Advanced book collectors are well known for their obsession with completing a collection. And series publishers count on this, because a really well-received series is a money spigot that allows publishers to sneak other titles onto their lists that traditionally lose money. If a publisher wants to publish an important academic treatise that may change the world (if only more than two people will buy a copy and read it), it helps to have a money-making series in his or her back pocket to deflect the slings and arrows being fired from the sales and marketing departments.
The publishing statistics for some long-running series are nothing short of phenomenal. Perry Rhodan, a long-running German science fiction series, has sold over one billion copies worldwide. Written by an ever-changing team of writers (similar to how the Stratemeyer Syndicate, discussed yesterday, functioned), the series is issued in weekly Heftroman (pulp booklet) format. Created in 1961, it has spun off its own universe of comics, collectibles and the like:
Of course, some folks would suggest that this should not really count as books in series, since Rhodan's novella format actually is a booklet. Such critics, however, are not likely to succeed with such criticism against some other well-known, long-running series.
Collectors interested in good old-fashioned swashbuckling, for example, have tendered enough gold pieces to keep the publishers of Patrick O'Brian's Aubrey-Maturin series (a British Royal Navy series set during the Napoleonic wars) in swag for some time:
Truly successful books in series keep publishers in the black for decades after the original author's death. Although this is not a factor where a stable of writers is writing a series under a pseudonym (as is the case with Perry Rhodan and as was the case with the various series produced by the Stratemeyer Syndicate), the death of an exceptional series author can be catastrophic unless a series' various copyrights have been locked up tight by the publisher (or by the author's estate). That done, the lucky publisher (or author's estate) is limited only by the ability of sales and marketing to repackage a series in ways that are likely to continually entice collectors towards completion...
Recent Comments