Goodreads Librarians Group discussion

I am working on some technical books. One in particular are the Sams Teach Yourself. Basically according to this site Sams Teach Yourself Series it states them as a series. My question is under the definition of Series here on GR would I be correct in merging them into a series? If so then should the series have two titles? example: (Sams Teach Yourself Series) and the sub series (in 24 Hours) or (in 21 days)?

Since the books appear to all have been written specifically for this series, it is a series as GR defines it (in which every edition of the books is part of the series). It sounds like you'll want several sub-series, actually; "Sams Teach Yourself in 24 Hours", "Sams Teach Yourself in 21 Days", etc. You could either put the Sams Teach Yourself information and links to the other sub-series in the description of each sub-series or else make an overarching "Sams Teach Yourself" series which includes all of the books in any sub-series and then have the sub-series descriptions link to the overarching series and have the overarching series link back to each sub-series.

Good grief.

Cait,

So would this be how you are suggesting it be done?
Sams Teach Yourself PHP, MySQL and Apache All in One

Now should the "Sams Teach Yourself" and "All in One" be in the title as the one above listed is?

MissJessie wrote: "Good grief."

?

also I know there is a way to link to a book, but is there something similar to link to a series page without using link?

Richard, yes, like that! There are a couple of things I'd suggest: for one, the sub-series should be the first series listed for the book so that it shows up next to the title. (All of the series show in the more details section.) To change which series is first for a book, go to any edition of the book, open the edit page, and scroll down to the bottom where all of the series are listed; there are up-down arrows next to the series so that you can move the sub-series up to the #1 position.

Another thing I'd do is strip the description of the main series down to just a few sentences and remove all of the marketing information -- it looks like you copied that directly from a website, yes? If the website has other information that would be useful, you can link to it from the series description, but if it's just marketing and bookseller links, don't. In the list of sub-series you can make links to the ones you've created, as you create them.

There isn't a way to link to the series in a format like the add book/author; you have to use the URL directly, I'm afraid.

I was thinking the same thing regarding moving the sub-series up!

Yes, I did use the main url description, but there is no bookseller links. I just removed some information of the Main series. So it basically contains a description of its targeted audience, what the series is about, and description of each sub-series.

This what I ended up doing with this book and will do with the remaining in the series:
1. I shortened the Title since the (Sams Teach Yourself: All in One) will follow.
2. Left the sort file name as sams teach yourself {title} all in one
3. moved the series "Sams Teach Yourself: All in One" as the primary series.
4. and insured all relevant information where in their respective places.

Actually, since the series names still aren't searchable, you should probably leave the Sams Teach Yourself part in the title for now. Or, if you want it to look cleaner, you can move it into parentheses after the main title, because the book display recognizes that that means series and overwrites it with the actual series link. Ie, if the title of this example book is "PHP, MySQL and Apache (Sams Teach Yourself)", it'll still show as "PHP, MySQL and Apache (Sams Teach Yourself: All in One)" in the book page. I'd be inclined to match the sort title to the visible title, too, but everything else looks super!