Quote:
Originally Posted by DiapDealer
Philistine. 
It's more like "Why are crappily written series so much more prevalent in the <insert desired one-word label that defines the uber-category formerly known as Speculative here>, than they are in other genres (and not so much crappily written, as crappily formatted and divided into separate volumes that are not conducive to telling a proper "story")? |
Heh.
To be honest, I think it's sort of The Changing Face Of The Business. We've had a few series do mega-well for themselves -- The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo, Twilight, Harry Potter, Hunger Games -- and so in standard business logic, this is the new thing.
And, of course, I think publishers have always liked series in the sense that they're a sort of "guaranteed" income -- I keep buying Deathlands even though they're up to 102 now and I've read only about 30.
Heck, some READERS like series, as long as it's done in the right way. I'm nearer completion of my stand-alone novel right now, and at least 3 of my beta readers have cheerfully demanded spin-off books for the dark-horse characters in the book. Tellingly, they all three demanded different books for different characters.
If their desires were indicative of my hypothetical readership at large, I could have a series there, IF I had the inclination to follow it and did the work to do it properly. Those are tricky, but as a wanna-be self-publisher, I could make that decision with a little more freedom than if I'd signed on a dotted line promising three more books already. So there's that.
But also there's a tendency in the publishing world to shove people into boxes and series do that very handily. It's not just "your first book was sci-fi, now you're a sci-fi author", it's full on "your first book was His Dark Potter Files, now you're that series from now on."