All About Books

Spreadsheet: Book Series

I have shared this spreadsheet before, about a year ago, but it has changed so much since then and I also didn’t share an empty copy in case someone wants to use it too. So here it is again. 

I case you didn’t know: I love series. I always prefer series over standalones which means that I have a huge list of series that I read/am reading/want to read. I just had to start a spreadsheet to keep track of them all. That I love getting statistics about what I read only adds to that need.

This is an example of how I keep track of my series:

series_all

I have a row for each series and then keep track of when series start and finish, when I started and finished them, as well as a status for each individual book.

The first column indicates the status of the series:

  • empty: still reading it or need to start it
  • ✓: finished reading it
  • ↯: DNF

The fun part: The name of the series changes its style automatically according to that field.

The 8th column is for the number of books in a series. After entering that number, the fields for the books will automatically fill themselves with color like in the picture above.

The status of each book:

  • X: the book is read
  • O: own the book but haven’t read it yet
  • B: still need to buy this book
  • When a series is a DNF, the fields of books that are unread stay empty
And then the fun part: statistics

Series_stats

By changing “2015” to any other year, you can get the statistics for any year you want.

A few extras:
  • a tab that shows which series started in a specific year
  • a tab that shows which series were completed in a specific year
  • option to sort the series by name of the series or author

Series_sort

 

 

Get the spreadsheet here
(This is read only. You have to make a copy for yourself via File>Make a copy)

 

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  • Cooool. Ich liebe solche Einblicke in Spreadsheets. Da kann man sich immer noch mal die ein oder andere Anregung für das eigene holen.

  • Wow, you are so organized! Thanks for sharing the blank spreadsheet. :) So according to your convenient stats, which series have you read the most? :) Also, how do you distinguish between published and unpublished sequels?

    • Do you mean which series has the most books? It doesn’t count how many times I read a series!?

      I don’t distinguish between the two. That would mean I had to update the status of books all the time (everytime one is published) and I’m too lazy for that :D

  • This is by far the coolest spreadsheet I’ve seen for tracking series! Thanks for sharing the awesome-ness!

  • This is beyond awesome. I love the stats. I have a massive leather book journal where I keep up with all of my series, wishlist, TBR, etc. , but I would love to do something like this. Thank you for sharing.

  • I love with this spreadsheet! Makes me feel so organized hehe. Though I need to fill it up more and see where I’m at.

    Amazing!

    • I WANT TO SEE YOUR STATISTICS! How many series do you have??? :D

      • Will send you a screenshot when I’m done filling it out! I just hope I don’t start doing the series jail thing like you when I’m done. =D

      • Yay!
        Haha, come on, the only reason why you hate my jail is because Wrath is stuck in it! :P

      • Y’know as more time passes, I don’t think you’ll like it as much because of the romance thing going on. However, you also might because you love certain books with romance, too (not going to mention which ones muahaha)… And it’s not only about TWatD, it’s ALL of the books. Imagining waiting to read a book that could be a favorite just gives me nightmares in daylight. =P

  • I also prefer series over stand alones – I love my stories to last a long time hehe!! This spreadsheet is great! I started to make one but I’m not great with Excel – yours is WAY better!! Thanks for sharing :D One problem/question I ran into when I was trying to make my own series spreadsheet is what to do with novellas. How are you handling novellas in your spreadsheet – just not counting them at all maybe?

    • Hello fellow series lover! :D

      I don’t count those at all because I don’t really care about them. I only want to keep track of what I “have” to read in a series. I’m not that big of a fan of novellas and almost never read them.

  • That’s so awesome! I love how you’re so organized with the books you’ve read / planning to read :) I tried putting my books on a spreadsheet, but ehhh I neglected it lol. Maybe I’ll put all my bookish stuff in one planner since I prefer writing it than typing it for some reason. Btw I’m a new reader of your blog and I love it ^_^

    • Oh, I understand that you prefer writing it. I actually have a notebook to keep track of what I read too. It’s just that I want series sorted by author and I love having all these statistics

  • Well, now I know how I’m going to be spending my night! This is awesome! Thanks so much! :D

    • Haha, you’re welcome! I hope you had a fun night, filling it out :D

  • Crini, you are such a spreadsheet wizard! I’ll admit, I’ve tossed around tracking series before, mostly for the series that I always meant to finish but that got lost in the shuffle. The Seven Realms series, by Cinda Williams Chima, for example, is a series that I always intended to finish but never got around to. It’s on my TBR for 2015 to at least revisit book one, but having a way to keep track of all these “get back to it someday” series would be good. I’m going to work on it!

    • I like that title! :D
      YES, READ/FINISH THE SEVEN REALMS SERIES!!!! LOOOOVED that one!
      The spreadsheet also helped me not to start so many new ones now that I see how many I’m actually in the middle of.

  • This is wonderful! Thank you for sharing it with everyone. I really love all the spreadsheets you have come up with.

    • You’re welcome! I love sharing them and see all the statistics of other people :D

  • Thank you so much, for not only showing your spreadsheet (I’ve been meaning to do one for ages) but also sharing a blank copy for us to use!

  • This is pretty cool. I never thought of doing this to keep track of the all the series I read. Thanks!

  • OMG! This is the best thing EVER! Seriously, thank you so much for sharing this (and the Books Read 2015 spreadsheet which I have also saved a copy of).

  • This is too cool! I’m totally gonna try this out. I need a better system than what I have now, because it’s just not working.

  • Alyssa H.

    First, let me start off by saying that I LOVE this spreadsheet! I have been looking for a way to track my series and this is perfect.

    Second, I just have a quick question about the formatting. I’ve looked everywhere for what I think is the conditional formatting that is used to drive the color and formats between series not finished and finished, but I can’t find it. I also had to add quite a few columns to accommodate one of my series that currently stands at 45 books. When I use your sort feature, it sorts the first columns that were original to the spreadsheet, but not the one that I added. Can you please help? I know it’s probably right in front of me and is so simple, but I just can’t seem to locate.

    Thank you!!

    • Yay, always makes me happy when people have a use for my spreadsheet.

      Both those things are handled as scripts! (Tools>Script editor)

Jun 26, 2015