Anyone played with the Series (BETA) yet?

[AlinaX]

It's best to be cautious with the cover design, I had to redo my first two attempts since the autocropping sliced off parts of the title. Anything (text or graphics) close to the edge may get trimmed, so keeping things centered seems like a good practice.

A new time sink - text based life forms now thinking they can design good covers...

Design to 768x1200 and it won't get cropped.

 

[AlinaX]

Hmmmmmm...

I'm not sure how deeply into this rabbit hole I want to go...

Back in the day, when I thought there might be a point to publishing on Amazon, I self-published a few short collections. Some of the stories had been published here on Lit previously, and some were completely new. Recently I removed everything from Amazon and published the 'new' stories here instead, and I thought it would be nice to collect them as a series of sorts.

Anyway, we'll see how Lit reacts.

 

[Voboy]

It's best to be cautious with the cover design, I had to redo my first two attempts since the autocropping sliced off parts of the title. Anything (text or graphics) close to the edge may get trimmed, so keeping things centered seems like a good practice.

A new time sink - text based life forms now thinking they can design good covers...

I followed the infamous @AWhoopsieDaisy tutorial to the letter, and it came out exactly as I designed it.

 

[AlinaX]

(Hmm. Looking at that thread again, I wonder if my latest cover design will get rejected.)
ETA: No. Accepted. Cool.

 

[yowser]

Design to 768x1200 and it won't get cropped.

Thanks for this. I was going by the 750px by 1000px mentioned in the FAQ.

 

[Voboy]

Thanks for this. I was going by the 750px by 1000px mentioned in the FAQ.

Hmm. That's what I did. Worked fine...

 

[AlinaX]

Hmm. That's what I did. Worked fine...

[Warning: Unsolicited feedback] I don't really like the italics there.

 

[Duleigh]

Would it be bad to use the series tool to make a collection of stories that aren't an actual series?

I'm not sure why you would want to do it, other than it's possible. I'm going to use it to add a side stories into a chaptered story filling out the series.

 

[AWhoopsieDaisy]

So with the cropping issue I will say that it's pretty standard to avoid putting important visual information near the edge of your pictures. Like the margins on a word document. This is usually only common in physical print where you have to account for bleed and binding, but I guess we have to worry about it here too. Huh.

 

[AWhoopsieDaisy]

the infamous @AWhoopsieDaisy

Infamous. Excuse me while I clutch my pearls and scoff.

Thanks for the laugh

 

[Voboy]

[Warning: Unsolicited feedback] I don't really like the italics there.

Yeah, me neither, but the cooler fonts required me to buy an app. And homie don't play that.

I'm just impressed I was able to master the gradient tool...

 

[DarkRaven13]

Question - Does the new Series tool only work with stories? I was thinking of grouping several poems together as a trilogy ... but when I click on the Series (beta) link, there is no way to get a poem in. Or am I doing things wrong? (FYI, the poems do not have titles that have a commonality to it ... however, the themes of the poems are similar.)

 

[Timeris]

I was wondering why two manual series I'd created weren't showing up until I went in and looked at the edit page for one. At the bottom, it said it was in draft. Just something to keep in mind if you're not seeing an update.

 

[EmmersonWrites]

Same here. Over a year later and I can't; find anything and the interface is far from intuitive. Can anyone point me to a thread or link that explains simply HOW to use the series function?

 

[ElectricBlue]

Same here. Over a year later and I can't; find anything and the interface is far from intuitive. Can anyone point me to a thread or link that explains simply HOW to use the series function?

I've not seen one, other than an introductory thread back whenever.

You just have to muddle through it. It took me a couple of passes, but I finally got a four year old chaptering cock-up fixed. In the end, I had to kill the auto-sequencing, open a new Series title and load the correct chapters, then sort them. It worked out okay, now that I've figured it out (which took an hour or so).

Are you trying to re-cluster existing stories, or starting new? That will affect how you do things.

 

[Duleigh]

Same here. Over a year later and I can't; find anything and the interface is far from intuitive. Can anyone point me to a thread or link that explains simply HOW to use the series function?

It's really not hard to set up a series, I've set up four, two from auto created series and two manually created. If there's a pain anywhere its the lack of feedback, but I've been highly successful. Here is my Stormwatch series, it's a series I created manually. This one is We're a Wonderful Wife it's an automatic series that I've dressed up a bit. If you have any questions I'll be happy to help.

 

[Candy_Kane54]

The only issue I have with the new Series function is that on your stories page, it won't list the Series in alphabetic order like the rest of the stories/series if you create it manually. It is inserted in the spot of the first story added to the series. See my Stories page and you'll find the "Until It's Time For Me To Go" series in the wrong place.

 

[Duleigh]

The only issue I have with the new Series function is that on your stories page, it won't list the Series in alphabetic order like the rest of the stories/series if you create it manually. It is inserted in the spot of the first story added to the series. See my Stories page and you'll find the "Until It's Time For Me To Go" series in the wrong place.

I don't know who to talk to on that one, maybe Manu, good luck getting an answer, his website has been lopping bits off of my stories when I send them in to be posted.

Like you said it looks like your series was listed alphabetically based on the first story that was posted, 'And the grass won't pay no mind' the second story in the series but first to be posted, in April 2021 How to fix? That mystery belongs to Manu

I've done two series that were listed alphabetically and I made sure that the titles of the stories were created in alphabetical order - it's a real pain and one story is not in alphabetical order because of a single hyphen, I put it in correct order when the series beta came out