Making a proposal for a fantasy novel series

AuthorGuy said:

As I understand it, proposals are made for non-fiction, while fiction is queried only when the book is complete. I am currently working on a series of science fiction short stories for a magazine. I also recently finished a rom-com/spy adventure fanfiction epic that is 622K words long. The plot of the short story series could potentially be brought in line with the fan fiction epic, with suitable modifications to the fan fiction, in which case I could probably produce 8-9 full-length novels in a very short time. I don't say immediately, because I never write the same thing twice, and the story would no doubt end up very different in the translation. Do you have any advice on how i would go about proposing such a project, and to whom?

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I'm confused -- you want to shop a 600k+ fanfic? That's not publishable, generally, to start with and pretty much no one is going to entertain anything close to that size...

Even if you could cut it down by like, 5/6 and change it from fanfic, you query ONE standalone book at a time. No one, but no one, is buying an 8-book series.

cornflake said:

I'm confused -- you want to shop a 600k+ fanfic? That's not publishable, generally, to start with and pretty much no one is going to entertain anything close to that size...

Even if you could cut it down by like, 5/6 and change it from fanfic, you query ONE standalone book at a time. No one, but no one, is buying an 8-book series.

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TBF they might buy one from an established bestselling author.

A VERY bestselling author.

But as a newbie? Yeah, what cornflake said. Even without the fanfic aspect, that's not going to fly. Write the first and sell it. Go from there.

AuthorGuy said:

I also recently finished a rom-com/spy adventure fanfiction epic that is 622K words long.

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No, it's not finished. It's ready for editing down to a salable length.

AuthorGuy said:

Do you have any advice on how i would go about proposing such a project, and to whom?

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With the given premise, you're stuck with self publishing I'm afraid.

Jeff

1) You can't sell fanfic, it's illegal
2) You can't sell a 622k novel unless you're Alan Moore
3) You can't sell an 8 book series unless you're Scalzi or Sanderson

What you CAN do is turn about 80-90k of it into a stand-alone novel, file the serial numbers off the fanfic elements until it looks like original fiction, and query it as a single book with series potential.

That is probably your best bet, as far as selling something to a commercial press or snagging an agent's attention.

The only time you're going to sell fanfic is if you can snag a contract to write a sanctioned, licensed piece of fiction in someone else's universe, and that takes writing skill, credits, and often networking with other published writers/creators. There are magnificent fanfiction writers out there, but most of them are never going to sell commercially.

The most you want to do write a readable standalone, and mention 'series potential' in an agent query. Until agents like your work and ASK about more stuff, you almost certainly *don't* want to let them know you have a large series in the works.

There's a widespread and sadly true perception that most new SFF authors with unsold but written series may think they're Sanderson or Tolkien, but probably aren't up to the task. So agents might simply reject the query out of hand, if they think the writing sample doesn't merit the effort of writing and selling a series.

If you think there's the remotest chance you might take your big series commercial, don't self-publish or small-press publish the first books. That makes it much less attractive to an agent or big publisher, unless your book sells really well.