YA Book Series That Never End

Cassandra Clare’s Mortal Instruments series, Sarah J. Maas’s Throne of Glass series, Victoria Aveyard’s Red Queen series … Most prolific readers of YA (young adult) fiction, or fiction targeted at an audience aged approximately 12 to 18 years old, are familiar with series that seemingly never end. Whether it’s a beast that grows and grows—in the ilk of Sara Shepard’s Pretty Little Liars series—or an ostensibly modest trilogy or five-booker that spawns further trilogies, prequels, sequels and so on—as in the three initial examples—expansive series are prominent in YA, especially YA fantasy.

Of course, massive series and multiple series are far from unique to YA or to the fantasy genre. Crime, in which series often tend towards the “episodic” (Nikolajeva 198), contains a good spread of sprawling series (hello Jack Reacher). Adult fantasy also loves the behemoth series, which, in cases such as that of Robert Jordan, can even outlive their author. Nonetheless, there’s a special penchant for series, particularly ones that “proliferate” (Wilkins 48), in currently popular genres of YA and upper middle grade.

So why do never-ending series have such a hold on YA genres including fantasy? And is the existence of these series good, bad, or other? Three key factors that play into the existence and popularity of such series are: efficiency, fans and proliferation. The below discussion addresses each in turn, while recognizing their variously overlapping and shifting elements.

Efficiency

“Laziness,” or a bid to make money easier might be less generous ways to talk about what is here described as “efficiency.” Serializing with efficiency in mind is author driven or publisher driven, and can have creative or commercial motivations according to authors. Similarly to many things in publishing, the likelihood is that it in fact has both. Authors can love their characters and not want to let them go at the same time as they see in series a potential to increase output and therefore in theory commercial success.

To pause for a moment on the output and commercial side of the equation, the idea generally goes that setting up a world and characters is a lot of work for an author. So, as a well-known British children’s author said, the more they can “squeeze” out of what they’ve already put work into, the better (personal interview). That way of putting it is somewhat mercenary, perhaps, but it recognizes that publishing is a business—a fact that most authors are obliged to acknowledge to some extent.

The idea that it’s efficient to serialize also recognizes demand from readers and therefore publishers to produce content quicker and quicker in an age where digital technologies mean instant gratification is increasingly the expectation (Wilkins 56). An extra short story here or a novella there might satisfy readers—and yes, also keep them excited about the world—while they wait for the production of another full book. And that book can typically be produced quicker if it’s in an existing series or world.

This talk of worlds offers an insight into the affinity between never-ending series and YA fantasy in particular. When “worlds” come up for discussion, the impulse for many is to leap to fantasy and its secondary worlds. Such worlds, and the characters who inhabit them, take setting up of a different kind to other worlds in fiction. So the “waste” of all that crafting for one book, or even three books, is often amplified in the fantasy genre.

Even so, the argument stands for all genres of YA—and really of fiction broadly: series are in part a tool that creates efficiency, and the efficiency increases with series length (Gelder 16-17). That’s not to say there aren’t downsides to the never-ending series model. There are many. For example, the efficiency of using a world that’s set up might be counteracted by the limitations of that world restricting the author’s subsequent ideas. Or the necessity to remember and not contradict details provided in books potentially written ten plus years prior might in fact slow things down.

If never-ending series were universally beneficial, no one would write or publish anything else. While there might be a lot of extensive series going around, that clearly isn’t the case. So they aren’t working for every genre, author, or for that matter, reader. But the efficiency that can come with serializing makes series that seemingly never end an attractive prospect, especially considering the nature of YA fans (Wilkins 48, 55-57).

Fans

Fans of YA—fantasy especially—whether they are young adults or not, are a very particular type of fan, characterized by their avid engagement, often voracious reading habits and strong emotional connection to what they read (Wilkins 48, 64). By and large, these fans want more of what they love. And it stands to reason that publishers and authors who are trying to make money will give them this.

When a publisher demands more from an author about X character or in Y world, this typically stems from reader demand for the same. Publisher driven serializing for efficiency generally comes down to success measured in terms of sales—it is efficient for publishers to produce what they have a good idea will sell based on the track record of previous books and an existing fan base. Fans and their purchasing behavior therefore influence decisions about the value of developing or extending a series.

The “avid fan” label aptly attributed to YA audiences brings with it behaviors such as the desire to curate collections. Young readers in the YA and middle grade spaces are likely to want to collect their favorite series (Watson 8). And it’s not only young readers who enjoy collecting. Anyone who’s spent time in YA fantasy Facebook groups or other social media equivalents will have seen shelfies showing off painstakingly curated and displayed collections belonging to fans of all ages. While such fan behavior isn’t unique to YA readers, its presence in these fan communities lends a further dimension to the prevalence of series that grow and grow.

It may be a chicken and egg scenario, but whether fans create never-ending series or never-ending series create fans, series suit avid fans who just want more of what they love. And series facilitate fans indulging their love by collecting books—and products related to them, which is where proliferation comes in.

Proliferation

The idea of proliferation draws together and extends the production and reception considerations above. Kim Wilkins describes proliferation as “one of the ways that fantasy texts offer glimpses, and hint at a much larger storyworld” that is not “containable” within one book, or even necessarily within the pages of books (52). Proliferation doesn’t happen only within books or only outside them, but in a myriad of ways relating to both stories and material objects. And naturally, it doesn’t relate only to fantasy worlds or to worlds where books are the initial product.

Proliferation happens so readily, and often successfully, in YA because of the appetite and participation of fans, who are offered a deeper connection to a storyworld by processes of proliferation—and also, of course, due to the motivations of authors, commercial and otherwise. As the above chicken and egg comment alludes to, there’s a cycle where the loop feeds back, leading to more and more series that never end because they work. Fan appetite leads to never-ending series, which feed fan appetite further. In that desire for “more,” proliferation flourishes.

To demonstrate how proliferation might look at work in series that never end, the following paragraphs touch briefly on the examples of Rick Riordan’s Percy Jackson world and Victoria Aveyard’s Red Queen series. Technically, Percy Jackson fits more in middle grade than YA, but it’s hard to look past the world of Percy Jackson as a contemporary example of textual proliferation. And of course, swathes of series “crossover” in terms of readership (Beckett). Harry Potter, for example, may start firmly in the middle grade camp, but most would agree it finishes in YA territory.

So, unashamedly bringing in Percy Jackson as an example, Riordan’s multiple series demonstrate how a world can proliferate and expand to distinct characters and stories within books. What started as the Percy Jackson series has grown into The Heroes of Olympus, Magnus Chase and the Trials of Apollo. Each of the series within the world shifts focus to a different set of characters, and often to a different part of the world, showing readers that more exists than they had anticipated. This ecosystem builds a richer world and gives Riordan space to play with different ideas and casts … though these don’t diverge too far from what readers expect and what was working in the first place. This harnessing of series to expand a storyworld keeps readers of the original series engaged—for the most part, anyway—and draws in new readers through ongoing visibility and freshness.

On the matter of downsides once again, spreading out series nodes by bringing in new characters after an original series that centers around one heavily branded character, à la Percy Jackson, runs the risk of alienating fans who really want more of that character. On the other hand, though, multiple series and the Percy Jackson approach allays one issue of long series that aren’t split up—namely, readers who come to multiple connected series part way through don’t need to go right back to the beginning to understand the story.

As mentioned above, proliferation happens beyond books as well as within them, and this is a major factor in building fandom. “Transmedia adaptations,” such as merchandising, interactive activities and reader groups that discuss and promote popular worlds, are some examples of proliferation beyond books themselves (Wilkins 1).

Wilkins discusses proliferation in relation to Aveyard’s Red Queen series, using the Scarlet Guard fan site as an example. As Wilkins describes it, through the site, “fans are charged with sharing links across their social media in order to be rewarded with previews of content and cover art” (54). Here, fans are actively participating in proliferation, effectively providing free labor to publishers and authors by spreading the reach of series and worlds. Notably, readers are participating by choice (Wilkins 54) because they enjoy feeling a sense of connection or proximity to the author/storyworld. Such activity cultivates the kind of fandom that encourages series that never end.

Fans want the worlds they are invested in to proliferate, and if authors, publishers and other industries don’t deliver (or even if they do), fans will often take matters into their own hands. Such participation spreads the worlds and characters of YA series beyond the books, creating space in both commercial and storytelling terms for more than what might originally have been perceived as the scope of a series. When authors fill this space, series that seemingly never end are one of the results.

It’s easy to see the YA series that never ends as nothing but a money grab. And certainly, instances would exist where that is the case. But there can be a lot more to the equation than meets the eye, and ultimately, readers are getting what they want and quite often demand. When there stops being an appetite for more, publishers and authors will typically move on, because publishing is a business. That’s a reality, whether for good or bad. The existence and popularity of YA series that seemingly never end therefore reflects the dynamic interplay between authors, publishers and readers in contemporary book production. It’s not always easy to tell what the core driver behind a never-ending series is, and nor, perhaps, is it necessary. Many observers are quick to insist on a stark distinction between creativity and commerciality, and to demonize the latter. But those who find joy in YA series that never end will continue to do so regardless, so those who don’t might as well let them.

Works Cited

Beckett, Sandra L. Crossover Fiction: Global and Historical Perspectives. Routledge, 2009.

Gelder, Ken. Popular Fiction: The Logics and Practices of a Literary Field. Routledge, 2005.

Nikolajeva, Maria. “Beyond Happily Ever After: The Aesthetic Dilemma of Multivolume Fiction for Children.” Textual Transformations in Children’s Literature: Adaptations, Translations, Reconsiderations, edited by Benjamin Lefebvre, Routledge, 2013, pp. 197-213.

Personal interview. Email. 2 July 2019.

Watson, Victor. Reading Series Fiction: From Arthur Ransome to Gene Kemp. Routledge, 2000.

Wilkins, Kim. Young Adult Fantasy Fiction: Conventions, Originality, Reproducibility. Cambridge UP, 2019.

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