Behind the Scenes: The Sticky Bits of Branding Spin-Offs
This is the (nearly) finalized cover for the collection, but it has given me to think. There's always been some confusion about whether Alysha's arm of the Peltedverse is known as the 'Alysha Forrest' books or as the 'Stardancer' books. I think I standardized on the former, but that brings me to... how do I brand books set in that arm of the universe that aren't part of that series? Like this collection, which you can read as a standalone?
I've been looking at IPs with similar set-ups (main series and anthology series), like the Dresden Files, Valdemar, and the Honorverse, and they don't seem to do much better at labeling things. Lackey didn't even bother trying to standardize anything (and even the covers are confusing). You can't tell the Dresden Files collections are collections without squinting at a really tiny set of text below the titles, and they're not contained in a series, even in the meta-data--when you go to them on Amazon, they aren't arranged in a series in order, they're all mixed up with the normal novels.
Weber did the best job of the lot, by arranging his anthologies by using the title of the second anthology ("Worlds of Honor" ) for the series name. Which is a little bit confusing but at least they have their own series name and the meta-data is linked up correctly. (So Worlds of Honor 1 is called More than Honor, Worlds of Honor 2 is... Worlds of Honor, but at least by 4, when you see Worlds of Honor: The Service of the Sword, you know you're getting an anthology of shorts.)
On the other hand, Weber doesn't do a great job of calling out spin-off series; I can't tell that Shadow of Saganami starts a new spin-off, and it was only an accident that I figured out that it was a series. It's comforting, sort of, to realize that even long-running businesses that do this kind of thing for a living still don't do a perfect job of packaging.
I have a chance to do better, basically, I'm just not sure how I want to handle it. Maybe continue to brand all the milsf Peltedverse books as Alysha Forrest books, but give the collections a series name? (Maybe like Weber, they can start the To Discover and Preserve series.) It may be that TDaP might be the only collection, but I think it's best not to make that assumption.
That would make the collections the "Alysha Forrest: To Discover and Preserve series." whereas the main books would just be the "Alysha Forrest books." Which doesn't seem ideal either.
I'm not expecting any of you to brilliantly solve this problem... this is more me talking through the issues with branding/marketing and how you don't necessarily see all the work that goes into (often imperfectly) ensuring that people know what they're getting when they pick up a related book. But I would certainly not say no to any suggestions! š
Regardless, I think the Art Deco works well for the cover, and I'm glad I get to use it for something.
