This subject - why authors give up - tends to be one of the untold stories of the writing life. So when Christopher West told me about the reissuing of his books,I asked if he'd like to let me have his perspective on it. I have happy memories of a wonderful Bouchercon in Philadelphia when Chris and I were both in the early stage of our writing careers; we had a lot of fun together and he attended other conferences, promoting his enjoyable novels, until - suddenly, he moved away from the genre.
Here, he tells us why. I'm very grateful for his guest comments, and, yes, if you haven't read his books, you have a treat in store:
"Journey’s end
A crime series is a living thing. It has a life cycle – or perhaps a ‘death
cycle’ would be a better expression: there are times when it seems to be in
maximum danger, others when it is relatively safe and flourishing.
The first moment of maximum threat is in its
conception. That brilliant idea of Karl
Marx’s parallel career as a PI just doesn’t seem so good the next morning
(annoyingly, someone else will produce a winning series with this formula a few
years later). The next is probably the
first book. Publishers like the ‘throw
spaghetti at the wall and see which one sticks’ approach: if the first book
bombs, book two will be a hard sell.
If the first one does well enough, you probably have a grace
period. But if, after a few books in,
things aren’t taking off, trouble looms again.
New writers are knocking on the door and you are effectively in their
way. What do you do? Call it a day? Rebrand?
Or soldier on, hoping things will pick up? I remember hearing Ian Rankin say that after four
moderately successful Inspector Rebus novels, he sat back and refocused the
series, giving it a tougher edge. One of
the great rebrandings.
My own experience of hitting the ‘four book’ wall was
different. My Beijing detective was still doing OK and
critics still liked the books, but I didn’t sense any great picking up of sales. I toyed with rebranding, but how,
exactly? I liked the tec and the series
the way they were. (I sense that Rankin
rather fancied the idea of toughening the Rebus series – if you rebrand, it
must be in a way you like, or you risk the grisly fate of being tied to a
character / series you can’t stand.) In
the end, my hand was forced – luckily in a pleasant way, as another writing opportunity
came up. I said a sad farewell to the
Inspector and his feisty wife, and started on a series of business books.
Now Amazon has given old series a second chance. My detective can reappear on Kindle and reach
out to a new audience. A re-edit to make
things a touch pacier for the e-reader.
A little rebranding. A sympathetic
epublisher (Pageturners). Death of a Blue Lantern, the ebook, is just out. It’s great to be
back."
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