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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Mouseferatu" data-source="post: 1343320" data-attributes="member: 1288">D'oh!! <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f631.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":o" title="Eek!    :o"  data-smilie="9"data-shortname=":o" /> Yep, I certainly did.Right, but I'm not sure we've got the chicken and the egg in the right order. Do stand-alones not sell as well because people prefer series, or do people buy more series because there are more series than standalones out there in modern fantasy?Let me clarify:I have no doubt that, at one point back when the numbers were roughly equal, people were no doubt buying series more than standalones. But I'd hazard a guess that it's not because a majority of the fans prefer epic series to individual books. Look at in terms of numbers (and I'm pulling numbers out of a hat to illustrate something; one again, I don't claim these are statistics).Let's say that, on average, 1 out of every 10 stories published in fantasy becomes popular. If a story is five books long, it will sell more books than a story that's one book long, because people who like the story want to finish it. It's not that they "prefer" a series; it's that they have to buy more books to finish the story, so the sales indicate that series are more profitable.In other words, one could argue that series sell better because they force fans to buy more books to get the whole story, rather than because people inherently prefer them.Publishers realize this, and begin pushing writers to write series, rather than standalones. If a series fails on the first book, the publisher need not continue it, and has lost nothing more than the cost of a single book. Should it succeed, the publisher/writer keep adding to it, and making more off it. Under this model, you're correct that it makes financial sense for publishers to prefer series--but that's not because it's what the majority of the market truly wants.I don't think series are evil. The vast majority of my favorite fantasy novels are series--but then, I can't think of very many standalone fantasy novels I even own anymore. I'd just like, as a consumer, to have the option of one or the other, and I feel that option has been largely taken away from me in the past decade or so.(And we won't even talk about what this situation does to those of us who are trying to get novels published.)</blockquote>

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