Notes from Six Figure Authors Podcast - Ep. 125: How to Launch a Successful Series

Check out the podcast episode here! Or watch it below:

 

These are some notes that I wanted to jot down for my own reference as I listened to the episode, and I've decided to share them here in case it helps any other writers and a few of you have shown interest in checking out my notes, especially if you don't always have time to listen to full podcast episodes.

Basically, I'm sharing my study notes with my fellow writing students! 🖋

Below the notes are my own thoughts, which will hopefully also provide some added value. 

 

Episode Notes

Notes from Lindsay Buroker's advice:

1. Write around 5+ books in a series because you may need to spend more resources to get people into Book 1, so the more books you have after Book 1, the more readers might want to dive into your series.
2. Have an overarching story or mystery or something to be solved that's going to compel readers to read on to the next books and keep them hooked. Make the reader feel they have to read the next book, even though they've just read a full story.
3. For romance, you can introduce future/potential romantic couples in early books for their own romance stories in the following books. You may want to leave characters you know readers are going to really want to read about for later books, to motivate readers to read on.
4. One way romance books in the same series can be linked if you want different protagonists for each book can be through the same setting.
   
5. For non-romance, you want an identifiable protagonist readers will want to follow throughout the series. Kill off main characters at your own risk! It'll be tough to sell the reader on the next book.
6. Write in the tense and POV that is most popular or most successful in your genre.
7. When planning your story, keep the worldbuilding and backstory to a minimum in the first third of Book 1. Once people are engaged in the story, they'll be interested enough to get into that stuff, but pushing that on them from the get-go can have adverse effects on their attention/interest.

Notes from Jo Lallo's advice:

1. Target around 6 books, but be flexible in your planning. It pays to have plans for both greater and lesser success - in other words, if you want to abandon or pull the plug on a series early on, make sure you finish in a satisfying way.
2. Leave room for a spin-off series for readers who really enjoy a certain character, for example, and it can also act as another entry point into the main series for readers who don't know about it.
3. Put some thought into serious branding. It makes a huge difference to have a short, catchy series name that works well as an acronym. Don't get too unique with made-up words, but don't make them too easy and common as titles.

Notes from Andrea Pearson's advice:

1. If you create a series with standalone books, make sure each and every book is a perfect package and that it leaves readers satisfied and happy.
2. If you're writing to market, make sure you know what readers expect from your genre/subgenre. If they know they'll get what they expect from your writing, they'll read more of your work. This applies to all genres.
3. If you're established, longer series are almost always the best way to go. But a long series if you're just starting out might not be a great idea. A trilogy is a good starting point. It gives you the chance to bail out early on, and it gives you the chance to see what readers are interested in and get more experience getting your writer voice and style down.
4. Don't full your books with too much fluff.

Choosing blurbs and cover art to help you sell books:

1. Check out what other authors that are successful in your genre are using for their covers, and take inspiration from them.
2. Deviate from what's selling at your own peril...
3. Make sure your editor or beta readers have looked over your blurb to make sure there's nothing confusing or any typos or errors. The blurb is meant to pull people in, so it has to be well-crafted!
4. Different genres have different expectations for blurb lengths, but be mindful of the fold. Only so much of the blurb will show before it's cut off with a 'Read More' depending on the platform where it's being presented. Make sure it's enticing from the get-go.
5. Format your blurb. Use bold to draw the eye to certain parts of your blurb, like a hook/tagline or call to action.
6. You want the books in a series to look like part of a series. This can be done via typography, having the same character on the front of the book, a type of logo/series name that is identifiable on the cover.
7. Find a way to have a common thread of visuals through the covers of the books of all of your series/books (example: large author name with a specific font - think Dan Brown or Danielle Steel).
8. Not every single trend will work for you. Don't hesitate to try things out, but be flexible if you find out they don't work for you.
9. You may need to update your book covers every few years to fit in with book cover trends.
10. Keep your color schemes and cover designs similar so that the series looks unified.
11. Always put the author name on the same spot in all the book covers.
12. Don't skip on descriptions for later books in the series. Even if someone has read the first four books, they may not want to read book 5 if you don't entice them with a well-crafted blurb. The same concept can be applied to book covers - always keep the same level of effort and professionalism.
    

Preparing bonus material to entice newsletter sign-ups and get new readers hooked:

1. Consider writing two bonus short stories or novellas to go with the first book. One can be a free giveaway that you can throw everywhere - put it in the back of the book, give it away for free, etc. It should tie in to the book and be a complete story (don't let the reader feel cheated). When distributing it alone, add excerpts for the book at the end of it to entice readers to read more about the characters/story.
   
2. Something that will be enticing to readers after they've finished reading the first book - make it something they need to sign up for your newsletter for. It can be a short story or novella, or even second epilogues that gives a little more after-story. Bonus scenes from alternate POV characters are also a good idea.
3. Planning theses newsletter perks and reader magnets up front gives you the opportunity to use one of them as a lead-in preceding the release of the first book. You can also add them to a series later on to bump sales up again.
4. Your free reader magnet cannot be something necessary to read (if readers have to read it or else be confused in the first book, that's not good).
5. Take note of how readers are reacting to certain events and characters in your story, because that can also give you great ideas for the bonus material content that will be popular with readers.
6. After the book is finished and off to the editor is a good time to write a short story, second epilogue, or novella to accompany that book.
7. Box sets or bundles are great sellers and allow you to add bonus material without always having to change all of your cover/blurb details (you can just say "...And bonus content!") - but keeping the bonus material individual can give you an idea of which of the bonus content is really popular among readers. So, pros and cons.
   
8. Use images everywhere to advertise your reader magnet. Images are catchier than text!
9. The more free stuff you can offer that can't be found anywhere else, the more enticing it is for readers.
10. These reader magnets can also give you something to send newsletters out about and keep readers' interest. 
11. Consider a lower price for the first week or two of your book releases to get more readers, and then bump up to full price later on.
12. Be careful about launching high and lowering your price letter. It's better to launch low and increasing price later on.

Consistent publishing schedule for the books in the series:

1. Be reliable and consistent for the next book releases in the series. If you can do pre-orders, it might help readers feel more excited about the books and keep it in their minds.
2. You can rapid-release the first 2-3 books, and then slow down to one every quarter or so. But you don't want to wait a whole year after releasing the first couple of books really quickly. They won't remember your story by then!
3. If you're not sure you can release quarterly, space our your book releases, even if you have a few books already written. This gives you the space to work on your books at a pace comfortable to you.
4. Try not to insert unrelated books into your publication schedule between books in a series. It may indicate that you're not interested in the series anymore - keep the momentum going until you finish the series. Also, writing other stories when you've got a series going may take time away from your series, interrupting the writing process for that series.
5. If thing are unpredictable with your schedule, take a few years to see how much you can write and publish reliably in a full year so that you can choose a publication schedule that makes sense and is comfortable for you. 
6. Try to keep your yearly releases to the same month. For example, a new book in the series can be published every August. Hold on to a finished book until you've reached the usual publication month to create consistency.
   
7. It's a marathon, not a sprint. Don't rush, be patient, and don't push yourself to the point of burnout.
   

Continuous book promotion

1. Every time you release a new book in the series, you may want to promote Book 1 again - or ideally always keep ads going for the first book to keep readers coming to the series.
2. Character interviews, book teasers, or other small things now and then are a great way to keep readers interested and continuously promote your series. Remind readers that you exist and you're working on bringing them a new book.
3. Work that has already been done can be points of conversation, like behind-the-scenes info.
4. Call for engagement on social media. Ask Qs and ask for opinions. This can get the community discussing among itself then it keeps them engaged without much effort from your part.
5. Participate in multi-author promos, write and give freebies, giveaways, and always make sure to tell your readers about any of these events.Working with other authors can help you expand your readership, but you may reach a point later on when you'll need to stop.

Final tips

1. Find what works for you and stick to that - so only implement the tips you think will help you and that you have the ability to do.
2. It's hard to stand out - you can pend a ton on advertising and feel like nothing's working, but having those short stories and additional bonus content is something you can always promote and you can use that to help readers get into your writing. 
3. Sometimes, you have to prioritize. If you're struggling to write a book but you've got thousands of posts on social media and blog posts, keep in mind that that's writing, too! Therefore, you may have more time than you think if you simply re-prioritize the kind of writing you spend time on.
4. Any number of words is more than zero! You can make progress even if that progress is tiny. Even if it's just 5 minutes a day - that's better than nothing.

Related episodes for more tips

• SFA 105 – How We Would Start from Scratch Writing/Publishing Books Today
• SFA 060 – Writing Series That Sell with Sara Rosett
• Also, check out the Six Figure Authors podcast website for more!
  

Additional Thoughts

1. One more thing that I want to emphasize, which was mentioned in passing in this episode, is something I see in a lot of first books in series. Often, writers seem to fall into a trap where the first book doesn't really stand on its own. The main problem is introduced and never solved. The book might feel more like an introduction than a full story. While you want to have an overarching plot for the entire series, it's important to make sure each book stands alone. I actually have a podcast episode in the works about this specific issue, because I can pretty much count on both hands the number of first-books I've read over the past year or so that have this issue and that have left me feeling extremely unsatisfied as a reader.
2. Additionally, it stands to reason that if you want to find out what's trending in your genre (in terms of style, tense, POV, etc.), you have to read in your genre. Just be careful not to become a chameleon! It's okay to adopt some techniques that improve your writing, but don't go overboard so as to lose your own writing voice. 
3. Creating bonus content is a great way to get people onto your newsletter, and from there, every time you have something to share, they're only an email away. Patreon and similar platforms are a little more work, though; you have to have new/bonus content to share pretty much every month, and that's a lot of work to add on to your plate. I would recommend starting off with the newsletter, because you can share bonus content whenever you create it.
   
4. I'm writing a very long fantasy series at the moment, which has over 7 books, and I'm certainly taking the advice to complete books in advance before I even release the first book. It's a bit of a downer because I want to share my stories right! now! - but it's also just a wise move, because if I decide, in Book 5, to change something that I'd have to go back to previous books and fix up for consistency, that's going to be a lot harder if the previous book has been published already. Even if you plot things carefully, this can happen, so I've decided to complete the series before publishing the first book. (That also gives me the added benefit of releasing the books with whatever frequency/schedule I want.)
5. Series give you a lot of space to work with - more than a standalone book - so it also provides a great way for you to fully explore every single character, to really delve into their backstories and give them well-developed character arcs that provide a strong payoff in the end. It's a good idea to craft your story with that in mind. In some ways, this is what authors who focus on different couples per romance book in a series do, but it's something that works for all series.
   
6. Likewise, the space that a series gives you offers you the chance to really present and expand on your world. Get your worldbuilding game on, and let your readers see the awesome world you've developed.
   
7. If you don't get the chance to take readers to a certain set of locations in your world, or don't get the chance to really delve into a certain character and have them have a strong development arc (ideally, this would be for secondary or tertiary characters, as main characters need a good development arc), then creating bonus material like short stories that focus on those characters/settings might be a great way to get readers to enjoy those elements.
8. Keep your worldbuilding/character notes in an organized notebook or binder. Consistency of key details is important throughout the series. Also, it might help to keep track of subplots to avoid any plot holes along the way. (More good reasons for me to release my first book after I'm done with the full series.)
   

That's all I have to add for now, and hopefully this set of notes has proved helpful to you!

Best of luck with your writing!

~⭐~

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