The thing a house loses when an editor leaves.

A series editor holds a model of the books in their head: who knows what and when, which thread was dropped on purpose, what the second book promised that the third has to pay off. None of it is written down, because writing it down was never anybody’s job.

When that editor moves, the house does not lose a file. It loses a reading. The next person starts from the manuscript in front of them.

Every read produces chapter summaries and key points — the compressed form of a book, tied back to the text. Those exist today, for every title that goes through the line, as a by-product of the read rather than as extra work.

That is the whole mechanism. A series relationship carries book one’s summaries and key points into the read of book two, so the structural pass on the later book is performed against the earlier one rather than in isolation.

The artefacts are live. The relationship that carries them forward is being built. We would rather tell you it is coming than imply it is here.

What exists today: the summaries and key points, per title, for every book read. What is being built: the series relation itself, and the panel that shows an editor the earlier books in the series while they read the later one.

It does not enforce continuity, and it will not tell an author they have contradicted themselves. It gives the person reading book three the reading of books one and two, in a form they can check. The judgement stays where it was — with your editor.