Dear Friends and Fans of The Three Investigators,
Most of you know that three brand-new Three Investigators books are set to be released on June 3rd. But I suspect that not all of you are aware that, from here on out, the future reach of the new series rests largely in your hands and the hands of other readers like you.
I can’t remember whether I’ve ever actually mentioned that the main reason Steven and I decided to publish the new books ourselves was because we knew that if we went to a legacy publisher, we’d lose creative control of important aspects of the new series.
However, another, secondary, reason was because no such publisher would have committed to a 26-book series in advance. Such publishers no longer have true creative control themselves. They are now uniformly owned by global corporations.
In fact, the publishing world has changed almost beyond recognition in the time since my father sat down at his writing table and created Jupiter Jones, Pete Crenshaw, and Bob Andrews by pecking words out on his old Underwood typewriter.
Given all the changes I have seen in my lifetime in the way books are marketed, I decided a long time ago that I would never put Jupiter, Pete, and Bob into the hands of people who merely wanted to make money off them, or who didn’t understand their essential goodness and the essential goodness of the world they inhabited.
In fact, I’ve known since I became an adult that I had a moral responsibility to try to protect my father’s fictional sons from exploitation by a too-commercial world.
What I didn’t know until much later in my life was that I would eventually come to feel that I should personally oversee the creation of a new Three Investigators series for a new generation of American young people.
Many American boys are in a terrible place right now - vilified by their own culture, disaffected, and increasingly isolated. While there’s a lot of good YA fantasy being written these days, these boys live in the real world, and I conceived of the new books as a way to reach (and hopefully help) this potential audience by showing them the real world not only as it might be, or could be, but surely should be.
I wanted the new series to teach them the same things the classic one taught several previous generations - to think critically and follow the evidence - but also to show them the enduring value of friendship, to present them with teenage role models they could emulate, to remind them that we are all just a tiny bead on the pearly string of history, and to illuminate the importance of older mentors.
Steven suspended his very successful editing business for six-and-a-half years to work on the new series, and I stopped writing my own books for the same amount of time so that I could lay out the trajectory for, plot, and then co-write 26 new Three Investigators books.
In so doing, I used all the skills I had developed in over forty years as a writer for adults to try to give something valuable to a new generation of young people.
But since I am who I am, in order to use those skills to good effect I needed to write the books for a slightly older audience than the one which had read the original books.
I needed to use a more complex point of view, and to develop both theme and metaphor in a way that my father hadn’t.
I did this first and foremost in order to ensure that I’d stay interested enough in the project, as a writer, to stick with it for as long as it might take, but I also felt that the approach I had in mind would provide something unique to today’s potential readers.
Because I’d read again and again that the current generation of boys was reading very little - if any - fiction these days, I also felt convinced that if I could get their attention at all, it would be through adding something novel to the mystery, adventure, and puzzle-solving aspects of the classic series.
That something became delving deeper into the Three Investigators’ backgrounds and characters, and taking on broader themes and more challenging subject matter.
Since fantasy tends to draw pretty sharp distinctions between the good guys and the bad guys, I also wanted to give young people a visceral way to understand the endless real-world gradations of good vs. bad, true vs. false, and excellent vs. mediocre.
It seems to me vitally important that today’s young people be exposed to such complexities in fiction, since they certainly aren’t being exposed to them in their encounters with the mainstream media.
It was wonderful being able to follow my instincts, unimpeded by any outside interference, and it was great to know I could confidently plan a 26-book story arc. But by choosing to publish the books ourselves, Steven and I landed ourselves in a publishing and reviewing system very different from the one we had long been familiar with.
And although in the end I loved the writing experience from start to finish, both the overall conception and the specific stories were complicated enough so that at times it was hard to believe that Steven and I would ever get the series finished.
What kept the two of us going for six-and-a half years was the knowledge that we were doing something really cool - and if you keep reading the new books as they are published, I think you’ll be able to see how unusual and compelling the series as a whole actually is.
However, at this point in time, I am desperate to get back to my own writing, and to put the publication of the new Three Investigators series on some kind of automatic pilot.
Luckily, all the books are totally written, all the book covers are finished, and Steven and I have reason to think that we’ve completed most of the steep learning curve that was required when we decided to publish the books ourselves.
I hope you’ll be willing to help us prove that Steven and I made the right decision when it came to the way we approached both the writing and the publication of this series by doing everything you can to help get the new books into the hands of young people.
If you know teachers or school administrators or homeschooling parents who might be interested in using the new books in their classes, schools, or home classrooms, please make them aware of the books’ existence.
If you know young people in your extended family or your neighborhood who you think might like them, please consider giving the books to them as a gift.
If you know a blogger or a tweeter who might be willing to give the series a positive mention on social media somewhere, please ask them to do it.
And if you are inclined to give these books a five-star rating on Amazon, please consider adding a brief review to your rating - one which mentions young readers. (If you can’t bring yourself to write even a very brief review, please register the rating, anyway!)
The fact is, at the current moment, both the subscribers to this Substack and the vast majority of people who bought the first three books are adults who grew up on the classic series.
And while, of course, I’m delighted that the new books seem to be appealing to people who have known about The Three Investigators for a long time now, I also want the books to get the chance to appeal to people who’ll be encountering Jupiter, Pete, and Bob for the very first time.
With that in mind, Steven and I have decided to start publishing the series through IngramSpark, in addition to Amazon and Barnes & Noble. IngramSpark is a mainstream book distributor which will list them in catalogues available to booksellers and librarians.
From now on, new books will be published through IngramSpark within a month of their publication on Amazon, and at that point, it will also be possible for you to mention the series to the manager or the head librarian the next time you’re in your favorite bookstore or library.
Finally - and just so you know - starting in September, rather than publishing three books every three months, Steven and I are going to be moving to a one-book-a-month publication schedule.
Our main motive in doing that will be to regularize our own lives in the eighteen months that will follow September 3rd - but as book readers ourselves from way back, we kinda like the idea of a book a month, anyway.
Under the new system, we won’t be putting the e-books into pre-sale, but on the 3rd of each month - once a book is available on Amazon as an e-book, a paperback, and a hardcover - I’ll be sending out the complete first chapter to all subscribers to this Substack. (A few days before that, I’ll send out a reminder about the upcoming release in the form of the book description and dust jacket.)
I’m hoping that regularizing the future publication of both my Substack posts and the new Three Investigators books will be good for everyone involved.
With thanks in advance for any help you can give the new books as they make their way into the world.
Best wishes,
Elizabeth Arthur
Me, at the age of sixteen, in a field in Concord, Massachusetts.