Slightly cheating for this week’s top ten, but I hope you’ll forgive me. Back in October I wrote a post for Books Rock My World that has a lot to do with the topic for this week. If you didn’t know I write for that site, now you do know.
Unless you hated one of my articles, in which case haha, no, that’s totally another SE White. It’s a very common name. Don’t flame me.
Please don’t do this to me about my articles
Anyway. Leaving a series unfinished is a guilt common to all bookworms. Using the Group Power of the Internet™ I asked the site readers for their opinion on which authors have series that are running too long. Yes, asking for people’s opinion on the internet is a lot like rolling in a puddle of gasoline and then lighting a match in your own hair, but the readers at Books Rock My World are uniformly nice and thoughtful so it was a pretty safe thing to do.
[I have a theory that bookworms make great Internet commenters because they have good comprehension skills and actually read the article, instead of reacting with a flame war over what the title might mean. I love you guys, is what I’m saying.]
At a certain point it starts to become obvious that the author is being pressured into putting out a book a year/multiple books in a series and the quality noticeably comes down. It’s a sad thing to watch, but it’s understandable. The world moves so fast, if you’re not churning out books and staying in the spotlight the odds of you not selling anything go much higher. I don’t really have any ideas on how to fix that, but we did diagnose the ailment for several authors.
Commenters chimed in with series by James Patterson, Dean Koontz, Charlaine Harris, Danielle Steel, Janet Evanovich, and Julie Garwood. Among many others. This seems to be something that bookworms across genres have noticed.
If you’d like to see which other authors made the list of shame and/or chime in with your own opinions, the article can be found here. And remember I love you, my fellow bookworms, for your kind and thoughtful comments.
We’re all this guy together
I don’t mind some that have gone on for ages but others definitely need to wrap it up. lol
I sometimes think series get less good as they go along too! But I always wonder if it’s ever true that it’s the author can be said to just be putting out books for the sake of it?!?At least for YA, I know it’s so hard to get deals for series that the sales would have to be really good to even make it happen! Which means there are definitely many fans out there. Maybe that’s different in YA vs adult books though. I have no idea.?
That’s a good point! I tend to think series get pushed more in adult (especially romance) but I don’t have any inside knowledge . . . maybe it’s our fault as the fans for buying every book in a series the poor author puts out! That would show me, haha.
Ah, Danielle Steel – my namesake – that woman cranks out some books. My bookish friends and I recently did a “guess how many books” for a slew of popular authors, and some of the results were obscene when we went to research. I think some of the authors listed need to let their characters rest and find new muses. I am so done with Stephanie Plum, but I really like the new Fox and O’Hare series. I hope it doesn’t suffer the same fate of too many books for no reason.
Here’s hoping!