How do you personally handle series books with no unique names?

[BaronKrause]

How do you handle the naming of books that are part of a series but have no unique names? Like ones that are just listed as the following in the default epub metadata/official book listing or possibly actually written on the cover like that:

"Book Series Name Vol. 1"
"Book Series Name, Vol. 1"
"Book Series Name Volume 1"

I'm struggling with whether I should just leave them as they are/are listed as, since it was how it was listed as (making it essentially like an official unique book name) or to make them all uniform. And if I'm making them uniform, should I make exceptions for ones that are explicitly written on the cover differently like with "Spice and Wolf, Vol. 1", on the cover it actually says "Vol. 1" (and its metadata and book listings all have the comma as well).

And if its best to leave them, what do you do for books that have no official listing like for instance unofficial fan translated books that might all have different naming conventions since there wasn't any real thought put into the file name/metadata except quickly getting the book series/number across.

Just curious how others handle it, in the end it isn't that big a deal since it can always be changed at no real consequence aside from re syncing Calibre companion.

[Sirtel]

I use "Series Name" I, "Series Name" II and so on, with Roman numbers. No book, volume, part, episode or anything like that in my titles. That would be clutter.

[theducks]

I wing it One size does NOT fit all

What I do do, is make the SERIES and the Title consistent for the members when it does happen.

I avoid commas,
Some times the title and Series are identical (other than the number being in [] )
The title might get (2nd ed), (Books 1-4 (when the title overlaps with a single book) )

[ownedbycats]

For the one series I have with no names I just use "SeriesName: Book 1."

I do have some magazines though, and I use "MagazineName: February 2021" for those.

[BaronKrause]

Originally Posted by theducks

I wing it One size does NOT fit all

What I do do, is make the SERIES and the Title consistent for the members when it does happen.

I avoid commas,
Some times the title and Series are identical (other than the number being in [] )
The title might get (2nd ed), (Books 1-4 (when the title overlaps with a single book) )

Are commas in titles bad? It seems every single book from Yen Press has a comma after the name like "Series name, Vol. 1" if it doesn't actually have unique book names. Its like their "thing" it seems, even amazon/ibooks/kobo all mirror their naming convention on their books. Wonder if I should change it.

[Sirtel]

Originally Posted by BaronKrause

Wonder if I should change it.

Of course you can change it, if you want to. I want all my books to be named after the same pattern, no matter where I bought them or what the original title exactly was. So I make minor changes to basically all my titles and often to series names as well.

OTOH if you're not so anal about consistency, you may leave the titles as they are. This approach would drive me mad, but obviously YMMV.

[BaronKrause]

Originally Posted by Sirtel

Of course you can change it, if you want to. I want all my books to be named after the same pattern, no matter where I bought them or what the original title exactly was. So I make minor changes to basically all my titles and often to series names as well.

OTOH if you're not so anal about consistency, you may leave the titles as they are. This approach would drive me mad, but obviously YMMV.

It’s driving me mad too since not all books even have a default name to leave (metadata just has series name in title, that doesn’t work with multiple books in a series). So I would have to come up with something anyway for many.

What I’m personally grappling with now is to use “volume” vs “book” since most titles I would use this for are light novels that all seem to use the volume naming convention (so “Series: Volume 1”). But then if a standard American book series doesn’t have individual books names would I also use “Volune 1” there or “Book 1”.

It’s just minor minutiae but it bugs me :P

[theducks]

IMHO strip (move the data to the proper place) the long title down to the title UNLESS it is needed that way to tie break a tie.

I also have a custom column Subtitle (Kobo's support Subtitle)

THIS IS YOUR LIBRARY

DO IT YOUR WAY. The only reason to be careful, is that your way does not break (fail to get results) 'get Metadata'

[BaronKrause]

Originally Posted by theducks

IMHO strip (move the data to the proper place) the long title down to the title UNLESS it is needed that way to tie break a tie.

I also have a custom column Subtitle (Kobo's support Subtitle)

THIS IS YOUR LIBRARY

DO IT YOUR WAY. The only reason to be careful, is that your way does not break (fail to get results) 'get Metadata'

Thats what I do when there is proper book names. Everything gets stripped from the title except that volumes proper name, the series and number are set in their correct field, and out of the title. If needed the plugboard can export in a way that names it identifiable for e readers that cant display metadata.

I'm just mulling around how to handle the ton light novel books that don't have individual names like "Spice and Wolf". There is 10+ books in the series, all without proper individual names.
The vendor has this specific entry listed like this in the title:

Spice and Wolf, Vol. 1
Spice and Wolf, Vol. 2
Spice and Wolf, Vol. 3
Spice and Wolf, Vol. 4
Spice and Wolf, Vol. 5
etc..

Going by the previous precedent the title should be blank since the series and number are already in the right spot and that's all there was to the books name. But that's probably not a good idea so it just ends up being the Series name, and Volume label/number.

I'm assuming that's the best way to go about it? And if so should I make the part after the series name standardized between all works like that instead of leaving it up to the vendor which will often do "Vol. 1", "Volume 1", ": Volume 1" or ", Vol. 1".

And whatever I choose it totally screws up the plugboard for exporting since there is now a bunch of needless overlap with 2 listings for the series.

[Sirtel]

Originally Posted by BaronKrause

And whatever I choose it totally screws up the plugboard for exporting since there is now a bunch of needless overlap with 2 listings for the series.

I don't add the series name at all to such books, because it would be redundant, as you say.

But then I don't use metadata download at all, so I don't care how much my titles differ from actual titles. I enter all my metadata manually for each book. I actually find the process faster this way, as I was never satisfied by automatically fetched metadata.

[Sirtel]

Originally Posted by theducks

The only reason to be careful, is that your way does not break (fail to get results) 'get Metadata'

Personally I don't use that feature. So I can change the titles to whatever I like. MY way or the highway!