My PUBLISHING vs PASSION purpose
DECIDING when to Shelve A Series
A SERIES and GENRE publishing change
My career started with a Middle Grade Series book. I've written two of the five planned books of the series. However, during my merging of author and business owner my viewpoint of what to spend my time producing has seriously changed.
WHEN TO DECIDE TO SHELVE or DROP A SERIES
Our formula was based on the current sales, the cost benefit of the sales, the mode of sales, the type of sale and the maintenance cost. Also, the opportunity cost of the product.
Here's some considerations we made before shelving a series from a BUSINESS VIEW
1) Our Middle Grade books sold better in print form.
2) Supporting printing cost meant either, moving our printed copies to POD, dropping our distributor's role to maintain the print copies.
3) Touring worked best to sell our print copies and Middle Grade books. They just sold better when I was selling them in person.
4) The profits made for this series was good, but not at the amount needed to completely cover the (a) touring cost and (b) printing cost (c) promotional cost
5) Recent fans of the series have grown up. We would have to find a new group to read. Harder with Middle Grade since YA tends to also garner a large number of adult readers compared to MG.
Decisions Made Going Forward
Shelve the MG series and write YA.
We did this because at the time, YA was doing so much better on electronic media format that our sales could be better realized producing and selling ebooks. At the time YA did better in ebook format than MG books. The series will be finished, but with a POD and ebook focus.
Shorten the MG series
I didn't want to completely shelve the series, but we didn't think it would carry for five books. Therefore we are shortening it from a five part series to a three part series.
Product Novella's in YA Contemporary Romance Category
We had a request from my YA readers to see some contempory romance novels. My confidence in being able to finish an entire novel was skeptical. Therefore, we 'tested' the market with three novella's around the same theme of a 'Summer Romance'.
It worked well and we plan to put that in some of our future releases.
No Bringing On New Authors
Originally, my partner and I wanted to have at least four other strong authors in various genre. After trying out a few, we realized that the bandwidth needed to support those authors in the manner we felt was fair and profitable to all parties was not possible for us at the time.
I've got my eye on another partnering author that I plan to see some exciting stories coming soon.
So, have you seen series you've liked shelved?
