In a comment she wrote on my recent review of Sarina Bowen’s Good As Gold, Caroline wrote:
When I look at Bowen’s output, it doesn’t surprise me that the quality is starting to fall off. I started to feel like something was off in the 2021-2 releases of the Brooklyn Bombshells (Bombshells, Shenanigans, and Love Lessons). The stories just felt diluted.
I know the pressure is on authors to produce, produce, produce, but I hate how many times I’ve seen this same pattern and how many autobuy authors I’ve lost to it.
This comment resonated with me. In writing, like most everything else, there’s a place where the rapid pace of production begins to pull down products’ quality. There are categories like, perhaps, category romances where that may not be true. And I’m sure there are prolific authors whose output remains stellar. I just can’t think of any….
What’s your take? Do you feel like there are authors out there who write several really good books a year? Are many authors publishing more books in shorter time frames than they used to? Or am I utterly off base? Let me know!
The first writer who jumped into my mind is Caitlin Crews, who, in addition to publishing at least three HPs per year, also publishes other work under the names Megan Crane and M.M. Crane. She’s amazingly prolific but is still able to maintain a very high level of quality. However, I think for every writer who manages to pull off the “high number/high quality” balancing act, there are going to be many more writers who spread themselves too thin or tend to publish the same story over and over again. For example, as much as I like the dark romances of Amelia Wilde and Skye Warren (either writing together or individually), there’s no doubt that writing many books in a concentrated period of time (Wilde is currently midway through at least three series) eventually takes a toll on the quality of the writing: all of Wilde’s Hill Family books feature the same “I’m taking revenge on this woman because of something one of her male relatives did to my family” set-up. After a while, the plots all tend to bleed into each other. I’d also guess that the stresses of producing as much product in as short a time as possible takes a toll on a writer’s mental health: both Skye Warren and Katee Robert have discontinued series or postponed due dates when working on multiple projects became overwhelming. I have to wonder if that’s why Anne Calhoun (who, in the short span of seven years, published well into double-digits number of astonishingly good books) went radio silent after her last published book in May of 2017. And I imagine with the insatiable appetite of places like Book-Tok for more and more books from favorite writers, the roundabout won’t be slowing down any time soon.
I think Crews writes good category romances which is so much easier than good HR, RS, or fantasy.
I don’t think Anne Calhoun left because of mental health issues–she sure is missed though.
Katee Roberts’ work is not holding up for me these days–again, I’d guess too many books in too short a time.
But the profit margins are so low for many authors, one can understand why they want to churn out books as quickly as possible.
Apropos of my above comment, I just discovered that Amelia Wilde’s CROSS YOUR HEART, which had been scheduled for release on this coming Tuesday, has been postponed. In fact, it’s been pulled from Amazon completely—if you search for it, nothing shows up. Writers attempting to produce multiple books in a limited time-frame is simply not a sustainable business model. As Suzanne said, eventually something will have to give.
I’ve never read one of Cate C Wells’s books that has been less than good, and she has been chucking them out at a fair rate. However, a recent newsletter of hers mentioned something to the effect that she’d put a project aside because of feeling burnt out. And honestly, I’d rather wait a while longer rather than have an author completely grind to a halt Although, as Dabney says below, I can understand the pressures on writers to keep plodding on that treadmill.
My favorite authors all seem to take a year or more to write a book, often considerably more than a year. When I try books that come out every few months, they seem slight, lacking interesting characters or well-spun plots. The only really prolific author I enjoy is Jennifer Ashley. I like both her historical romances and her historical mysteries, and I know she writes in a bunch of other genres as well. I don’t know how she does it. Maybe she doesn’t sleep.
Well, not in romance, but I do enjoy Seanan McGuire, who writes SF/Fantasy and has two series (or more) going at this time, plus shorter works in electronic format.
She can get a little dark for me, but there’s no arguing with her talent as a writer and storyteller! My husband is a fan of her’s.
A few years ago – I think it was 2020, so he had time on his hands (!) Gregory Ashe published 10 books in one year. They were all excellent reads. Last year, he practically wrote an entire book on Twitch, and seeing the amount of preparation he does in outlining and the way he fleshed it all out and turned it into a novel was not only fascinating but also showed exactly why he’s capable of turning out so many good books in such a short space of time.
C.S Poe produced two outstanding books last year, and Jay Hogan has already published a couple of DIKs and has at least one more book due out in 2023. KJ Charles had a quiet year last year, but before that was regularly publishing 2-3 great reads a year. Nicky James put out her first three Valor & Doyle books within about 9 months (?) all of them DIKs. I’m sure there are authors I’ve missed – Fearne Hill is one – but my “books to review” spreadsheet regularly lists books by a handful of authors I know can be relied on to put out several great books a year.
BUT – they’re a relatively small number when you consider the number of books published each year in the romance genre and I’m convinced over-production is one of the (many) reasons the vast majority of historical romamce has gone down the tubes – faster production demands leaves authors with less time to do in depth research (although CS Poe manages to do a staggering amount for both her steampunk and contemporary books, so it’s possible.
I think there are many more authors publishing many more books now. But only a very few of them are able to maintain quality over 2 or more a year.
You named the author’s that immediately sprung to mind for me. I feel like I get double pleasure out of author’s like Poe and James because getting to relisten on audio is such a treat.
Well said, Caz.
In addition, I have to believe this is why series are such a huge part of most authors’ offerings. Creating a world, a time and place, fleshing out supporting characters and plot points, etc. can be leveraged from one book to the next.
Jayne Ann Krentz’s Arcane books were a very different series, but one that I liked despite the sketchy world-building in the futuristic fantasy romances in the series. She was producing three books a year for most of that series, and had been writing at that pace for quite a while, as I recall.
I do think you are right that fleshing out a series can make it easier to get the books written — at least for some writers. Other writers just need more time — Stella Riley does not crank the work out like Krentz does, but to me, there’s a significant difference in quality. Riley’s work will hold up longer, in my opinion. Then again, Jennifer Ashley is very productive, to, at a pace closer to Krentz. But I think Ashley’s historicals are stronger than the Krentz historicals (written as Amanda Quick).
Recently “NORA” was the answer to a clue on the NYT daily crossword (“The Queen of Romance?”). I know most readers wouldn’t call her “stellar,” but she’s written an amazing number of highly readable books over the past few decades. And while she may be predictable at times, she’s also amasingly consistent overall. I’ve read almost 50 books by her and they generally are B/B- grades, with a few notable clunkers and no A grades. Still, that’s not bad! There are a few of her RS books that I reread regularly.
I’ve seen several authors do DIK-level multiple releases for a couple of years. Courtney Milan from 2012-2014. Sherry Thomas in the same time frame. Sarina Bowen and Tessa Bailey from 2014-2018sh.
Authors people are mentioning like Nora Roberts and Caitlin Crews are people I think produce consistent competence (B-grade) books over a long period. But I don’t think you can do excellence at that rate for a long time.
Some writers may be able to pull it off, but I’ve never seen a writer change from a one book a year to a multiple books a year schedule without a significant loss in quality.
That, I think, is my experience as well.