successful series

3 reasons to consider merchandise when writing your series

March 1, 2018 By K. D. McAdams

Setting is critical to a successful series, make sure your places and organizations feel real enough to have their own merchandise (merch). *Some affiliate links below*

I didn’t watch Gilmore Girls but a while ago I saw this story about the coffee shop featured on the show popping up around the country. It allowed fans to grab a cup of free coffee and in some locations they get a sleeve branded with ‘Lukes Coffee’ to remember the experience. They were mobbed and it was a huge promotional success.

This is the level of fan passion and engagement you should strive for when creating a business or setting in your series.

5 Steps for growing your series idea

February 1, 2018 By K. D. McAdams

I normally try and post these on Wednesday, but having my wisdom teeth out last week has really thrown me for a loop. Sorry this is late, but I look forward to being back on track next week.

In the last post I shared how I decided my idea was worthy of expanding into a series. Here I’ll go through my process of building enough reference material and ideas to actually form the foundation of a series.

There is a difference between a story idea, a novel idea and a series idea. Some story ideas are great but only have a few thousand words in them. Other stories can naturally grow into a longer work and become a novel. Taking a concept from an idea into a multi-book series requires you to think beyond the traditional steps of planning a book.

Even though I validated my idea and was confident that I had more than one book I didn’t have any concrete thoughts about the story arc or what the characters real journey was going to be.

Having made plenty of mistakes when it came to writing my first two series I wanted to do better planning my new Off Earth series before I jumped in and started writing. The challenge is that you have so many thoughts and ideas floating around in your head, how do you start making sense of them?

Here are five steps to take for expanding your idea into a series.

Think on it. This isn’t as easy as it sounds. When I have a new idea that excites me for a couple of days I want to jump in and start writing. But what happens when you scratch that itch? It’s easy to finish scratching and then forget about it.In my case I started to obsess over what could pose a threat to Earth and force this character to change his goal of living on the planet to saving it. I also thought about back story quite a bit. How did this character end up orbiting Earth, and what was the society and economy like that had him feeling trapped there.
Write on it. Don’t start writing the stories, but write out your thoughts and ideas. This should be a brain dump where every possible character and scenario is spit out onto the page. Spelling doesn’t matter, grammar doesn’t matter, and punctuation is irrelevant. It’s brainstorming 101 and some if the ideas will never make it into your series, but others will become the foundation of your characters and your world.I spent 3 hours on 5 consecutive days brainstorming ideas for the OEI series. Some of them have already been rejected and others have become key elements. After 15 hours of free writing I had plenty of content, conflict and mystery to start coming up with a story arc for the main character and the people living in this world.
Research it. Is anyone else writing about this idea? Are there real world equivalents or parallels to your idea? Even if you’re writing fantasy or science fiction you’ll want elements of reality woven into your characters and your world. Your characters have to be believable no matter what setting you have them in.Doing research will help you to understand what realistic characters look like and how much detail you’ll need to invent if you’re straying from an actual setting. To my surprise I found out that there are companies already working to mine asteroids and manufacture items in space. Their websites are full of inspirational ideas and issues that can cause conflict.You also want to understand other books in this genre. What aspects do readers enjoy or dislike? Never copy another story, but know how your story fits into the genre.
Embrace it. If you’ve gotten this far, this is your idea. Own it and love it. Many times this is the stage when self-doubt starts to creep in. Yeah you’ve thought about the idea and done some free writing, there is a market for it, but…Don’t get stopped by the but. You’re writing this series and you need to be excited about it. I always tell aspiring authors that if they love their idea and write with passion, readers will be able to tell. Dig in for the hard work but get excited about what you are going to create.
Talk about it. Don’t shy away from your idea. I get asked and hear other people ask “What’s going on?” all the time. Tell them! Say I’m writing a new series and I’m really excited about it. Their feedback may not shape your work in major ways, but you never know when a friend or acquaintance will share that one tid-bit of information that puts your story over the top.It’s also a way to start finding readers. You don’t have to sell, but if an acquaintance knows you’re writing and they’re a reader they will ask you how the book is coming. If you keep them posted they may be willing to buy your new release when no one else will. Every sale in the early days helps.

At this stage your story idea is big. It’s ready to get planned and plotted and you need to prepare to shift your focus to actually writing the story in a way that makes sense.

I’ll share a few thoughts on plotting and planning in the next post.

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I started work on my new series in October 2017. With my commitment to full time writing I expect to be working on the first three books in this series for 9 months.

Over the coming weeks and months I’ll share with you my thoughts, notes and tips for each step. You can easily follow along by joining my mailing list. In return I’ll send you a copy of my Successful Series Writer Manifesto and a weekly digest of posts.

If you want to see how I’m communicating with readers, hop over to the For Readers section of my site, or sign up for my Sci-Fi mailing list..

15 Steps for writing a successful series

January 17, 2018 By K. D. McAdams

After writing and publishing two series with 6 books in each I decided to look at the process and see if there were steps I could take to improve my odds of creating something successful.

One of my biggest issues has been reader engagement while I’m working on a new story. When I’m writing my head is down and I don’t have time to come up with ideas to share with my readers. Traditionally I have not shared anything with my readers until I have a book complete and ready for them to buy. Recent research has shown that readers want 2 main things from authors they like – more content and a peek behind the scenes. I was looking for a way to deliver those two things while I was working on a story. They had to be part of the plan.

In April 2017 I came up with a seed of an idea I thought could be a great series. I was working on finishing another project at the time and resisted the urge to jump in and start writing. In September I was wrapping up my other projects and started to formulate my plan for attacking the new series. Below are the 15 steps I came up with.
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The 3 P’s of a Successful Series Writer

January 10, 2018 By K. D. McAdams

Should you invest in writing a series?

Aspiring authors face an overabundance of advice. From what genre to write in to how fast to write there is an expert recommendation at every turn. One of the most common suggestions for success in the author business is to write in a series.

If you just started writing your first novel and you come across this advice it might seem overwhelming “I’m struggling to write one novel and they’re telling me I need to write at least 3?”

Maybe you’ve already written a series and it’s available for sale but not doing as well as you would like. You have a great new story idea, but you’re wondering if you can really invest in creating a new series only to have it not earn back what you put in.

If you’re like me, you have a few series out and they are profitable, but you want more. You have a great new idea but you’re really thinking about return on investment. Will this new series be profitable enough to make it worth the work?

Make no mistake, writing a series is an investment.

Series writers invest time, money, and energy. Regardless of how many words you can write in a week it will take months or years for the average writer to create a successful series.

On top of this major investment there are no guarantees. No one owes you a living. Even if you did everything the experts say and poured your blood, sweat and tears into your series it might not sell. This point cannot be overemphasized, no one can promise you financial success in return for your investment in writing a series.

But there are ways to improve the odds.

The three P’s of a successful series writer

A successful series writer has three key traits – planning, persistence, and passion.

Planning

A successful series writer plans – Writers tend to fall onto a spectrum between pantsing and plotting. It doesn’t matter how you write an individual book, if you want to be a successful series writer you need to start with a plan.

A plan helps you to develop a story big enough to tell over multiple books, engage with readers throughout the process and keep you on track when the going gets tough.

Some writers hear the word plan and think it’s taking the art out of the process. It’s not. Your story and each of your books are still creative works of art. You can even pants writing each novel.

A plan is a tool for setting expectations with your readers and preparing them to buy your art once it is ready for consumption

Persistence

A successful series writer is persistent – Creating a series takes time. Some of the steps will be laborious. Some days you’ll wonder when you are going to see results. You cannot give up.

Be patient. If you put in the work, results will come. If you set to it every day, and follow your plan good things will happen. Writing a novel takes weeks, months, even years. Planning, writing and selling a multi-book series takes time, don’t rush it.

There will be days when you don’t want to write, days when you think your plan and writing is crap and days when you feel like a complete imposter. We all have those days. The days when you don’t want to write are the most important days to sit down and write.

Bad copy can be edited, revised, and improved while nothing can fix a lack of content.

If you don’t keep at it, your plan will be wasted, your patience will be shot and worst of all, your story will never get out into the world. Power through your doubt and keep working. It will be worth it.

Passion

A successful series writer is passionate – If you love your story, readers will see it. When readers feel the passion in your words they are more likely to stay engaged.

This series is going to be with you for the rest of your life. Family, friends, and strangers are going to ask you questions about it. Is your series something that lights your fire and makes you want to engage in discussion with others? It better be.

If you want others to love your work, you need to love it first and always.

There will be social media debates about your characters and setting. You’ll get good reviews and horribly critical reviews. The best way to keep moving forward in the face of criticism is to love what you are doing so much it drowns out the negative. Unfaltering love of your story will keep you going when anyone else would tune out and shut down.

Join me as I take an idea and build it into a successful series

Over the last 5 years I’ve completed 2 series with 6 books each. All started from a single-story idea and grew after the first novel was written. While I love the stories and the process, I made plenty of mistakes while writing and publishing over 750,000 words.

In an effort to learn from these mistakes and create a new successful series that readers will love I’ve developed a plan for growing my newest idea from a tiny seed into a multi-product series. Join me on this journey and I’ll share my process and plan with you.

Like a good story this adventure is bound to have twists and turns, ups and downs, action and suspense. I can’t promise it will be easy but I will be here with you, sharing the good with the bad.

Along the way, I want to help you plan, write, and sell a profitable series. If you’re working on a series of your own I want to hear about it. Tell me your struggles and successes, ask me questions and share your doubts.