Beyond the First Book: Strategic Planning for Your Book Series
When considering a book series, it's imperative to plan ahead. The decisions made for book one will have far-reaching consequences for the rest of the series. Let's dive in.
Beyond the First Book: Strategic Planning for Your Book Series
Publishing a book is a huge undertaking—reserved for the truly courageous. Publishing an entire series? Often, that takes even more grit, not to mention careful planning.
When it comes to launching a series, there’s more pressure to get everything right from the start. It's more difficult to recover if anything is set up improperly. Your decisions regarding the first book have implications for all books in the series, and a misstep with later books can alienate them from the rest of the series.
So, what considerations should you make when planning a series?
Here are a few pointers.
Start Right with Key Questions
There are several questions you should ask yourself early on:
What will your author name be? Will you use a pen name or your legal name? Whatever name you choose must be consistent across your entire book series.
Will you form a publishing company? If so, will you purchase ISBNs under that name? Each book in your series should be published under the same company.
Do you need a logo? If “yes,” it should appear on each of your books.
Will you have a website? How about social media? Will you share links to them in your books?
These are just a few items that will have repercussions throughout your author career. Changing these items later on can be detrimental to your overall brand.
Study the Bestsellers
Before launching any book—but especially a series of books—survey your competition, primarily the bestsellers. What tools do bestselling authors employ to ensure cohesion between books in their series and heighten discoverability? How do their covers appear? What language do they use in their titles and book descriptions?
This research can illuminate your next moves and pinpoint what may work best for your series. Once you've surveyed the landscape, your next crucial step is crafting titles that resonate.
Choose Titles That Connect
The titles (and subtitles) of all the books in your series should be written well in advance of the text. When crafting them, try to make them compatible with one another. Making sure all the titles sound like they go together is a great way to boost brand recognition.
An experienced book title consultant can help ensure that the words not only resonate with buyers but also reinforce the unity of the series.
Design Cohesive Covers
The cover design of book one will become the foundation for the rest of the books in the series. All the books in the series should have a similar look and feel that will help buyers recognize them and associate them with the series.
If you manage to plan all the titles and subtitles ahead of time, that will help the cover design process go more smoothly for each book moving forward. The designer will then be able to ensure the overarching design is flexible enough to accommodate the longest and shortest titles in the series, as well as highlight the brand.
Offer Consistent Formats
If you choose to offer book one in multiple binding styles, you should do so for other books in the series, as well. For example, if book one is offered in softcover, hardcover, and eBook, buyers will typically expect those options for the next books in the series.
If a customer buys books one and two as a hardcover, they likely won’t want to find book three only available as a softcover. That can lead to negative reviews. For the most part, book lovers prefer consistency on their bookshelves.
Price for Success
Buyers who enjoyed your first book will expect the price of the others to be similar. Pricing your book accurately from the start will deliver this consistency and ward off unpleasant surprises. This is trickier than it sounds, however.
As the years go on, print costs will gradually increase. While you don’t want to price yourself out of the market, you must price the book high enough to cover the print cost. Not all authors will have the same overhead, so don’t be afraid to price your books in a way that will cover your costs effectively.
Don’t Hesitate to Seek Help
If you need any help with title consultation, cover design, or marketing, 1106 Design offers all this and more. We love helping authors achieve their publishing goals. Contact us today to learn more about how we can help you succeed!
In case you missed it…
How to Choose a Great Title for Your Book: A Brief Guide for Indie Authors
Book titles should be informative, memorable, and compelling. Click here for tips on how to select the right title for your book.
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