Deborah's Journal

Over on my blog, Margaret Yang and Harry R. Campion, who write together as M. H. Mead, talk about why they consider their books a set instead of a series. I think this is a distinction worth considering, for both newer writers and those of us who've been around for a bit.

Readers often fall in love with a world and its characters (and we as writers do that, too, but we also experience a natural reluctance to start again completely from scratch with a new project when we have a richly developed landscape, cultures, and history -- not to mention fabulous characters -- just begging for more adventures!) This temptation is not without risk. One is that if the reading satisfaction and completeness of each book is dependent on having read all that has come before, you're setting up a scenario for decreasing sales. This is perhaps less a problem with epublishing, when books remain "in print" essentially forever, than it was when a mass market paperback's shelf life was measured in days before it was swept away to make room for the next release. Readers are naturally reluctant to pick up a book in the middle of such a series.
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