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Identifing A Sequel
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Sequels are treated as series, because they often turn into them. Series is actually a catch-all for a number of different things which are not necessarily identical.* Planned multi-part stories (e.g., most fantasy trilogies)
* Planned serial stories which involve the same characters/setting, but are each more-or-less independent (e.g., many detective novels)
* Unplanned serial stories where an author writes a stand-alone book and then writes a sequel (or more than one) due to demand/popularity
* Non-fiction "series", such as travel guides, where the books are not ordered but are collected under some common heading,e.g., "Rick Steves' Insert Place Here"
* Others
The first three are not even completely independent since the third can turn into the second and either may even morph into the first (or have subsets of the series which morph into the first).
For your case, the way to do it would be to retitle the books:
Impacted (Impacted, #1)
Bonds of Love (Impacted, #2)
At some point in the future, if an official (or better) series title emerges, these would be changed.
Thank you Michael. I'm seeing a lot of books treated this way too:Impacted (Book 1)
Bonds of Love (Impacted, #2)
Blood & Fire (Book 1)
Blood Curse (Blood & Fire, #2)
Are these examples correct or should I change them to:
Impacted (Impacted, #1)
Bonds of Love (Impacted, #2)
Blood & Fire (Blood & Fire, #1)
Blood Curse (Blood & Fire, #2)
Thank you Michael. I'm seeing a lot of books treated this way too:Impacted (Book 1)
Bonds of Love (Impacted, #2)
Blood & Fire (Book 1)
Blood Curse (Blood & Fire, #2)
The problem with this format is that it's difficult to tell which series "Impacted" is book one of. Sometimes books get reissued with different titles, and it would be reasonable for someone to glance at a listing like this and wonder if "Blood & Fire" might be a reissue of "Impacted" under a new name.
Cait wrote: "Thank you Michael. I'm seeing a lot of books treated this way too:Impacted (Book 1)
Bonds of Love (Impacted, #2)
Blood & Fire (Book 1)
Blood Curse (Blood & Fire, #2)
The problem with this forma..."
Okay I'll start changing these as I come across them then. Thank you both!
Have another question...How do you handle a short story or offshoots that are part of a series. For instance in the Lost and Found series by Syd McGinley, Samhain takes place after the third book in the series but it's not really the fourth book in series since it's just a short.
I've seen shorts treated two ways:Bite (Includes: Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter, #8.5; Sookie Stackhouse, #5.1; Mageverse, #3)
Some keep whole numbers, treating the short like a full book. Others make an #8.5 style notation, saying the short falls between book 8 and 9.
If reading the short is important to the flow of the story, I'd use a whole number and treat it as a book in it's own right. If it's an aside, I think the #8.5 style notation is fine.
Mod
I tend to use the decimal notation unless I see it differently on the author's site. Lori, Jordan Castillo Price is a good example, as she uses the decimal notations on her site for the PsyCop shorts which is especially useful as she has a couple that came between books two and three. I just updated these recently.
Thanks everyone. Some series are just so hard, like the Jarhead series for instance. I'm not sure I even want to try and tackle those.
LOL, yeah, looking at his site is of absolutely no help. Possibly an email to him might clear things up?
DarkHeart "Vehngeance" wrote: "LOL, yeah, looking at his site is of absolutely no help. Possibly an email to him might clear things up?"He's a she and I've been so tempted to volunteer to update her site for her. That series is just so confusing!
How should prequels be numbered then?Negative numbers? ;) A problem since we don't start counting at zero. (Excuse my math joke.)
Also, I've seen both "(_____, #1)" and "(_________ #1)". Which one are we aiming for?
Kaion wrote: "How should prequels be numbered then?Negative numbers? ^__~"
Hah! I suppose if the authors numbered them that way, we would follow! I've only ever seen prequels unnumbered or in a prequel series with standard numbering within the prequel series, though.
"Also, I've seen both (_____, #1) and (_________ #1). Which one are we aiming for?"
The standard is to have a comma between the series name and the numbering.
Kaion, I usually see and do prequels as fractions, such as #0.5 or #.5.And as Cait said we use the comma.
Mod
True Rivka but there's more than one fraction. lol.
Mod
If there's a series of them, they can have a series title.
Thanks for the comma clarification, though I've seen other notations as well "Book 1", etc.I also see some series named well: "Boy in Danger (Mansel series, #1)"... I think the "series" part is repetitive (and left out of most series for obvious reasons).
So, no consensus on the prequels, eh? Personally, I think it's counter-intuitive to number using decimals. A program labeled, for example 1.3 would understandably be considered the third update of program one. So I'd think it was a revision of book one rather than a midquel.
Sandra wrote: "Kaion, I usually see and do prequels as fractions, such as #0.5 or #.5."I've also seen #0. I don't know if that's correct or not though.
Kaion wrote: "I also see some series named well: "Boy in Danger (Mansel series, #1)"... I think the "series" part is repetitive (and left out of most series for obvious reasons)."
I'm 99.44% sure that it's been stated to remove the "series" because you are correct, it is redundant.
Kaion wrote: "So, no consensus on the prequels, eh. "
It doesn't seem like it...
Zero makes sense to me, though if there is more than one prequel...
Mod
Those either predate the consensus or were edited by someone who didn't read the manual.
Dori, make that 100%. ;)
I know of at least one instance with a #-1 (it's not physically on the front cover, but it is actually listed as "-1" on the spine of the book)
The Order of the Stick Volume -1: Start of DarknessThe author had already done a #0 prequel, so the prequel-prequel became #-1. Of course, as a graphic-novelish book, it has a different style title.
Yesterday I ran into a situation where when I googled the order of books for an author it had the first in a series and then it had at least 4 stories in compilation novels before having another regular book in the series. How do you handle that? I'm thinking specifically if this author and her MacLeod series... Books 1 and 2 are regular novels and the next 3 or 4 were shorter novellas collection books.http://www.lynnkurland.com/books-by-l...
Dani, LK what a mess. I would give each of the MacLeod series a full number, as the author has not chosen to give numbers, but has listed them in order. You will need to combine the stories from the anthologies into their correct books and to list the (including MacLeod, #...)after the book title.If you need a hand just ask.
Sandra wrote: "Dani, LK what a mess. I would give each of the MacLeod series a full number, as the author has not chosen to give numbers, but has listed them in order. You will need to combine the stories from th..."oh man. I'll set some time aside next week to work on it. I couldn't believe it when I saw it! LOL Something I need to do while the kiddos are sleeping so I don't screw it up.
I'm confused by the prequel discussion. If the prequel is written after the first few books in the series, wouldn't when it was written determine the reading order even though it's a prequel. Some prequels are meant to be read after we've already read other books in the series. If you give it a zero or negative number, then that would indicate it should be read first and that is not always the case.
Moderatrix Lori wrote: "I'm confused by the prequel discussion. If the prequel is written after the first few books in the series, wouldn't when it was written determine the reading order even though it's a prequel. Som..."Librarians aren't here to provide (or even suggest) reading order, though; we're just here to provide whatever information is available about the book so that readers can choose what to do.
Isn't that part of what numbering a series is for though? To assist readers in determining the correct reading order? That is certainly what I use it for. How a person decides to read a series is entirely up to them but I think most authors would prefer that their series be read in the correct order.
I agree, I think the information is very useful as to what order the "time line" of a narrative/series follows. Then anyone can choose to read prequels first, last, or whenever.
At least, that's what I use such info for.
Yeah, authors don't even always have writing order or even chronological order as suggested reading order.
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Books mentioned in this topic
Start of Darkness (other topics)Samhain (other topics)
Impacted (other topics)
Bonds of Love (other topics)
For example:
Book one is titled: Impacted
Book two is titled: Bonds of Love
Should the sequel have something in parenthesis to indicate it is the sequel to book one? There isn't a series name since it's just the two books so how would you determine what to put in the parenthesis?