Gentlemen, you are all so right
I can even add another possibility: some of my series are numbered following the
preferred reading order, so series book #1 can be easily be published book #98 ... There you go.
Let's blame it on the insufficient specs from the OP which render our solutions moot at this point. As I stated before on this forum: assumptions are deadly.
On the positive side: a bug seems to be fetched and fixed due to the topic
Not bad for a few minutes of our involvement.