Is it worth continuing writing the series? > Likes and Comments

I wrote what I thought was a brilliant thriller (and, to be honest, which author doesn't think his work is brilliant?) yet in spite of good reviews, it did not have many reviews - and not many sales either.

I ended the book on a mini cliffhanger, neatly seagueing into the next book. And I am well into writing the follow-up. But with such poor sales of the first book. I am wondering if it is even worth writing the sequel?

Part of the sales problem is Amazon itself. If you search for the book by title alone Degree of Guilt, you find other books with this title but not mine. These are followed by completely unrelated products. I'm not sure why Amazon does this but they do.

One orher thing, I was in the nineties and then again 2009-2012, a published mid-list author of thrillers under my own name (published by Hodder and HarperCollins) but I created a new pen name for this project. Was this a mistake? Should I republish the book under my real name?

Here is a link to the book:https://amzn.eu/d/0h2KfAwI

Hi Dan,

Looking at your history - traditionally published in the '90s and '09 to '12 - you understand this industry and that during the periods mentioned, has been like a shifting sand. Traditional publishers no longer take risks, and that's like the death knell to a creative industry. Before, the publishing industry had established genres for marketing purposes, but a publisher/editor accepted a book upon his or her gut-feeling and thought about marketing afterwards. Now, considering the audience is the overriding consideration before accepting a novel, thus authors have less freedom to explore a subject matter and have to focus on fitting in a particular set of criteria. This is only one of the reasons I now prefer independent publishing.

However, we both know that that means chucking the novel into a swamp and then figuring out how best to shine a spotlight on it...

So, to cut a long and boring story short, we authors have to writing as many novels as possible in the hope one will take root. It's only when we've have a few books published that we can establish a foothold and perhaps prepare the soil for the next novel.

In the business of writing novels, everything takes time. Overnight success, simply isn't going to happen.

With regard creating a series? That has to be a long term view and objective. With the Original Earth series I had written books one, two and three before I published book one. I'm currently writing book four because I hve had reasonable success with the first three, but it's still very early days and the book is still too slowly (in my view) harvesting readers. Book four will also stand alone, so I will be able to market that separately.

Now with nine novels and a memoir under my belt I'm beginning to look to other media. Currently, as well as book four, I'm adapting another book for radio drama. Drama serialisations, I think, is the future. All my novels will adapt to streamed drama series or film. Personally, I'm hugely excited about the future because every story begins with a blank page and authors are blank page fillers. There's plenty of room for all of us, it's just about finding the right platform where we can place a spotlight on our work.

Legal thrillers have always been popular, so I think you're absolutely right to continue with the series and in between novels, learn how to adapt your existing novels to a script and start pitching. You've obviously had an agent in the past, so have I, a couple. My problem is now getting an agent onboard because I'm now considered a self-publisher... My answer to that problem is to get a producer interested and then get an agent onboard. The rules have changed