Call me sentimental, but there is something powerful about a story that knows when to end. Once, a good book left you sitting in silence, holding the weight of its final line. Now, too often, that silence is replaced with a promise: “Book Two coming soon.” Somewhere along the way, the natural satisfaction of a story’s conclusion has been replaced by the expectation of continuation. Instead of letting stories stand on their own, the publishing world has turned every ending into an opportunity for marketing and money-making.
I’ve always considered myself an avid reader. Yet lately, I’ve noticed a pattern: I’ll finish a book I adore, open Goodreads to log it and discover it’s only the first in a series. What felt like a complete story suddenly becomes a commitment. “Firefly Lane” by Kristin Hannah is one of those examples: a heartfelt, self-contained story that didn’t need continuation to feel complete. When I was younger, I used to get frustrated when a great book ended without a sequel. For years, I was furious that Laurel Snyder refused to write a sequel to “Orphan Island,” but that frustration carried a certain beauty. It meant the story had said everything it needed. The bittersweet sadness of a story ending is becoming increasingly rare, replaced by an industry that doesn’t seem to believe in endings anymore.
To be clear, there’s nothing inherently wrong with a sequel. Some series are joys. They contain expansive worlds with beloved characters and plots that reward patience. In fact, some stories genuinely need more than one book to unfold and many readers cherish the sense of returning to familiar worlds. A series can foster communities, encourage reading continuity and even sustain authors’ careers in ways standalones often can’t. For mid-career or independent writers, franchises can be a smart business model that provides long-term stability and security. But over the last decade, the publishing ecosystem has tilted decisively toward seriality. Editors, agents and imprints increasingly prioritize books that can be turned into multi-novel franchises, shaping what gets published, what readers are encouraged to buy and, most importantly, which stories are allowed to end. This shift turns literature from art into a repeatable product.
Publishing is a risky business: a single hardcover can cost hundreds of thousands to produce and promote. Despite this investment, for most books, the return is small. A series reduces risk. A second or third volume can salvage investment in reader discovery, extend shelf life and turn one breakout title into a long-lived revenue stream. Series offer branding and promotion benefits that create devoted readers who will buy not just one book but multiple entries in a franchise. Further, market data reveals that in recent years adult fiction has been a leading driver of sales growth. Publishers Weekly’s 2024 reporting notes a small number of franchise authors repeatedly dominate adult fiction bestseller lists. This isn’t a coincidence; they’re indicators of a market that rewards serial, francisable projects.
Industry consolidation makes those incentives stickier. As publishing conglomerates have grown, commercial calculus increasingly determines acquisitions and marketing strategies. Critics and recent scholarship argue that conglomeration shifts editorial priorities toward titles that promise scale and repeatability, not necessarily those that innovate or conclude elegantly on their own terms. The result is a structural pressure to keep profitable stories going.
The most immediate artistic cost is obvious: when economic success depends on prolonging a narrative, endings become optional. Writers may be nudged, or pressured, to leave threads unresolved or construct plots that exist primarily to set up the next volume. Characters are serialized commodities, and cliffhangers become a business strategy rather than a literary necessity. Or, even worse, some authors feel compelled to revisit stories that were already complete, adding sequels to novels that had perfect, self-contained endings. Take “They Both Die at the End,” for example — a story that was powerful precisely because it was a one-off, self-contained narrative with a clear and final conclusion. Yet now it’s been expanded into multiple unnecessary follow-ups, undermining the emotional weight that made the original so memorable.
The fallout is uneven. Debut authors from diverse backgrounds, whose stories might be structurally or thematically complete in one volume, face an industry that prizes further installments by already-established names. Risk-averse editors may prioritize authors who can be packaged into long-term brands over singular, boundary-pushing books, which narrows the kinds of stories that reach broad audiences. However, not everyone wants a decades-long commitment to a fictional world. Standalone books can be daring, precise and devastating in a way series seldom are: they have the freedom to make a point, take a risk and close the argument. When publishing attention concentrates on series, these standalones get squeezed out of marketing budgets and bookstore displays, making discovery harder for readers who crave a contained experience.
Ultimately, we need to relearn how to appreciate endings. Not every story needs a follow-up or a companion told from another character’s perspective, and not every great book needs to become a trilogy. The industry’s growing obsession with serialization risks dulling the beauty of a self-contained story, the kind that leaves you sitting in quiet reflection rather than waiting for a sequel announcement. When every book becomes a beginning, we lose what makes endings so powerful in the first place.
