Special Series / Sequence Setup

[J.C.]

I need assistance with arranging a book series supra-title. The short works that Barb and I (J.C.) create and publish privately have a somewhat odd organization. There are "sequences" (which might be interpreted here as "series"), but all entries in a sequence also belong to a series called "Tales from the world of the Noble Dead Saga." This is why the titles of these short works include a sequence title plus a roman numeral and "colon" before the title. The "series" number for "Tales from..." is by the order in which individual works are released.

So, I need to be able to edit/request some series entries for "Tales from the world of the Noble Dead Saga" on some texts because readers do search by that as well as sequence and ebook title.

Any advice / assistance would be appreciated.

Best, JC

[Cait]

GR Authors can't edit series directly, but if you post here with the requested information a librarian can set them up and change them around as needed.

It sounds like each work should be in two series: one for the sequence and one overarching. That's easy enough to do! Just list off the works (links to each one would be great) and give us the order and we can get it all set up.

Should the existing Noble Dead series also be listed in an overarching series, or are they clear enough in separate series as they are now? (We'll add links in the descriptions for each series connecting the Tales to the existing Noble Dead series, of course.)
http://www.goodreads.com/series/50198...

[J.C.]

Hi Cait,

Well, I'll get back to you on this in the morning, as I'll have to go look back over stuff and get supra title order. While I have you, once more question, since I can't see to find and answer on my own.

I've upload a version of Karras the Kitten directly for sale on GR... but... for the life of me I cannot find a place to put it on sale or set a price. What am I overlooking? Or is that some overriding factor because the title is for sale at a handful of vendors already listed in links?

As to the Nobel Dead books, the series (or rather saga) level title should be either "Noble Dead Saga" or "Saga of the Noble Dead"; the former is what is on most of the books; the latter is how most readers (and Barb and I) refer to it. The "saga" is composed of three "series" at present.

Thanks, JC

[J.C.]

Back again, Cait. The following is a list of volumes (and their numbering) so far in the (major) series "Tales from the world of the Noble Dead Saga" vs. the (minor or sub-) "sequence" grouping for individual titles.

1. The Game Piece
2. Karras the Kitten
3. The Feral Path
4. The Sapphire
5. The Keepers
6. The Reluctant Guardian
7. Karras the Cat

[Cait]

Okay! How does this look?
http://www.goodreads.com/series/91743...

I've also changed the names of the three novels series to "Noble Dead Saga: Series X", since that matched the name of the tales series. If you'd rather have it as "Saga of the Noble Dead: Series X", just let us know -- authors' series names are always considered definitive.

As for the ebook sale, I'm afraid librarians don't have access to that. You'll need to contact support, or you could ask in the authors group and see if someone there knows how it's done.

[J.C.]

That's closer. I guess what I'm wrestling with is...

(1) what is needed at GR to make them searchable on vendor sites vs....
(2) how these works are actually listed at such sites.

To use one title as an example, at Amazon and B&N, here is how it works...

B&N---

"Bones of the Earth, I: Karras the Kitten" for the title of the work with "Tales from the world of the Noble Dead Saga, #2" appearing in the product details under "series."

Amazon---

The title is done the same way, but the "Tales..." reference is listed after the sequence:title in parentheses.

I would suggest the B&N approach would be best, as that is closest to the other direct portal vendors who sell our private titles. I've done "search" testing here at GR, and variations on the title structure made no difference for how broken those search links are. Even when using just a title without a sequence before it, the GR links to various vendors fail depending on whether I use ISBNs or ASINs in the metadata.

[I can't for the life of me see why someone hasn't altered the SQL tables and web-side forms to allow for both; I could do it myself in about a hour. This and other accessory issues with how those links are created is something that I am investigating elsewhere.]

For now, to accommodate GR somewhat, I'd like to see the "sequence" name and number appear in the title field... either as a lead phrase with a colon or a following phrase in parentheses... whichever by your experience works best for searches.

The "tales..." series and number should be the only part that appears in GR's "series" field. That seems the best compromise so that people can work out how to find these when the GR links fail... and they continue to do so.

What do you think?

The stuff for the Noble Dead Saga seems fine as you have it so far, as the publisher has chosen something similar to what you did.

And thanks for your efforts here, by the by.

====
ADDENDUM: Oops, one more detail. The "seqence" subtitle (as in "Bones of the Earth") uses Roman numerals; using standard numbers instead will break targeted searches, if that makes sense.

[Cait]

Series names and numberings currently are not part of the search index at all, actually.

It's a little tricky, but here's how it works in terms of searching and display on the book page. The actual title field on the record contains this: "Title of the Book (Free text with series information in parenthesis)" and all of that text is indexed for search results. However, when a book is part of a series, what actually shows to users on the book page is "Title of the Book (Series name from the series definition, Series number)" with the actual "(Free text with series information in parenthesis)" portion of the title field suppressed, even though it's searchable. The display of "(Series name from the series definition, Series number)" is actually not searchable -- unless that text is also part of the title field, searching for books with that text returns no results. Does that make sense?

There's an additional complication here in that your books are part of two series here and only one can be primary. The primary series is what shows up in the parentheses next to the title, but you can see all series to which a book belongs by clicking on the "more details" below the publisher (if you haven't already). Which series is primary can be selected by a librarian, but our general rule is that the most specific series -- in this case, the sequences within the tales series -- should be primary.

I've formatted "The Game Piece" by our full standard rules as an example:
http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/16...
with the title as "The Game Piece (Tales from the world of the Noble Dead Saga #1; Homeward I)", so all of those words are part of the search index for this edition of the book. We tend to prefer this format over the "Series, X: Book Title" format, but both are acceptable. If you like, I can do all of the works in this format.

This is searchability within Goodreads, to clarify: the search which connects records on GR to external websites such as bookstores and libraries relies entirely on the ISBN or ASIN of the edition if those are present, so the format of the book title is irrelevant for these automated connections.