an area I hate entirely. A short holiday story to give readers a taste of favorite characters is fine. Annoying but fine. As long as it’s unimportant to the overall scheme. But numerous short stories make me give up on a series entirely. I want to read full novels. A great short is wonderful but if there are that many great shorts why aren’t they a novel? And the pricing…. the pricing is the #1 reason I rarely buy short stories anymore.
I don’t think you’re alone in that. What’s worse is when it’s billed as a series but it’s actually a serial.
Yes. I’ve seen that and kind of wanted to slap some people.