I was glancing at something else on Amazon, and noticed a book offered as “related to [series].” That’s not new, but what caught my eye was the difference between the book I was looking at, which is “a snarky urban fantasy” and the main series, a portal fantasy into a medieval realm.
That’s a big jump for readers of a genre. Or is it? The books have the same author. The urban fantasy takes place as the main character in the other series is saving the world, and the two are related to each other, but are different settings and premises. The MC in Greymantle crosses between worlds, while the MC in the urban fantasy stays in this world. There’s some overlap in world building and characters, and thus far, based on reviews and sales, the jump works with at least some readers.
Mad Genius Pam Uphoff has done similar with her Wine of the Gods series. The biiiiiiigggg picture includes a lot of side branches, some of which stand alone, others of which are generally unrelated to the original story. I have the side trilogy of alternate history novels about WWI and the interwar years in Eastern Europe that takes place in the Cat Among Dragons world (A Carpathian Campaign, Grasping for the Crowns, Against a Rising Tide) . They are tightly researched books, unlike the rest of the series, and you don’t need to have read the main series to get them. There are some people who liked those and didn’t care for the main series, and vice versa.
So, what if you have a semi-related series, or an older series that you think readers of the current works might be interested in? You point that out. “Hi. If you like this, this, and that from the current books, you might give [other thing] a try. It also has bravery, accounting, and a touch of the uncanny.” Or “If you like history in your fiction, but not historical fiction, you might enjoy my older Kingdoms and Crowns books.” If you know what Reader Group A likes, then point them to the elements in That Other Series/ Other Novel that are the same.
So, let’s look at the Merchant and Empire series and the Carpathian Campaign series.
- Based on history to a strong degree, in both cases Central Europe.
- Both pretty realistic in that stuff happens and characters get achy and are often frustrated by real-life-type problems.
- Both end on a positive note.
- Both include a blend sci fi or fantasy elements, but those do not drive the series*.
OK, so there’s a decent amount of overlap in the two. But…
- One starts with a middle aged protagonist with limited goals, or features blue-collar working men. The other starts with a young, ambitious nobleman and the heir to the Habsburg crowns.
- War drives the Carpathian series, as does high politics. That is not true for the Merchant books, aside from books 1 and 4, and even then it is very limited.
- The Carpathian books are set in the period 1914-1945. The Merchant world is sort of, ish, AD 900-1300, kinda.
- The Carpathian books get very dark, because of the time and place they are set. There is always, always hope, but readers know that it will take a while to get to the happy ending. The Merchant stories always end on an upbeat note, and don’t go as low.
So, do I think Merchant fans would enjoy the Carpathian stories? If they are reading for the historical elements as well as the characters, then a tentative maybe, with caveats? I suspect the overlap is greater the other way, with people who enjoyed the Carpathian novels more likely to have fun with the Merchant books. I would need to be careful to point out the differences, so that readers don’t feel that they’ve found a bait-n-switch.
It’s a balancing act.
*The creatures called the Powers do steer part of the Carpathian series, but that has as much to do with the ripple effects of real-world politics as sci-fi.
Image Credit: Author Photo, Museum Hill, Santa Fé, NM, USA, 2023.
Mad Genius Club 
19 responses to “If You Like This, Try That: Selling Older Series and Linked Stories”
It’s an interesting question, whether to prod some subset of your readers towards some particular part of your backlist…I’ve only just, in the last six months or so, evolved to the point of adding a linked backlist to my books.
As a reader, I find there are so many elements that drive my liking for a particular book/series that I think it’s difficult to zero in on just what the hinge linking them to another book/series (by same or different author) can be … there are a lot of possible hinges.
For me, it comes down to two primary things, one positive, one negative. On the positive side, I value most the emotional satisfaction I got from the first book/series, and want more of that (whatever form it takes). That could mean betting on a continuation of some of the same characters, a different story in the same world, a similarly difficult challenge in another world… all of it in service of an emotional journey. (This is part of what I like about your various books, as well as the interesting settings. There is also a similar matter-of-factness (tone) that characterizes your characters in their worlds.)
On the negative side, for any new-to-me book/series I read the blurb with care, even if I’m familiar with the author. From relentless book promos in email lists, I see so many blurbs or first paragraphs that hint at (or loudly proclaim) amateur writing or other forms of cluelessness that even for authors I like well I exercise similar caution when considering a related work.
When I look at my own work (the series — shorts are different) I see completely unrelated worlds, but there’s a commonality of main character determination with its consequences that characterizes all of them. Not all of my readers like the different worlds (different genres of Fantasy), but the ones who follow me do it for that hero-with-a-mission aspect (I believe) and his/her reactions to the difficulties along the way.
It sounds like your concerns are almost more stylistic; for me, if I’ve read and liked an author before, a synopsis is there to tell me whether I’m liable to find the subject matter boring or annoying.
There is author voice. If you like the author you will follow them through many places because they will sing the same as it were whether they are doing high opera or pop. We all have our lists of authors we’ve followed in more than one style, or genre for that matter.
Yes, that’s right. But there’s an interesting “professional” issue that can work against that.
Take the case of Nora Roberts. She has been a seriously professional writer most of her life and a few of her books are favorites of mine. She writes to fill a professional requirement (this story in this style for this reader), and because she’s so accomplished at that, she can target all sorts of different readers in all sorts of styles, many of whom read books I don’t like. Beginning with her Harlequin days, her ability to target an explicit reader means I have to look very carefully at any book of hers to decide if her moving target this time is actually me.
So even in her case, yes, it’s style… but only one or two of her styles.
For more conventional (and indie) authors, their target audiences may be more stable (or they may only be able/willing to write in one or two particular styles (e.g., various detective heroes)), and it’s more of a one-on-one matchup between author and reader.
I’d be more of a mindset to point out the commonalities, and let the reader look at cover and blurb, and decide if that sounds close enough. There are very few authors or critics who’s “If you’ll like this, you’ll like that” I trust blindly, because there’s no accounting for taste, and marketing hyperbole is a thing.
Trying to point out all the drawbacks not only is talking down the work in question, but it’s also selling a message of no confidence… and depending on why your reader likes the series, it may be wasting their time slagging things he doesn’t care about, but will now notice and be unhappy with precisely because it was pointed out.
If you like Merchant & Empire’s careful attention to historical detail in your fantasy, you might like Kingdoms & Crowns, following a noble family in the Hapsburg Empire’s waning days from 1914 through the Eastern Front of WWII… Or if you like more blue-collar fantasy, contemporarily, there’s the Elect, a group of werewolves in Poland dealing with oil exploration, forestry, roads with potholes bigger than the tyres of the trabant, and protecting their villagers and each other from vampires.
If those (Kingdoms & Crowns, Elect) are actual books (vs rhetorical), I can’t locate them. More info? 🙂
I’d read them…
Dorothy S. Grant is talking about Alma TC Boykin’s books, so look under Alma TC Boykin at amazon.
(Dorothy is among other things kind of the blurb guru around here, so she’s offering input on how to sell readers on the similarities between different series.)
Dorothy S. Grant is talking about Alma TC Boykin’s books, so look under Alma TC Boykin at amazon.
(Dorothy is among other things kind of the blurb guru around here, so she’s offering input on how to sell readers on the similarities between different series.)
The Elect is a series, and starts with Wolf of the World. Kingdoms and Crowns is something I made up. The three alt-history stories are under the Cat Among Dragon series, unless Amazon broke the link and I haven’t caught it yet.
Yes, sorry. I’ve read all of those, but didn’t recognize “The Elect”, and of course “Kingdoms & Crowns” was a paraphrase.
(And, as you see, randomly described I would buy them (and did)) 🙂
Thanks.
Ah yes, Amazon broke the Powers link to the Cat Among Dragons. I just checked before getting the Powers books.
Thanks for letting me know. I’ll go through and redo it. Again again.
Interesting point. I guess I was thinking of the less-than-positive reviews I’ve read screaming about bait-and-switch “Her last book was a sweet romance and this is grimdark! Ugh!” (In that case, the scream was deserved, because whoever put the cover on the grimdark used a sweet cover. The blurb also didn’t clearly mention that it was not your typical mild romance.
Please don’t be that publisher.
Urp. Completely off topic – but does anyone have a direct contact for The Passive Guy? ICANN has apparently suspended his domain, and I don’t know whether he is aware of it.
No. That started early this morning, east coast time. And while I’ve sent him email, it was thru his site not independently. Still, he must be aware of it — he posts several articles daily and he wouldn’t be able to do that. Probably in the throes of straightening it out.
That’s the only contact I had, too. It will be interesting to hear what happened – PG definitely does not strike me as someone who would ignore those notices. (Unless they got into his spam folder, which is huge.)
I’m sure he knew he had a problem long before he went looking for email alerts.
And then there’s a side effect of the side series posting. 🙂
I saw the Power’s books in passing at the Cat Roator’s blog, was wasn’t paying attention. I’m happy with the first of the Cat Among Dragon’s book, so the Powers series just went on the TBR stack in my Kindle.
Don’t much care how dark that series is. It’s gotta be lighter than $CURRENT_NEWS. /sarc