Two more debut series deals today. The times seem to be changing for sure. Maybe it's because publishers hope for a lot of movie adaptions, since they are so popular right now in Hollywood? Or maybe it's because people are starting to like series more? Children's: Young Adult Adam Gallardo's debut ZOMBURBIA, set in the suburbs where zombies are an everyday nuisance; when a girl, who's just trying to get through school while making enough money selling a drug called Vitamin Z in order to escape her hometown, catches the eye of a popular boy she begins to question everything she believes about herself and her source of income; as if that weren't enough, then she notices the zombies are getting smarter and their attacks, more coordinated, to Michaela Hamilton at Kensington Children's, in a two-book deal, by Ann Collette at Rees Literary Agency. FICTION Debut Ashley Weaver's MURDER AT THE BRIGHTWELL, featuring a wealthy young woman in 1930's England, who finds herself unexpectedly solving crimes in her upper-class setting while trying to salvage her marriage to her playboy husband, to Toni Plummer at Thomas Dunne Books, in a two-book deal, by Ann Collette at Rees Literary Agency (World English).
Most of the debut series are pre-empts. And pre-empts are when a publisher chooses to make an offer in an attempt to persuade the agent/author to take the book off the market before it goes to auction. So it seems not only are debut series more common than ever at the moment, but publishers are battling over them frequently.
PM is not a complete list of sales, in fact, agents don't usually list all their sales there, and some (but not many) don't list any. I saw three series deals for debut authors in March's SCBWI bulletin not listed on PM (that's just SCBWI related works). My contention was not that it's not harder to sell a series, it may or may not be, but I think it's entirely dependent on the writing skill rather than author profile. It certainly isn't nearly impossible and to encourage people to trunk a novel because it's based on a series, and wait to try to pitch it until they're more established as a writer is just poor advice. Why should they wait? What could they possibly have to lose by approaching agents with a series concept? I personally know so many new authors who signed with their agents based on series concepts (I'd be one of them).
Sorry, but that isn't the way the industry works. New writers are a big enough risk as it is. A new writer with a series compounds the risk. If the intent to create a series is obvious from the initial story, ow worse yet, openly stated, it tells the publisher you don't understand the business - another red flag.
