When Series Pages Go Wrong!

Most Indie authors know that selling books in a series is more profitable than selling stand-alone books.
 
But it isn’t all plain sailing, and we’ve just come across a couple of things you should know about how Amazon handles series.
 
If you publish your series using KDP then you can create a series page on Amazon. There are a couple of advantages to this.
 
First of all, the series page doesn’t have any advertising on it, so when people click a link to it, they will only see books in your series, not ads for other people’s books.
 
Secondly, at the top right of the page there is a button that allows the reader to buy the whole series with a single click - and some readers do that.

​So, instead of selling one book at a time, you sell the whole series in one go. That means that all the books in the series move up the sales ranking in lock step. It also means that all the titles appear in the “also bought” lists that Amazon shows readers.

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The “1 click” button is also “smart”. That means if the reader has already bought books 1 and 2, they won’t be included in the purchase.

Also, the price for the rest of the series is adjusted accordingly, making the rest of the series appear cheaper. In addition, if any of the books in the series is reduced, maybe because of a Kindle Countdown Deal, the overall series price will be adjusted accordingly.
 
So far, so good.

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​But there are a couple of things you should know about.
 
The most significant one is that if you don’t publish through KDP, you can’t have a series page on Amazon.
 
Using publishing sites like Draft2Digital (D2D) allows you to set the books up as a series, just like on KDP. D2D will also sell your books on Amazon, if you include them in your selection of distribution channels.

​This also applies to some other self publishing sites.
 
BUT
 
Even if you have set the book up as a series on D2D, it won’t create a series page on Amazon. So, you lose those advantages listed earlier in the blog.
 
Yet another reason for using KDP! But some people have an aversion to using them, but that’s their business.

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The second significant issue affects authors that do publish using KDP.
 
When you create a series, Amazon assigns an ASIN to it, just the way it assigns an ASIN to the individual books. If you use the link to the series page in your marketing and end matter (which you should for all the reasons given above) then the link will include the series ASIN.
 
So far, so good (again).
 
The problems arise when you add a new book to the series.
 
Amazon deletes the old series ASIN and assigns a new one, because it identifies the extended series as a new product.
 
That means that all the old links you have been using are now invalid and if readers use them, they’ll get a “page unavailable” notice.

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That means that when you publish a new book in the series, you must change all the links in all your marketing and end matter.
 
The new ASIN won’t go live until the book goes live and there’s no way of knowing in advance the precise moment when the series ASIN will change, but it will probably be within 72 hours of publication of the new book.
 
It would be unethical of us to claim credit for telling you all of the above, so here’s a link to the YouTube video where we made the discovery.
 
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