I recently received some advice from a publisher friend. He said:
‘The days of the one-off novel are over. If you want to get published, you should consider a series.’
Now while I hope it is not entirely true that the one-off novel will no longer find a place on the shelf (one would think literary novels would still flourish in the singular) I see the marketing wisdom in conceptualising a series of novels. Seeing the two series I’ve been involved in are children’s picture books, I thought it best, when talking about novels, to ask someone who knows what she’s talking about. Come in, Ruth Downie! If you don’t already know, Ruth, who is an old friend of the Crafty Writer, has written a bestselling series of Roman mysteries known as the Ruso novels. Continue reading ‘Writing a series: tips from Ruth Downie’
