Series and standalones
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While we're waiting for the next event (and by now you all know waiting is a big part of this process) let me answer a question that's come up lately. People have been asking me whether I've ended my Lydia Chin/Bill Smith series. They ask because not only is ABSENT FRIENDS outside my series -- what publishing calls a "standalone" -- but so is the book to follow, the one I'm working on now. If I haven't ended the series, people ask, why not make the post-AF book a series book, and then another standalone? Why be unfair to fans of the series?
I haven't ended it. The book after the one following AF will be back to the series. Here's why we're doing it this way: I had a contract with my previous publisher, St. Martin's Press, for 3 books in the Chin/Smith series. (It was the 4th contract with them: 3 2-book deals and then a 3-book deal.) There was still one book left on that contract when I started ABSENT FRIENDS. Because AF is outside the series, SMP didn't own it. They were offered a chance to bid on it but turned it down. The editor at Bantam who saw it liked it a lot and wanted to buy it, and we (this isn't the royal "we;" it means my agent and I) wanted to sell it to her. But here comes the business part. What Bantam puts behind this book may not pay off until the book that follows it. Whatever the reviews, publicity, etc., on a hardcover, a lot of people wait for the paperback, especially of a writer they haven't read. If this book sells at the level Bantam wants it to, it will be selling above my previous books, and therefore, obviously, to a lot of people who haven't read me. The thinking is, I'll penetrate people's consciousnesses with AF, they'll wait for the paperback, buy it, love it (!) and be ready to buy the next hardcover, because then they'll know me. So Bantam stands the best chance of making their investment back if that next hc is theirs. Thus their offer on AF was for a 2-book deal, the second book to be delivered before I deliver SMP's last book. (My agent was smart enough to negotiate delivery dates out of the SMP contract years ago when we signed it, so that's not a problem.) But since my contract with SMP is for the next series book, the second book on the Bantam deal has to be another standalone.
I haven't ended it. The book after the one following AF will be back to the series. Here's why we're doing it this way: I had a contract with my previous publisher, St. Martin's Press, for 3 books in the Chin/Smith series. (It was the 4th contract with them: 3 2-book deals and then a 3-book deal.) There was still one book left on that contract when I started ABSENT FRIENDS. Because AF is outside the series, SMP didn't own it. They were offered a chance to bid on it but turned it down. The editor at Bantam who saw it liked it a lot and wanted to buy it, and we (this isn't the royal "we;" it means my agent and I) wanted to sell it to her. But here comes the business part. What Bantam puts behind this book may not pay off until the book that follows it. Whatever the reviews, publicity, etc., on a hardcover, a lot of people wait for the paperback, especially of a writer they haven't read. If this book sells at the level Bantam wants it to, it will be selling above my previous books, and therefore, obviously, to a lot of people who haven't read me. The thinking is, I'll penetrate people's consciousnesses with AF, they'll wait for the paperback, buy it, love it (!) and be ready to buy the next hardcover, because then they'll know me. So Bantam stands the best chance of making their investment back if that next hc is theirs. Thus their offer on AF was for a 2-book deal, the second book to be delivered before I deliver SMP's last book. (My agent was smart enough to negotiate delivery dates out of the SMP contract years ago when we signed it, so that's not a problem.) But since my contract with SMP is for the next series book, the second book on the Bantam deal has to be another standalone.
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