Forum: Author Hangout

I just discovered that when you list your novel on Amazon you can say it's part of a series and identify what number in the series it is. Amazon says it helps readers find other books in the series.

So I searched on Lee Child to see what he did for his Jack Reacher series.

Some of his books are titled: book title: A Jack Reacher Novel.

In the above case, the series option wasn't used.

Other books are: book title (Jack Reacher, Book 1)

The above does use the series.

So the Jack Reacher books are inconsistent. I thought maybe it was the different publishers, but Random House sometimes used the series and sometimes did not, and Penguin did it at least one time (I just sampled some of his novels).

Anyway, any thoughts about using Amazon's series for something like a Jack Reacher series? If you see two novels with (series name, Book 1 and series name, Book 2 would you think they were a series like Lord of the Rings or a series like Jack Reacher?

Sorry, but you can define a series within Amazon. I've done it frequently. What you're likely seeing is that they (and many other distribution sites) don't allow you to list the first book in a series as "volume 1", instead telling you that it's unnecessary.

The example you include isn't the stories series title, but is instead a Subtitle. For example, one story I'm writing is titled: The Knack: A Lucky Streak. The Title is "The Knack", while "A Lucky Streak" is the subtitle, which is primarily used for more detailed title searches.

Email me if you need assistance in adding a series title to Amazon and I'll set you straight.

So the Jack Reacher books are inconsistent. I thought maybe it was the different publishers, but Random House sometimes used the series and sometimes did not, and Penguin did it at least one time (I just sampled some of his novels).

I'm guessing those stories predated Random House's adding the facility to add Series Titles. In the OLD days, the Series Title was simply something they added to the cover to help sell books, rather than something used to find stories.