Justin Landon asks a great question: why are there so many trilogies? He posts his research (much more than I’d ever do) over on the Tor blog. It’s worth reading. You should do so.
I have to admit to being flummoxed by the “trend” as it does seem new-ish to me. Of course, Landon shows that stories of three have been around a long while, but these days it just feels contrived and forced at times.
I’ve always thought that it was a sales and marketing decision, as whenever the “next in the series” is promoted and marketed, attention and sales naturally spike for the first book. Which, of course, is a good thing.
I only bring this up because I read two books last year that ended (each after 400+ pages) with no resolution. And each looking towards the next book to be released sometime in the next 11-16 months. WHAT!? I was pretty ticked. Had I known they were the first in a planned trio I would have waited. This is what I did with Mira Grant’s Newsflesh series. It was tons of fun and worth the wait as I could binge read all of them in one coherent flurry of pages.
Don’t get me wrong. I love a book series. But it’s totally ok for one book to be one whole story. I want to dive deep. But I also want to know when I’m going to be reading one story over three books and two years. I’d be a proponent of a big sticker on the front that says “1st book in a planned 3 book series” or some such. But I imagine publishers wouldn’t go for that. I wonder if authors are of a different opinion? If three-book chunks are needed to keep folks like Scalzi and Grant at the keyboard, then please disregard this post.
Maybe I’m just immature and hate to wait. Or maybe I just need to do a little more research (of the Justin Landon quality) on that hot-off-the-press novel before picking it up to see if I’m going to be left hanging or not.
Or maybe I need to get comfy with the word “omnibus” and find some.
