Does starting a series create an implied agreement that the series will be completed?

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

18 minutes ago, baxus said:

I'm right next door to you, in Serbia, and there aren't that many unfinished series. The sales must be pretty good to have our publishers sticking with the authors for so long.

On the other hand, it might be the case of only the top authors being translated to Serbian.

Completely off topic: does Serbian use the Cyrillic or Roman Alphabet?

[baxus]

1 hour ago, Ser Scot A Ellison said:

Completely off topic: does Serbian use the Cyrillic or Roman Alphabet?

I never paid attention to it, but now that you mention it I'm pretty sure that most foreign authors' books are printed in Latin alphabet (Serbian version, of course).

[palaeologos]

44 minutes ago, baxus said:

I never paid attention to it, but now that you mention it I'm pretty sure that most foreign authors' books are printed in Latin alphabet (Serbian version, of course).

Cyrillic is the official Serbian alphabet.  Interestingly, Croatian (an almost identical language) uses the Latin alphabet.

[Kalbear]

5 hours ago, Werthead said:

Interesting (and almost as interesting as he mis-spells the name of one of his own books on the sidebar, but that's not really germane).

My personal favorite is that he says 'authors mostly don't owe anyone anything' and then brings up the three authors that we're mostly talking about as examples of authors sucking. 

[C.T. Phipps]

Martin Lawrence is weighing in now:

http://mark---lawrence.blogspot.co.uk/2017/11/have-they-ruined-it-for-us-all.html?m=1

[Lily Valley]

1 hour ago, Kalbear said:

My personal favorite is that he says 'authors mostly don't owe anyone anything' and then brings up the three authors that we're mostly talking about as examples of authors sucking. 

 His new book is set in New Orleans and co-authored with John Ringo.  Somebody stop me over here.   

[Darth Richard II]

Well yes he was the leader of the sad pups who also claimed he was shunned at the Hugo's and also got into a minor blog fight with GRRM who tore him to shreds using you know, facts and logic.

 

Edit: Haha, that article is hilarious if you are familiar with any of his previous antics.

[baxus]

On 11/20/2017 at 6:53 PM, palaeologos said:

Cyrillic is the official Serbian alphabet.  Interestingly, Croatian (an almost identical language) uses the Latin alphabet.

Actually, Cyrillic and Latin alphabet are both official in Serbia.

Croatian uses Latin alphabet (the same as Serbian one) only. You are right, they are almost identical languages, along with Montenegrin and Bosnian.

[C.T. Phipps]

23 hours ago, Darth Richard II said:

Well yes he was the leader of the sad pups who also claimed he was shunned at the Hugo's and also got into a minor blog fight with GRRM who tore him to shreds using you know, facts and logic.

 

Edit: Haha, that article is hilarious if you are familiar with any of his previous antics.

For those who avoided the whole thing like the plague?

[Darth Richard II]

Oh jeez, well, let's say he has a history of complaining about things that did not happen.

 

Edit: And he REALLY does not like GRRM.

[red snow]

If an author fails to complete a series and starts another one, I'm not going to buy the new series. Once bitten twice shy. So if the author is doing this as a profession then they should finish a series. If they don't, they can't complain if sales drop.

But until I'm obligated to buy every book in a series after reading the first one, I can't see why I should demand the author finishes a series either.

[Darth Richard II]

Well, I think it depends a lot on said series. Is it one of those continuing story type deals like ASOIAF or is it like say Sharpe, were each book is kind stand aloneish. Also there are authors that will write multiple books at the same time.

[Jo498]

Correia seems to largely ignore the point that many people would never buy a book with a sticker "first installment of a trilogy, probability of continuation 50%" on the cover and all the subtleties about a reasonable expectation for continuation and closure that come with it.

Mark Lawrence has a very good point about the translations. This shows the dilemma/vicious circle that if people cannot be reasonable sure they will get the whole series, many will not buy the first book at all thus lowering the chances of the subsequent volumes to be translated. But the same holds to some extent with the original. The main difference to translations being that the silent default expectation is that one will get continuation and closure and therefore buys the first book.

[Jo498]

10 hours ago, Darth Richard II said:

Well, I think it depends a lot on said series. Is it one of those continuing story type deals like ASOIAF or is it like say Sharpe, were each book is kind stand aloneish.

Completely agree. This is a huge difference. Conan Doyle had achieved pretty good closure by having Holmes falling down the waterfall but was persuaded to continue. As it was a loose series that did not really need any closure, it did not matter much. In such a series readers might have reasonable expectations that they continue but it is not at all like buying "half a book", so they cannot really complain.

Whereas there is a reasonable argument that buying the first book of an n-logy is at least similar to buying 1/n of a book with the promise to eventually get the rest. Again, one can make reasonable distinctions depending on how open-ended the first volume is.

[Hereward]

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Without good sales out of the gate the rest of the series can be in jeopardy. It could lead to a decline in the publishing effort put behind the remaining books, which becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy of commercial failure. At worst it can lead to publishers bailing on series, leaving them unfinished, which is exactly what the readers not buying the books were scared of ... they have caused the thing they were worried about ... they have become the thing they hate!

Blaming only the readers seems odd. You could equally say that authors who have breached the implied agreement are to blame for readers being wary of starting series. 

[C.T. Phipps]

In summary:

No, authors don't need to finish series they promise fans.

But they should.

 

[baxus]

Also, in this whole debate we seem to forget to take into account the actual quality of the series.

If series is not a commercial success, it's more likely that it's because fans don't think it's good enough to warrant their time than that they are waiting for the series to be finished so they can buy the whole thing and binge read it.

[Richard Writhen]

I believe so. If the author lives, he / she should try to eventually bring closure to a cycle. But that being said, many famous authors have perished mid-work, such as Poe and Dickens.

[Werthead]

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If series is not a commercial success, it's more likely that it's because fans don't think it's good enough to warrant their time than that they are waiting for the series to be finished so they can buy the whole thing and binge read it.

 

The publisher opinion I've always seen is that the "people waiting for series to be complete before they'll read the first book" phenomenon is so low as to be negligible. Exactly how they're working that out is unclear, though. Probably a comparison of the series that fail versus those that succeed which is rooted more in word of mouth/buzz/reviews and marketing.

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Mark Lawrence has a very good point about the translations. This shows the dilemma/vicious circle that if people cannot be reasonable sure they will get the whole series, many will not buy the first book at all thus lowering the chances of the subsequent volumes to be translated. But the same holds to some extent with the original. The main difference to translations being that the silent default expectation is that one will get continuation and closure and therefore buys the first book.

 

This is horribly Anglo-centric, but almost every serious SFF fan I've met from non-English speaking countries basically gave up waiting for translations at some point and taught themselves English to stay in touch with the genre, otherwise they'd never finish series or never get to read them in the first place. In fact I've seen theories, especially in countries were English is very widely spoken (like the Netherlands and India), that series often don't get finished in translation because impatient readers rush off to buy the later books in the series in English rather than wait months or years for the translation to be done, and sales drop. The main exceptions to that seem to be countries with large internal SFF markets in the native language (China and Japan being the most obvious examples, Russia to a lesser extent).

[Ran]

They might also look and see if earlier books in a series have any kind of substantial surge in sales after the final novel is released. If there generally isn’t any notable surge, then yeah, doesn’t seem like many people are genuinely waiting.