Kindle is in the process of changing the way that Kindle series books are displayed in Amazon.com search results, as I recently posted (click here if you missed it). Basically, search results will look like:
Book Title: Subtitle (Series Title Book Number)
For example, a search result might look like:
It Wasn’t the Butler (Guess Whodunit Book 2)
I recently came across an interesting question about this on the Kindle community forum:
https://kdp.amazon.com/community/thread.jspa?messageID=715460
It’s a good question: What happens with prequels, novellas, and short stories that relate to the series?
Authors want to include the series title to help readers find all the books that relate to a series, but authors don’t want to include volume numbers for prequels, novellas, and short stories.
If it’s not really a volume of the series, that volume number may be misleading—especially for a novella or short story, where it’s not another “book” of the series.
Presently, a series title and volume number are required on series books.
Maybe a prequel could be book 0 or i, but will Kindle allow these numbers? Good question!
Many authors use short stories and novellas to hook readers on a series. You don’t want those to be numbered volumes, but do want to make it clear that it’s part of the series so that if the reader enjoys the book, it’s easy to find the series (or to help someone who has read the series find the supplemental content).
I hope Kindle will have a good solution to this problem.
Chris McMullen, Author of A Detailed Guide to Self-Publishing with Amazon and Other Online Booksellers
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That is a good question. What about negative numbers or something like N-1? Always a few bugs in a new system.
But never a handy flyswatter for them…
I always liked the electric zappers.
It may also depend on where the short stories/novellas fit into the timescale of the series. I know a lot of authors label their shorter in-between stories as things like 2.5, 3.5 or 0 for a prequel to show that they aren’t full books, but also where they fall in the timeline. Of course that wouldn’t help in the case of books that are from the same universe but don’t necessarily fit in the actual series.
Thanks for sharing this. If Kindle’s change will accommodate zeroes and fractions (entering it is one thing; hopefully, Kindle will support it when they implement this), I think that will help a lot.
I know a lot of authors label their shorter in-between stories as things like 2.5, 3.5 or 0 for a prequel to show that they aren’t full books, but also where they fall in the timeline…
Hopefully, the changes being made will accommodate this.