Variant jackets that pretend to be missing issues

Drop titles are short. Marketing reuses them. A “siege finale” sketch jacket can sit in a folder beside the actual finale interiors, and a tired reader will open the sketch first.

Write two fields: jacket treatment and interior continuity. Foil, motion, and blank-cover styles belong in the first field. Page count and cliffhanger pointers belong in the second.

If the interiors are identical to another file you already indexed, the variant is not a new chapter. It can still be a beloved object. It simply does not earn a new spine number.

Shops that keep digital binders for customers save arguments by printing that second field on a tab.