Decisions, decisions

Yesterday, I posted about an issue I’d run into regarding setting Warbound Legacy up for pre-order over on Amazon. It wasn’t earthshattering. But it was frustrating. The way things are set up on the back end of an author’s account, you can set up titles to be part of a series. This is what lets the reader see a series page that lists all the books in order. You can also list related titles like prequels, short stories, etc. It’s something I’ve used since they made it available, both as a writer and as a reader.

Warbound Legacy is supposed to be the start of a trilogy that is a new “series”. Yes, it’s related to the Honor & Duty series. It shares characters, background, planets, history, etc. What I wanted to do was set it up as a separate series but link it back to Honor & Duty as a “related to” title. Should be simple, right?

Wrong.

Everything I found in the help files, in the KDP forums, in searches told me it wasn’t something I could do. Not to give up easily, I contacted KDP Support. I was told point blank I could either set up a new series OR I could add it to the existing series. I couldn’t do both.

Sigh.

My next step was to ask in a couple of forums I’m active in what the other members preferred, both as writers and as readers. Interestingly enough, the majority of answers came from readers. They all said basically the same thing. IF the trilogy could stand on its own, they were okay with it being its own series. However, if it relied too much on knowing what happened in the primary series, make it part of that.

That helped but didn’t.

So I took off my writer cap and put on my reader cap. I remembered recently reading several series that surprised me. Not because of the plot or the writing. No, what surprised me was that the “series” read like two. (This happened three times in the last couple of months.) Two of them because, as with Warbound, there was a time jump after what appeared to be the “finale” and new characters taking the main stage with the familiar characters of the earlier titles becoming supporting characters or not appearing at all. In another, it simply felt like a cheat by the author to keep readers buying titles that were frankly rushed and had nothing to do with the previous titles. But that’s a different rant for a different time.

Anyway. . .I also remembered several of my favorite authors have main series with branch series as well. So I wandered back over to Amazon to see how they were listed. The consensus seemed to be that they did something along the lines of “Main series title” and “Main series title—new series”. I kind of liked that, but still wasn’t sure. What would that mean for Warbound Legacy?

If I followed that example, I’d have two related series pages: Honor & Duty and Honor & Duty—Betrayal Among the Stars. It works, but I’m still not convinced it’s what I want.

Another option presented itself. I could continue Honor & Duty but use the subtitle option Amazon gives us to list Betrayal Among the Stars. To be honest, that would be the easiest way of doing it. Here’s what Amazon has to say about subtitles:

That doesn’t excite me. If I understand it correctly, it means the book would appear on the product page as Warbound Legacy: Betrayal Among the Stars. Then the series would be listed under the author name, stars, etc. But, it would keep everything together under one series.

So I got to thinking about how to do the cover text to indicate all this—without running afoul of Amazon in any way—and still differentiate that this is different as well. It took some several iterations and I finally came up with this:

It has the “series” name and the sub-series. So the visual cues are there. I’m going to have one more conversation with KDP Support today to confirm my understanding of the rules and confirm that I can use Betrayal Among the Stars are a subtitle that can run through the trilogy (with book # added). If I can, I will list this under the main series. If not, it becomes its own series but it will be listed as something along the lines of Honor & Duty: Betrayal Among the Stars #1.

In other words, with Amazon’s recent crackdowns on subtitles, I want to make sure I’m not stepping on their toes.

Hopefully, I’ll get an answer that makes sense and will be able to announce the release date and preorder date later today.

Until then, have a great day!