Books in more than one series

[Krazykiwi]

Firstly, it will help a lot to stop thinking of GR as a database of books that are available, it's not. It's a database of books that have been published, including out of print books. Users, i.e. readers, want to shelve and review the edition they actually read or own.

You can however add a line to the top of the description to say "This edition no longer available". GR readers generally learn pretty quickly to look for another edition if they actually want to purchase the book via the link button.

Definitely do not try to merge away old isbn/ASIN numbers just because they are no longer available, many users spend a lot of effort maintaining their shelves and listopia lists with specific editions.

As to series: Authors and publishers change series names all the time, or even publish under several names at once for different markets. Nevertheless, GR maintains one series listing. The individual editions however, while being collated in one series, should have specific series names in their titles, if they differ.

So you can have editions like this:
Book 1 (series as originally named, #1)
Book 2 (series as renamed, #1)

but both are maintained in the series listing under "series as renamed".

For display on the book pages, and the click through link to the series, the text in parentheses is replaced with the light grey link. On individual users shelves, it's not.

Looking at the two series, they are direct duplicates, so I would delete the one no longer in use (Midnight Warriors?) but retain the edition titles as they are, with the series name they were actually published with in parentheses.

As an aside, and perhaps I'm a cynic these days so please take this comment in the spirit it's intended. It's a good idea to be deeply familiar with the GR librarian manual and policies when responding to direct requests outside this group. I've seen more than one author use an inexperienced librarians willingness to be helpful in order to push through edits that are against the rules - such as removing out of print editions, which we never ever do.

[lethe]

Merry wrote: "My thinking is that Amazon and Goodreads are not the place to store old editions of books and that it should be up to the author to retain a record of all revisions themselves."

Amazon and GR are two different entities. Amazon is an online bookseller, GR is not. As Krazykiwi already said, GR is a database of books, and it strives to be a complete database of all the books ever published. It is intended for readers to catalogue their books, not for authors to sell them.

Please be very careful when editing and be aware of what is and isn't allowed.

It is always better to edit than to delete and re-add, because upon deletion the change log disappears.

[Krazykiwi]

In a bit of a rush so I'll try keep this brief (hah, like I ever do that)

No, we retain *all* ASINS, and all ISBN's, and all nook editions and every cover in every edition, even for books decades out of print. They are not duplicates, they are supposed to be there, that is pretty much the point of GR (if it were just a list of books for sale right this minute, Amazon pretty much has that covered.)

And no please do not separate out the ones that are out of print, that defeats the point of combining them (and would make them *not* show up as duplicates in your shelves when you use the duplicate feature: The only way the shelves know they are actually the same book, is because they are correctly combined.)

Users do in fact want to shelve the exact edition they bought. It might seem mysterious to you (and to an extent, to me, and when it comes to ebooks I do see your point) but you're just going to have to get used to it :)

The correct thing to do re the Kayelle Allen books is to use the edition field for the edition information; put either "erotic edition" or "non-erotic edition" or "clean edition" depending how the author words it there, and remove it from the title. Which ones the author wants for sale are her business to deal with at the stores of her choice. The editions listed on GR remain, all of them, because GR is not a storefront, it's a database. If you really want to, you can go through and put "This edition no longer available" at the top of the description where applicable though. As the author, she could choose which one is default and shows up when people search by title, but she can't stop people searching by isbn or ASIN and shelving or reviewing the edition they actually have.

I combined her books, but the titles are a hot mess. I made a note to go fix those later, if you don't feel like doing it.

GR maintains one series listing for each unique series, which is the case for the Midnight Warriors books. It would have also worked there to simply rename the Midnight Warriors series without retitling the books (don't retitle the editions that were sold as Midnight Warriors originally). Then you put a note in the note field on the series page to say "

Why is it even possible to put books in multiple series? Because we often have to, usually for one of two reasons:
1 - Books are part of two series, where book 3 in one series is book 1 in the spinoff, with disparate numbering. My mind is blank and I can't think of one of those offhand, but it's pretty common.
2 - Similarly books are often part of specific subsets of larger universes. Take a look at Robin Hobbs series, Assassin's Apprentice is part of a trilogy that tells one story, and also part of a larger overarching world that encompasses several other trilogies to form a complete saga.

Heh. So much for brief :) Hope that helped some.

[Krazykiwi]

Merry wrote: "Thanks very much, Krazykiwi. Are you actually a crazy person from NZ?!. My best friend is a kiwi and he's a good egg.

Understood regarding retention of all, and not separating, editions and why mu..."

I am in fact from NZ, and my kids would likely testify I'm quite mad :)

I fixed up Kayelle Allen's titles last night, but didn't touch her series or the editions.

On the Amazon/GR integration, I believe there is a javascript browser addon/extension that pretty much does what you want, adding GR links to the Amazon pages, but I don't have it installed and I can't find the posts about it - it's come up in the Feedback group a couple of times for sure. I believe Elizabeth (Alaska)(who is a frequent poster both here and there) mentioned it though, so maybe searching her posts in Feedback will find it.