Thursday, February 25, 2010

Series vs Stand Alone

Hi!


As I was going through my books I wondered about the prevalence of series to stand-alone novels.


I prefer a great character whose adventures I can follow through a series. I also like series (like Christine Feehan's) where the books are set in a world and are stand-alone-but-connected with sometimes an appearance by characters revealed in previous books. I think a great series which sells well would enable the author to write full time. (Always a plus!) I don't read (or see) too many stand-alone books anymore, except in straight romance, horror and fiction. Is this a growing trend in paranormal romance & other genres?


What do you think?


And do you prefer series over stand-alone books?

9 comments:

Adele said...

I love both, for different reasons. I love a good series for the comfort factor, following a familiar character. I love a stand alone too though, something new and different that I can't revisit and get too comfortable with. Variety is good.

Unknown said...

Hi Hagelrat!
Thanks for dropping by.
That's a great point about variety.
:)

J Hali Steele said...

I prefer series that are stand alone but connected. I like to revisit old characters, see what they're up to. I don't like series that don't have an HEA to each book.

Sandra Sookoo said...

I'm not a big fan of series. Mostly because the books start sounding the same after awhile, etc. I don't like to write series either. Mostly because I can't wait to send the main characters on their way so I can start something different. But there are always exceptions.

Rebecca Royce said...

I prefer series. Always, I find stand alone books to be too limiting. Great post!

Annie Nicholas said...

I have to agree with Rebecca. If you look at my book shelf I have very few stand alones.

Victoria said...

I love series. I tend to form my own ideas about the characters and like to see if any of them are right.

Chandra Ryan said...

I'm a big series fan, too. If I'm connected to the world or to the characters, I want to find out more.

Beth said...

I love reading series where the couple is new from book to book but there is continuity of family or plot(like in Feehan's Carpathians). A series that gets to be longer than three or four books with he same main character(s) gets boring to me. I stopped reading Davidson's Undead/Betsy books because of that.
I have notices that more and more the paranormal books are in series'. Contemporary still has a lot of stand alones, but I think that is because the "world" isn't as complex, being based on what we all know and live on a daily basis.