From The Digital Reader:
For a number of years now Amazon has been making series pages for Kindle ebooks. One of their bots would identify all of the books in a particular series, and then list them all on the same page so that a reader could buy all of the books at once, paying retail.
I can’t find my first post on the topic, but I always thought this idea was a good one because it aligned with how I buy ebooks (when I find a new favorite author, I buy their backlist).
And now Amazon has given authors the option of creating series pages on their own. A couple days ago they published an announcement in the KDP support forums:
You can now publish and update eBook and Paperback series detail pages automatically through KDP. With the launch of series in KDP, you can:
- Create a new series: For any titles in your KDP account, create an ordered or unordered series to help readers on Amazon.com, Amazon.co.uk and Amazon.de find all the books in your series on a single page. Learn more.
- View and organize your series: Navigate from a series title on your Bookshelf to view and manage books in your series. Review series details and titles to ensure the information is up-to-date for readers. Learn more.
- Edit an existing series to control how it appears to readers: Adjust description. In addition, add, remove, re-order or change whether your titles are main or related content. Learn more.
If you already had an eBook series detail page available on Amazon.com, we’ve added that series in your KDP account. You can view existing series in your account by visiting your KDP Bookshelf and checking the box on the bookshelf for “View titles in series”. If you don’t see your series in your account, you can create a new series by following the steps here.
Not all features are available in every marketplace. Series that contain paperback and pre-order books are available on Amazon.com, but not Amazon.co.uk and Amazon.de. We’re working to add more series features in the future. For more information on KDP series, click here.
Does anyone know how long this feature has been available?
Link to the rest at The Digital Reader
YES!
I have argued with KDP CSRs for 4 years because they wouldn’t add the 7th book in my series to the series feature. (They wouldn’t add it because it wasn’t novel length.)
Based on prior sales of the series, the failure to add it to the series feature really, really hurt sales. And then, they never added #8 because there was no #7 (in their eyes).
I just went and changed #7 to main content, and added #8. Years late, but at least I’ll control that in future series! 🙂
Well, I’ll be . . . I just looked at my Bookshelf (Amazon.com), and there it is! Have no idea when this started, but must be pretty recent as I’m frequently fiddling with something on my books.
And, BTW, the KDP Community is a lively place where an author can get answers to most questions (Amazon-based) within short order. Highly recommended.
As a reader I really like the series feature and often use it when buying books. So I would encourage all authors to take advantage of it.
The only improvement I’d like to see would to allow me to exclude a book from those to be purchased even if Amazon doesn’t think I own it (because sometimes I do: it might be a free download from the author’s website, might be in an omnibus, or whatever).