I've had this dilemma for a while and thought to post on it several times but never did... The problem is my plot is just too large for one book, or even two. I went into writing my story knowing that it would span several books, and therein lies the problem. My story is about a prophecy, or rather the people described in a prophecy. It tells of how several heroes will defeat an ancient evil, and how one villain will release that evil. Now here's the catch. the villain of the prophecy is my main protagonist. Circumstances lead him into starting his way along the path described in the prophecy, and everyone ends up labeling him as the villain even though he's a really nice guy. The plot i have for the entire story leads him from denial to aversion to eventually accepting that he needs to do his part so the heroes can do theirs, but the first 'book' of the story ends with him refusing to take part in the prophecy and hiding from the heroes that are convinced he is evil, as well as anyone that knows his past. The first book does feel complete (in my opinion) by ending this way, but it's an obvious 'to be continued' moment... If that makes any sense. I guess my question is, how would you as a reader (or publisher, for that matter) feel about this?
You may need to trim down your story, or work on one that will make a better first novel. Your chances of selling a series, as an unknown author, are slim to none. Even if you did, each vovel in the series would need to stand on its own. Also, you will need to stay in, or at least close to, the word count range in the submission guidelines for te publisgers you submit too. One superlong novel won't do.
I agree with Cogito. You might want to scale back the ending so that it leaves your protagonist in question of what to do, or maybe has accepted his fate, which the reader knows will only help the world, but close to the end another perilous act happens that jeapordizes the life of your protagonist, so everything is still in turmoil, but a little less 'to be continued' sort of feel. I do think that you would have to change your ending in some fashion, as it would be hard to land a book deal with that sort of ending. Sorry to say it, since your plot sounds really interesting and if I knew that there were more books in the series I would have no problem with the ending. But the reality of the book publisher world dictates otherwise. Good luck whatever you decide.
If you DO have two books (or several) then you really really REALLY have to make sure the first one can be a stand-alone and does NOT end in a cliffhanger. I've been in your same difficult situation, where you have too much plot, story and characters to fit into 130 000 words, so I'll try to give you my personal advice. It's up to you to take it though So, if you've already cut everything you can, and feel you still have too much stuff to cram into 100 000 words, then make it two books (or several). This is not a problem per se, other than that you have to make sure each book can stand alone. Not ending in a cliffhanger, but more or less resolves everything in that book. There can of course be plots tying into each other across books. Imagine you send off your mss to an agent for them to represent, you dont want it to be too long (for fantasy, think 80-130k words) though there are always exceptions. And seeing as it is incredibly difficult to get a good agent and then to be published by a good publisher in the first place, you want your one chance to be good and not end in a cliffhanger - it will not make the publisher want to publish the second one, it will just be annoying. And I'm saying this as a reader as well. Even JK Rowling could not leave a cliffhanger at the end of her books, though for her I suppose it was more of a personal choice and being nice to the readers
