On Series Branding and Subgenres

[rowyn]

I should be working on my NaNoWriMo project, but I'm still flattened from the booster shot I got on Thursday evening.  So I thought I would write about my thoughts on a different topic.

One of my Twitter friends, DanniRook (Twitter handle), did a thread on writing yesterday. One point they made was that the Anita Blake series changed over time from "urban fantasy mystery with some romance" to "erotica with some paranormal fantasy." They added that they considered this a marketing mistake on Hamilton's part. Readers felt betrayed by the genre switch. Danni argued that it would've been better to start a new series then to change the subgenre of an existing series.

Lut and I both read the early Anita Blake books. We both dropped the series after several books, due to the subgenre change. So you'd think I'd agree with this idea.

But it turns out that I don't.

First, while there are undoubtedly many Anita Blake readers who dropped the series because of the subgenre switch, the Anita Blake series continues to be massively successful. 28 books in, the latest installment has a 4.7 star rating on Amazon, with over 5400 people rating it.  Saying "this was a marketing mistake" given its long-running popularity strains credulity. If it were truly a marketing mistake, the series should have foundered.

Second, while many readers point to book eight as "when the series jumped subgenres": in retrospect, I believe this was Hamilton's intention from the start. She wanted Anita Blake's character arc to go from "ruthless monster killer" to "monster lover who sexes up all the monsters." Book eight was the point at which you could no longer ignore this evolution, but there were many, many intimations about the character arc before that. It's not an arc I enjoyed or would have chosen, but that doesn't make it inherently worse.

Third, starting a new series is a huge risk. Readers fall in love with specific characters and want to read more about that character. Yes, Hamilton could've escaped the reader backlash by writing a separate paranormal erotica series instead of turning Anita Blake into paranormal erotica. But it is by no means a given that a non-Anita-Blake erotica series would have met with more success. Hamilton has, in fact, written other series; to my knowledge, none of them are as successful as Anita Blake.

But perhaps the most important point is that there is no guarantee that "sticking with the formula" will lead to continued sales for a series. 

If you've got a series with a single main character, and you don't have that series evolve in genre and tone, you can also easily lose readers.

Many -- perhaps most -- readers fall in love with characters: not subgenres, not tropes, not settings. Characters. They want to read about their beloved characters growing and changing over time. If a series delivers a consistent experience in terms of tone/tropes/subgenre/character, will that guarantee that readers will stick with it? Absolutely not. Yes, readers are more likely to get angry if a series changes in a way they don't like than if it stays the same. But when it stays the same, they're just as likely to drop it. "I loved the first few books, but after a while it got repetitive."

Writing a successful series is difficult. And the things that one reader sees as essential to the heart of the series are not the same as what another reader sees as essential.  You may think that the subgenre is central and if it changes, the series is ruined. But another reader might be delighted by the shift in subgenre.  I love the way Lois McMaster Bujold changed subgenres over the course of the Vorkosigan series, for example. I enjoyed the early milsf novels, but would I have read every Vorkosigan book if they'd all been milsf? Maybe, but probably not. The Honor Harrington series delivered a consistent experience, at least from my perspective, and I quit reading those after six books or so.

Of course I'm not saying "authors have to change the series subgenre as they write to keep it fresh." My point is that regardless of what the author changes or doesn't change in a series, a certain portion of their existing readers are likely to dislike it and quit reading. If the author is lucky, a different set of readers will be drawn to it, probably for the same reason that some people left.

As a writer, I wouldn't change what I consider to be the key qualities of one of my series. But I'm aware that what I think is a key quality won't match what every reader thinks is key. I don't like where Hamilton took the Anita Blake books. But this is a matter of taste on my part, not an indicator of some fundamental rule of branding or marketing.

Comments

[terrycloth]

Honor Harrington eventually changed genres to be more about politics and grand strategy instead of milsf, and also had spinoff series that were outright spy thrillers. I'm not sure which branch has better sales.

[rowyn]

I think I stopped reading while it was still milsf? It definitely still felt like more of the same to me at the time.

[terrycloth]

Yeah. I think the first... 8? 9? Books were all milsf and then he was supposed to end the series but people wanted it to continue but Honor was already the grand admiral so.

[tuftears]

Yeah, I was pretty disappointed with the later Honor Harrington. So much thud and blunder! x.x I was one of those who dropped out of the Anita Blake series when it started being more paranormal romance, but I agree with Rowyn that it's fair to keep changing a series as needed. It is a risk, and sometimes it pays off, sometimes it doens't.

[lilfluff]

Yeah, I recall reading Weber saying somewhere that while he didn't intend to end the series around there, that he did intend to have Honor die in one of the big battles (and seeing how Admiral Nelson is an inspiration...), and that originally he planned to do a time skip to when some of the characters she'd influenced would take over as protagonists. But on reaching the battle where she was supposed to die he basically went, "Good lord, the fans will kill me if I do this..." and chickened out.

I'm not quite sure which book I stopped at. Although it was less genre shift and a deep discomfort with giving money to the current leadership of the publisher. Although considering I was starting to run across stuff that had me going, "Oh, no Weber, no, an entire chapter dedicated to the history of the economy of this world? Don't go Full Stereotype Tom Clancy Infodump, never go Full Stereotype Tom Clancy Infodump, even Tom Clancy didn't go Full Stereotype Tom Clancy Infodump." I'm not sure how much longer I would have lasted.

[caudelac]

And she also started Merry Gentry, which was all bangin' from the outset, and I don't think was anywhere near as popular.

[rowyn]

Yeah. I really feel that for most readers, the core part of the "brand" of a series is the characters, with the setting being second and author third. Genre is a concern, but the subgenre and tone: not so much.

[filkferengi]

On the Merry Gentry series, I felt she switched genres in the first book. The set-up starts as "P.I. doing clever things with little magic" before switching to All The Super Powers. It was the set-up I wanted to see much more of. After presenting & developing all the P.I.-adjacent characters, they all just disappear. I stuck with the series a few more books, in spite of the disappointment, but eventually the New Powers Every Book got a bit much.

[alltoseek]

readers fall in love with characters

100% agree. I've finished plenty of books where I didn't care much for the characters, but that's only cuz I do get interested in hows and whys of stories - where is the author going with this? how is this mystery resolved?- but on an intellectual level, not emotional, cuz I am a nerd like that.

To love a book you have to engage on an emotional level, and that almost always, for most people, means engaging with the characters.

I can put up with all kinds of fail in plots and settings and everything else if I like the characters enough. And I have to feel that the characters are like real distinct people who could really exist (in that setting). Characters are hard! Writing engaging realistic characters is hard! And some authors are successful in some of their works and not in others! I don't even know how that works!

[rowyn]

I've published 15 books now and I still don't know how it works. :D