My daughter celebrated her second birthday recently, and I fear we have set her up for disappointment.

Not only did she have two parties (one at her daycare and one at a local pizza place) but she also got to celebrate again with her grandparents at a beach resort two weeks later.

Worse still, the party at her daycare involved the National Guard. Yes, I’m serious.

My daughter’s daycare is at the high school where my husband teaches. It’s primarily for teen parents (to keep them in school—teen pregnancy is a huge problem there) but also for staff. Well, it just so happened that the day of her birthday, a Wednesday, the National Guard happened to come by with blow-up obstacle courses and motorized vehicles for the high school kids to try out. And the daycare kids, apparently.

Throw in some inflatable pools and a whole lotta junk food for the end-of-the-year daycare party, and my toddler had the time of her life. She came home passed out, with pink hair and wrapped in nothing but a towel and a blanket.

I, with my lack of party hardy experience, can never hope to measure up to that.

Which brings us to my topic of the week: expectations.

Publishers and authors can do this too, with their books.

Have you ever been reading along in a series, waiting patiently for the next new release, when the series just ends? It’s like when a favorite TV show gets canceled and the writers don’t have time to wrap up the storyline.

Publishers do this all the time. The series doesn’t sell as well as they expected it to, so they drop it. Never mind that the reason for the poor sales often has more to do with promotion problems than it does with quality writing.

Even if the series is only a mediocre seller, that still means it has fans.

Fans who want more.

Fans who don’t appreciate being left hanging…

Here at WMG, we have made a commitment to our authors and our readers: we won’t cancel a series in the middle. The author has room to experiment, and the readers get to see everything in that series—including the end.

After all, we have high expectations to meet.

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Allyson Longueira is publisher of WMG Publishing. She is an award-winning writer, editor and designer.