How do you order your relaunch books?

[MadeIndescribable]

This is mostly a relaunch question, but I'm happy to hear from anyone.

I'm trying to figure out the best way to arrange the order of my books, and I figured asking for people's advice and/or how you order your books might give me a few ideas?

My books are currently ordered loose sections chronologically:
- Enteprise, Vanguard, Terok Nor, TNG/DS9/VOY set during TV/film series, IKS Gorkon (including Left hand of Destiny/Diplomatic Implausability)
- DS9 relaunch (Avatar - Never Ending Sacrifice)
- 24thC relaunch (TNG/DS9/VOY, Destiny, DTI, Typhon Pact, The Fall, etc)

As you can see they are almost all arranged chronologically by narrative, but I'm having trouble with the post-Destiny titles, which are all interconnected, but with different narratives published at different rates. Obviously this applies most to Voyager, but even Disavowed was published over two years before The Long Mirage, even though both are set in Jan '86. Typhon Pact's Zero Sum Game and Rough Beasts of Empire were even published in the opposite order to their narratives.

This isn't a criticism, I think it's great that the 24th Century has become a massive playground of separate but interweaving events, and that discrepancies will inevitably arise from this. I also get that sometimes events have more impact if their revelations are a surprise, but then their build ups are explored in more detail later, it's just that I'm trying to find the best way to make sense of it all when looking at it as one big picture.

Thoughts?

 

[stardream]

Most of them are all on my Kindle these days.

But seriously if anyone has come up with a workable idea I'd like to know too. Husband and son are building a bookcase for me and I have quite a few 'physical' Star Trek Books lying around and I have no idea how to arrange them. Right now it's by series but I do keep the crossovers together.

 

[Idran]

Most of them are all on my Kindle these days.

How about "what Collections do you create" as a similar question?

(I've got a collection for each series in my Kindle app, each collection organized chronologically by narrative.)

 

[MadeIndescribable]

Most of them are all on my Kindle these days.

But seriously if anyone has come up with a workable idea I'd like to know too. Husband and son are building a bookcase for me and I have quite a few 'physical' Star Trek Books lying around and I have no idea how to arrange them. Right now it's by series but I do keep the crossovers together.

I'm not really a fan of ebooks, and put them off as long as I could. I recently downloaded some ebook only titles which I have enjoyed, but if there's a choice I'll always go for physical copies.

 

[stardream]

I'm not really a fan of ebooks, and put them off as long as I could. I recently downloaded some ebook only titles which I have enjoyed, but if there's a choice I'll always go for physical copies.

I felt that way for a long time but then I started running out of space.

 

[MadeIndescribable]

I felt that way for a long time but then I started running out of space.

For Star Trek, I'll always find the space

 

[Stevil2001]

Publication date within series, basically, though sometimes I move things around if they have similar spines (like, I put all the Errand of Fury books together even though other TOS novels came out in between them). I use to do variants of chronological, but it got to be too much to keep track of.

 

[Burning Hearts of Qo'nos]

All my books are in my Kindle, however I keep track of the narrative chronologically in a spreadsheet. For books that span several years, I tend to place them in the year where the end and/or the majority of the story takes place and think of the earlier sections as flashbacks (ie: RBoE and Full Circle). Stories where the framing device is in the future, I count the main story timeframe and not the future (ie: Q Are Cordially Invited)

 

[MadeIndescribable]

Publication date within series, basically, though sometimes I move things around if they have similar spines (like, I put all the Errand of Fury books together even though other TOS novels came out in between them). I use to do variants of chronological, but it got to be too much to keep track of.

I don't have many TOS books, but considering how many have been printed over the past 50 years I can imagine that would be a lot to handle.

All my books are in my Kindle, however I keep track of the narrative chronologically in a spreadsheet. For books that span several years, I tend to place them in the year where the end and/or the majority of the story takes place and think of the earlier sections as flashbacks (ie: RBoE and Full Circle). Stories where the framing device is in the future, I count the main story timeframe and not the future (ie: Q Are Cordially Invited)

Yeah, memory beta has a few pages which are great for tracking things, and I agree with putting books in with a framing story in place with the main events (like the Eugenics Wars books). It's those like Full Circle which are definitely the hardest to pin down.

 

[Burning Hearts of Qo'nos]

I have Full Circle, Unworthy, and Children of the Storm in between A Singular Destiny and Over a Torrent Sea. I view all of Full Circle as one long flashback leading up to Chakotay and the fleet heading out which is contemporary to this part of the timeline since all those years have been covered in other books.

 

[MadeIndescribable]

I have Full Circle, Unworthy, and Children of the Storm in between A Singular Destiny and Over a Torrent Sea. I view all of Full Circle as one long flashback leading up to Chakotay and the fleet heading out which is contemporary to this part of the timeline since all those years have been covered in other books.

The only post-Destiny VOY books I actually own are Full Cicle and Atonement, the others I've either borrowed from a library or haven't read (same with Titan). If I had more I guess it would be easier to place them by series?

 

[Kilana2]

By series. Keeping track of the chronological order of the stories gives me the hell of a headache.

 

[Burning Hearts of Qo'nos]

I get some sick, continuity-junkie pleasure out of it. Also, the spreadsheet helps.

 

[JD]

I picked by series, but it tends to be more complicated then that. It's more of a combination of chronological and series. I put the series together chronologically both by series and within the series. But when things start crossing over a bit more, like the stuff before and after Destiny, I put them purely chronological. So I do have of the Titan, and TNG books, Destiny, and A Singular Destiny all mixed together. I have a combination of e-books and physical books, so I do more of my organization on Goodreads.

For stories that take place in multiple time periods, I tend to go with where it starts, and for stories with framing sequences I got with the frame rather than the main story. But if it's part of a miniseries, I'll put them all together, so I have the whole Khan trilogy together even though they take place all over the timeline. Since the second book features the second IKS Gorkon story I put both of them with the rest of the IKS Gorkon/Klingon Empire books.

If you want to see the whole thing here's my Goodreads Trek Novelverse Shelf.

 

[TheUsualSuspect]

My physical books I keep grouped by series in chronological publication order. I separate out any books that are anthologies rather than novels, and place them at the beginning of the series, so Declassified goes at the front of the Vanguard books and The Lives of Dax goes at the front of the DS9 books, even though that's not chronologically where they belong. I have a separate section for anthologies that include stories from multiple series, such as the Strange New Worlds anthologies and Seven Deadly Sins.

The relaunch books that have characters from multiple series I place with whatever series I feel they fit best with based on the characters and situations/events in the book. I.e., Plagues of Night and Raise the Dawn I placed in the DS9 section, even though characters from both TNG and TOS appear in them. Right about the time it was getting really hard to determine some of the books, I got a kindle and stopped buying the physical books. On the kindle I just lump them all together as Star Trek.

 

[Christopher]

I mostly go by in-story chronology, but my system is rather messy. I put anthologies and collections first, then books that span too much time to be chronologically placed (like Burning Dreams, The Eugenics Wars, the SCE collections, or my own DTI novels), and then everything else chronologically. Plus I have a separate shelf for alternate-timeline books -- first Myriad Universes, then Mirror Universe, then Kelvin, then various other books that I count as alternate-timeline because of their continuity issues, with those being in chronological order.

With comics, I use the same system of collections first and the rest in chronological order, except for the TokyoPop manga volumes, which I put with my prose anthologies due to their size. (Though the comics come right before the prose anthologies on the shelf.)

For books and comics I consider apocryphal, I keep them on separate shelves from the in-continuity stuff, arranged by series and in publication order within each series -- except for the '80s Pocket novel continuity, which I have in my speculative version of chronological order.

 

[Cloud]

I mostly go by in-story chronology, but my system is rather messy. I put anthologies and collections first, then books that span too much time to be chronologically placed (like Burning Dreams, The Eugenics Wars, the SCE collections, or my own DTI novels), and then everything else chronologically. Plus I have a separate shelf for alternate-timeline books -- first Myriad Universes, then Mirror Universe, then Kelvin, then various other books that I count as alternate-timeline because of their continuity issues, with those being in chronological order.

With comics, I use the same system of collections first and the rest in chronological order, except for the TokyoPop manga volumes, which I put with my prose anthologies due to their size. (Though the comics come right before the prose anthologies on the shelf.)

For books and comics I consider apocryphal, I keep them on separate shelves from the in-continuity stuff, arranged by series and in publication order within each series -- except for the '80s Pocket novel continuity, which I have in my speculative version of chronological order.

First time post, but long time lurker here.
Question - As a writer, do you get an allotment of books for your own personal books or do you have to purchase them on your own? Also, if you buy them is it to bump your overall total or is some superstition for good luck? I don't think I could hold back the desire to purchase my own book and be sure to recommend it to the cashier as "one of the best books I've ever read".

 

[Dayton Ward]

From my local indie bookseller. Sometimes Amazon.

Wait...........

 

[Christopher]

Question - As a writer, do you get an allotment of books for your own personal books or do you have to purchase them on your own? Also, if you buy them is it to bump your overall total or is some superstition for good luck?

We get sent a number of copies of our own books.

Buying your own book in large enough quantities to bump up sales figures would constitute fraud, I believe. It also strikes me as counterproductive, because you'd be losing money to create the illusion of making it. I mean, for every dollar you spent to buy your own books, you'd only get a few pennies back in royalties. How the heck would you come out ahead that way?

 

[MadeIndescribable]

Thanks for your input guys. I think I'm gonna leave them in the published order for now, particularly as ever since The Fall, the separate series seem to be sticking to their own narratives a lot more anyway. I am trying to fill in the blanks in my collection though, so who knows if it will change in the future....