sholio | A poll?

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books:misc

A poll?

A little bit of background on why I'm asking this: I have self-published comics in the past, and I'm thinking about self-publishing again, and I'm trying to figure out how to format this hypothetical project. It would help me a lot to know a little bit about how you guys buy books, or how you might choose to buy them under these circumstances. (Results, you might note, are publicly viewable, so if for whatever reason you want to be incognito, you probably shouldn't answer the poll -- I doubt if anyone actually would mind since I'm not asking for anything personal and I'm not using these results to do anything but give me a little more information in making my decision, but because this is sort-of-highly-unofficial market research here, I don't anyone to feel as if they've been tricked or misused. And lest I sound flippant, I'm serious about that.)

The actual project is a graphic novel, but I think that these questions probably apply equally to graphic novels or regular novels.

[Poll #1453747]

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I've been burned before, buying entire series before I knew I liked them, which is why I don't anymore -- I ended up reading the first book, and then getting stuck with the other four books of the series which are still sitting on my bookshelf, unread. With giftbooks, unless it's really super expensive, I'd rather give the whole thing. Especially if it's something like a graphic novel, which tends to be shorter than an actual book.

I am more likely to buy a book that ends with "to be continued" if I know the rest of the series is already written, though. Unless it's, like, Harry Potter, which didn't start with TBC endings per se. But, well, Harry Potter is a whole other thing altogether.

That's a really good point, about knowing that the series is done being a factor in buying the first book. (People are bringing up so many good points! I have a smart flist. :)) It sucks like anything to be left hanging, and since I buy a lot of small indy books or self-published/web-published books (graphic novels and traditional fiction) I've been left hanging by authors on more than one occasion. *thinks some more*

Hmmm. This is difficult to answer because it depends on how the "whole story" would be broken into several books. I do prefer single books in a series to remain single - I have a deep-seated hate for omnibus editions. But on the other hand I also dislike artificial breaks in a story (which is why finished fanfic that's posted in small chunks over a period of time tends to annoy me) ...

Is that useful data at all?

It is useful, yes! One of the problems I'm having is that there is no graceful, natural breaking point -- it was conceived and written as one cohesive story, it just wasn't supposed to be this *long*. Breaking it up into two books would be solely to avoid the intimidating size and price of doing it in one book.

From a dramatic perspective, I think it'd work better as one; from a consumer perspective, though, I'm not so sure. I know that I tend to shy away from buying big, thick books by authors I'm not familiar with. But, yeah, breaking it in the middle doesn't sit well with me.

If it's one story with no natural breaks, I'd be annoyed to buy a book and have it turn out to be half a story. That may be personal taste, but seriously, in this case I'd go for the one book option. (Also, I often check out the ending first; can't do that if you only have half! *g*)

I like collecting individual issues, but if I like series I would buy the single book if that came out cheaper overall. Not if it was even more expensive. I.e. if a single issue is, say $3.50 and the collection of six single issues was $18, then I'd buy that but if it was $25, then I'd buy the single issues, obviously.

Ooh, that actually raises a really good point that I hadn't considered -- if the combined price of the two books comes out to be significantly more than the price of the single book, it's not really fair to ask people to pay for both (and people might not, or might become resentful if I offer it as a cheaper omnibus later). That's useful in making my calculations -- thanks!

I voted 'other' on the first two questions.

I bought a Kindle a few months ago and find that I am reading more novels from independent authors.

One thing I like about series novels, is that each novel is whole and complete and stand alone. The main characters are what are carried through to each novel. I come to like the characters and read about them in each new novel.

I don't think I would really enjoy the series if each novel ended with a 'To be continued' statement at the end, it would seem like the author is trying to tell me, if you like this story, you'll just have to pay to see how it ends...not really my cup of tea.

Anyway, just m2c worth. Hope it is of some help to you.

*nods* Yeah, and one of my big sources of difficulty is that there's not a natural breaking point; the story WANTS to be one book, it's just a long book.

This *is* helpful; thank you!

As a gift I would love to give a box set with all the individual books in it.

Ooh, that's not even an option I'd considered! *thinks*

Oh, very interesting. I have similar plans so I'll watch this post and see what people are saying. I'm thinking of trying the traditional route first, but that failing, self-publishing seems a lot more interesting nowadays than even a few years ago.

Yeah; I had the book under consideration by a publisher, but withdrew it after they basically did nothing for a couple of years. And they definitely wanted to sell me on doing two smaller books rather than one large one. Now that it's my decision, I'm struggling -- it looks like the poll results are largely bearing out my suspicion that a big expensive book is too much of a leap for an unknown author (i.e. me), but if I can do enough fishing with free samples and such, I might be able to get readers to make that leap. HMMM.

Yes, the poll results seem to confirm what I thought. I haven't done any concrete planning myself since the project itself is still in the hypothetical stage but in any case I figured it would definitely be a good idea to get the first pages out as free samples.

You might want to look into Deviantart, if you haven't already. Also, this site was recommended to me: comicspace.com. I haven't got around to checking it out yet but was told it's a good place to network and get your work out, for pros and hobby artists alike. I plan to get an account and test the waters.

I used to buy omnibuses of my favorite authors largely because of the cost: Jane Austen, Oscar Wilde--I could have everything in one huge book!

I have discovered that one huge book can be very awkward to read, and I just plain don't like holding it. Now what I buy for myself tends to depend partly on how comfortable I can get with the book! If I were to buy the works of those authors now, I would surely go for individual volumes. I don't know that your work will get that huge, but that's why I answered the way I did: whether I buy separate volumes depends partly on their size! Gene Wolfe's four-book set (the one that starts with In the Shadow of the Torturer) is broken into two manageable volumes of two books each. (Of course, I stopped after one because I was increasingly dissatisfied with it and then really annoyed that I'd stayed with it because as dissatisfied as I was, at least I was getting near the end--but it didn't end at all!)

When I'm giving gifts, though, I don't worry about the size. I'm not sure if it's because I'm cheap and two books are usually more expensive, or because I know I'm weird: Brilliant Husband has no problems whatsoever curling up with a very large tome (Neil Stephenson!) and sometimes even lying in bed holding it up. (I'd drop the darned thing on my face and probably smash my nose.)

*nods* It's interesting how individual all of this is. And I'm sure it's also very situational; I mean, if you're standing in the bookstore with a gift certificate and there's a big omnibus of a series you know you want to read, it's a different situation than if you're browsing through Amazon and looking at first novels in series that you've vaguely heard of but don't know if you'd like or not ...

For a series I don't know I'd prefer not to buy an expensive book, but on the other hand I hate TBCs!! So I'm not sure about question #1 - which isn't much help, sorry. If I know I like the series or are buying for someone else, then the complete series is definite (as I've answered in the poll).

Hope it all works out for you - sounds exciting!

Ha, yeah, it's a difficult question. *I'm* not even sure where I stand, because usually I prefer to have the book all under one cover, but I'm also fantastically cheap and I can think of times that I've refused to buy an expensive edition of something I really wanted to read -- there are very few authors that I'll snap up in hardcover. So I just don't know ...

It's funny, because I always enjoy the feel of an actual book, but like Ed236, Kindle has changed my reading habits quite a bit. I find myself reading the truly longer works on the Kindle because it is not as physically tiring, quite frankly, as wrestling with a *big* book. It's also been a really useful device to introduce friends, and, let me honest here, mere acquaintances to favorite authors. Many people are interested in the device itself and if I happen to have a favorite author or two on the screen whilst demonstrating the thing.... :-)

I've also found myself buying paper copies of particularly good Kindle books just because... see beginning of line one.

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