Series Numbering Question
A librarian acquaintance recently asked (with no small exasperation) why can’t the series numbers be in the book title, on the spine, AND on the cover?
Well, as with so many things, the answer boils down to “it depends.” Specifically, it depends on the publisher and the author, but only if the author is indie.
Like, for my books, they always have the series number on the cover. A random example:
As you can see, this is the fourth book in my HALF-ELVEN THIEF series, so it says “Half-Elven Thief #4” above the title.
Whether or not the series number is on the front cover depends on the publisher or the writer, if the writer is indie. For myself, since I make my own covers, it’s a trivial amount of extra work to make sure the series number is also on the cover. A small publisher or an indie author hiring a cover designer has to specifically ask for the series number on the cover, and they don’t always think to do that.
In terms of the spine of the print edition, it depends on whether or not it is included in the cover design. Typically for a print book you need to make a wrap-around PDF cover, or you use the automated tools with something like KDP Print to create it. The trouble is that space can be at a premium on a book spine, and after you have the book title and the author name, there might not be adequate room left for a series number. For example, a title like STEALTH & SPELLS ONLINE: FINAL QUEST takes up a LOT of space on the spine, and combine that with the author name of Jonathan Moeller, and we don’t exactly have much real estate left to work with.
However, for ebooks, there’s really no excuse for them not to be arranged in series order because all the online platforms now have good series management tools.
This is a relatively new development. For a long time Amazon and the other self-publishing platforms didn’t have any series metadata management tools, so we had to take things into our own hands. That’s why for a long time you would see books with titles like “FROSTBORN: THE IRON TOWER (Frostborn Book #5)” because there was no other way in the metadata to indicate that a book was a part of a series.
Obviously this was a problem, so eventually all the self-publishing platforms added series manager tools. So now it’s fairly easy to add ebooks to a series, so on the storefront they should show up in the proper series order.
But for tradpub print books, I expect traditional publishers are not terribly invested in providing series numbers on the spines of print books because it is a layer of (from their perspective) unnecessary work with no return on investment. Remember, most publishers are owned by big international conglomerates nowadays, and from the corporate owner’s perspective the publisher’s existence boils down to a cell in a spreadsheet. So a series will only get new cover art and potentially numbers on the cover if doing so might make the Number Go Up in that particular spreadsheet cell.
A series is most likely to get numbers on its cover and its spine if it’s 1.) finished, and 2.) popular enough to be re-released with new covers.
So, the TLDR answer – it depends if the publisher or the indie author has the resources to add the numbers to the cover.
-JM
