Novel Series with standalone books

[Andrew d’Entremont]

I'm slowly entering my paperback and hardcover novels into ComicBase and I'm not sure how to enter standalone novels that belong to a series. 

For instance, the Star Trek: The Next Generation novel series has a number of standalone books that are novelisations of specific episodes like "Unification" or "Descent" which aren't numbered. I've attached a scan from inside the front cover of one of the novels to show you what I mean.

I'd like to keep these standalone books as part of the series, so should I just enter them without ticking the "Part of a numbered series" checkbox? Should I select "Special Edition" for the edition?

Any feedback would be greatly appreciated!
 

[Mark J. Castaneda]

you could go with 2 different titles i suppose; one for the unnumbered and the other for the numbered run.

[Steven L. Dasinger]

What you ask is a little different then what I asked.
My question was: For a set of books that are meant to be read in sequence (to make the most sense) but, could be read by itself, should they be listed under one Title (to keep them all together) or separately (NOTE: The are NOT numbered)?
The answer was to list each of them under their own Title.

To try to apply this to what you have...
Looking at the covers on Amazon, the first nine are the list do not have any number on the cover (I can't see the spine).
The others DO have numbers on them.

My guess is you would create 9 separate Titles for the first 9 non-numbered books.
Not sure about the Titles. could be either
'Star Trek, the Next Generation: Descent'
or just
'Descent'
(I would lean towards the StNG:Decent one and just change Descent to the other names)

Then create 1 Title, with a possible name of 'Star Trek: The Next Generation (Pocket)', and list all the others (currently, Amazon has it as 65 books) as part of a numbered series.

[Andrew d’Entremont]

2 hours ago, Steven L. Dasinger said:

Then create 1 Title, with a possible name of 'Star Trek: The Next Generation (Pocket)', and list all the others (currently, Amazon has it as 65 books) as part of a numbered series.

I actually already created this series and uploaded it as new content. I was really hoping to keep the non-numbered TNG books under the same title as a special, similar to something like Elementals (Vol. 1) which has two special issues listed under the main title. 

[Steven L. Dasinger]

Books are different. The Comic Title Elementals (Vol. 1 was already created. For these books you would have to 'make up' some Title to place them under. Then what do you do for Item #. Can't really use 1, 2, 3. Even Year may not work as multiple books could come out in one year.

Here is Pete's actual reply to my question:

Quote

Thinking of things like Lee Child's Jack Reacher books, I think we're going to have to find a different way of tying them together rather than inventing an overall series to hold them -- the actual books are called by completely different titles, and have no markings identifying, say "Echo Burning" as "Book x of the Jack Reacher Thrillers".

I'd definitely support title comments to that effect, but since each book might have appeared (always under it's own name) under dozens of different printings, editions, translations, publishers, etc., I think it'd be hugely troublesome to try to maintain a "Jack Reacher" meta-series as its own title.

Would definitely consider a dedicated field for the overarching series, as a title field, if we could pin down the parameters of such a field, though.

 

[Gregory Hecht]

For the unnumbered books, if there really is a continuity from one book to the next, you could always put something in the Notes field "continued from xxxxxxx, next book in series is yyyyyyyy."  

Alternatively, you can always use a custom field for those sorts of reading order and continuity notations.  

[Andrew d’Entremont]

Ok. Sounds like the best thing to do is just enter them as separate titles. Thanks for the input guys! 

[Corey M. Dvorkin]

Regrettably, all of those entered are currently listed under "Trade Paperback" and will need a format reset to "Mass Market Paperback"

[Andrew d’Entremont]

Well that's an easy fix. You just need to submit a correction.

[Andrew d’Entremont]

And forgive my ignorance, but what is the difference between a paperback and a mass market paperback? 

[Steven L. Dasinger]

See this post for the difference:

https://forums.comicbase.com/index.php?/topic/833-mmpb-mass-market-paperback-vs-tpb-paperback/&tab=comments#comment-2898

[Andrew d’Entremont]

Thanks. I just made the changes to all the entries I previously made and submitted the corrections. Sorry for the extra work your review staff will have to do! 

[Adam Sternberg]

To answer @Gregory Hecht's question, there is no continuity really between these books.  There be some between a couple of books, or even sub-series here and there, but overall, there isn't any.