Best Practice for Book Series

A book series is a collection of books that are part of a larger story or related in some overarching manner. They may be continuations of the same story (Lord of the Rings), share the same characters (Sherlock Holmes) or are part of a related theme (I Can Read!). To ensure all books within your series have the best potential to reach your readers, consider these best practice guidelines for providing series related metadata.

• Create a series name that is unique. Using a series name that is unique and clearly ties together elements of your overall story can help avoid confusion with other books or series.
  Example: The West Coast Girls is a much more specific series name than simply using The Girls.
• Use a series number if appropriate. If books within the series are in a specific order, use a series number to indicate this. Readers want to know in which order to read your books. This should be provided as an integer in the series number field. i.e. 1, 2, 3, etc.
• Be consistent with the series name. Use the same spelling and format of the series name for all titles. For example, don’t use West Coast Girls for one book and then use The West Coast Girls for another. The formatting and spelling of the series info should be consistent for all titles in the series.
• Do not include the series name or number in the title or subtitle fields. Retailers use data from specific fields to display on their sites. Including the series information in the title or subtitle fields can cause your title information to be listed with incorrect formatting and is not considered best practice.
• Include the series information in the book description. To ensure customers can easily identify your book as part of a larger collection, consider providing the series information within the book description. For example, "This is the third book in the thrilling Big Brother series." 
• Include the series info on the front or back cover of the book. Again, mentioning the series info on the cover can help easily identify it.
• Incorporate series info into the keywords. Using key phrases such as “YA Fantasy Thriller Series” or “Romantic Comedy Book Series” in the keywords field can help boost discovery to new readers who may not yet be familiar with your series.

For more information about writing a book series please see here.