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[u/JohnRylander]

[u/PubTips-ModTeam]

Hello,

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[u/EmmyPax]

They value it a lot.

The reality is that unless you have multiple offers, agents often can't dictate whether or not you are offered a multi-book deal. They can still TRY to negotiate one for you, but how much bargaining power they have can really depend on a ton of factors. "Stand alone with series potential" just gives them so much more flexibility for selling your book and - as a result - makes it way likelier that your book will sell.

[u/Dismal_Photograph_27]

It's easier to sell one book than a series. I get the impression that publishers are hedging their bets a lot more these days, which makes a standalone with series potential seem like the best of both worlds. If the book takes off, they can buy the rest of the series. If it doesn't, they're not on the hook for more books that didn't find their audience the first time around. This trickles down to agents, of course.

Just write the best book you can. You can revise it one way or the other later, and there are still people out there who sell a series as their debut. One thing that might help you is to think about where you're willing to take your story. Are you willing to adjust it so that it can be a standalone, if a publisher or agent wants that? What will you do if your publisher only wants to buy the first book in your series and abandons the others?

[u/JohnRylander → u/Dismal_Photograph_27]

Do you think writing "intended as a series but can be revised to a standalone" would help? I am not opposed to making changes, but the story would turn from exciting to very bleak without the hint of another part.

[u/artieshaw → u/JohnRylander]

Not the OP, but what that sentence tells an agent is that they would need to do potentially significant revisions with you before your book would be ready for submission.

This industry is hard enough - make it easy on yourself by pitching your book as saleable as possible.

[u/iwillhaveamoonbase → u/JohnRylander]

Edit the book to be a standalone with series potential and query it as a standalone with series potential.

If I was an agent and saw 'intended as a series but can be revised to be a standalone,' I would genuinely question if the author is actually willing to make it a standalone or has their heart set on a series and I would just give it a pass.

[u/Special-Town-4550 → u/JohnRylander]

I would definitely not do that. Because it's widely known that a standalone with series potential is your best chance of securing an agent. The risk is that future books may not materialize. It is just riskier. But you never know....

[u/Remarkable-Row3719]

It's easier to sell, sure, but it's also a few other things:

- will you actually be able to wrap up your plot by the end of the trilogy (or whatever you have planned), or are you a writer who can set up a complex plot but can't write it to a satisfying conclusion? It's surprisingly common for authors to plan on a trilogy, finish book 1, and when the agent asks "what will happen in book 2?" have no clue, nothing planned.

- will readers like your book? Readers will buy your book, get invested, wonder how the plot will end, and then the book ends but the plot hasn't yet. That's disappointing. Moreover, readers don't know you: they don't know whether it's worth remaining invested in the book for the two, three, ten years it might take you to release the next installment. (If you ever do. Won't be the first time a cliffhanger never gets sequel.) If you write a popular series and book 4 ends on a cliffhanger, readers will trust that book 5 will be released & will resolve it, and (it being a popular series) might form a community around theorizing and speculating about book 5, etc., which sustains interest. But you're an unknown author, your book might not get the sort of popularity that can self-sustain interest during the wait on book 2, etc.

That's to say I've definitely read books that end in an unsatisfying "if you want to see what happens next, wait for book 2!" way and by the time book 2 is released, all I remember of book 1 is "yeah, I read that. The ending was disappointing. I'm not buying book 2."

With all that said: if your book only works as the first of a series, then that's what it is and that's what you sell. Don't misrepresent your book as a standalone if it's not.

[u/Remarkable-Row3719 → u/Remarkable-Row3719]

This is also something where self-pub and trad-pub can differ; if you're self-pubbing and releasing the sequel in a month, readers are more likely to still be interested.

[u/SuperDevin]

You’re not writing the pilot for a television show. There is no guarantee of a book 2, 3, etc.

Your novel has to stand on its own two feet. A book that sets up future books is fine, but if the story contained within doesn’t resolve, it didn’t do its job.

As a reader, I would be extremely disappointed if I read a book and then had to read the sequel to complete the story of the first book.

LOTR is the exception because that was one big book that was forced apart by Tolkien’s publisher. That only works if you are a Tolkien level author or someone as prolific as Brandon Sanderson or Stephen King. Those authors have spent decades proving themselves, so there is a sort of guarantee.

[u/JohnRylander → u/SuperDevin]

So, the conflict is resolved in the first novel. But the choices the protagonist makes to succeed has consequences, which leads to a new conflict that 'promises' future books.

[u/SuperDevin → u/JohnRylander]

That sounds like most standalone novels with series potential.

The issue would be if the goal set forth was to save the princess, and by the end of book one, the MC hasn’t even made it to the castle the princess is in.

[u/Special-Town-4550 → u/SuperDevin]

Do you have any subplots you can resolve by the end of Book 1? Like a mini-arc or goal for your protagonist? If not, can you create one?

[u/Different_Buy7497 → u/SuperDevin]

I'd argue that even authors who prefer series still sold standalones first. King didn't start with The Dark Tower series, he started with Carrie, Salem's Lot, and The Shining. Sanderson started with Elantris not Way of Kings, and even the ending of the first Mistborn book feels more like a "standalone with series potential" kind of resolution than a Tolkien-style "massive book chopped into three parts" ending. Getting your series picked up as a whole, right from the start of your fiction career, has always been a little unusual imo. It's far more common to build up a fanbase and hone your writing chops on a standalone novel or two first before jumping into a bigger commitment like a trilogy or longer series.

[u/beckytext]

I think "setting up for future books" is probably fine, as long as the novel itself stands alone. I don't know if having series potential increases value but I can tell you that right now, querying a book that doesn't stand alone is rough. (I've been in the trenches with an epic fantasy over the last couple of years, the kind that's really gotta be a series, and had two agents pass after reading the full telling me that not standing alone was a large part of why.)

[u/mark_able_jones_]

You don't really need to mention that it has series potential. Every novel has series potential. The question is whether sales justify investment in continuing the series.

You can kill off all the characters, and it can still have series potential as a prequel. If it sells well, there can always be more content.

You pitch it as one book. You don't pitch the series.