Running Header format for book series

As far as I'm aware, general rule of thumb is the title of the book goes into the header, but you can shorten it for spacing. For example, my book's currently titled "Three Days to Dead," but in the header I have "Author / Three Days / 2."

Does every book in the series include the series title in the title? Sort of like "The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring," "The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers," etc...?

Also, you mentioned sending them in for publishing....I'm assuming you have a publisher, therefore an editor. Ask them what they prefer.

The idea of the running header is to identify the ms. in case it gets lost, or the pages get separated. So as long as you have the information: author, title, and page number to identify the pages, it really doesn't matter if it's just the last name, a nickname, or the title is XYZ or Poo.

I would say, though, if you have three books in the series, then just using the series name doesn't make sense because it's not unique enough. You should use something that uniquely identifies each book:

- MV 1, MV 2, MV 3
- DARK PAST
- MV: DARK PAST
- DARK
- MV: DARK


Any of the above would be acceptable. (and yes, if the title is long, like Lord of the Rings blah blah, it's fine to shorten it. Again, the purpose of the header is to identify your ms.)

ditto to what maestrowork said.

Example, the Harry Potter series.

Seven books all with Harry Potter in the front followed by the books subtitle.

The ms title helps draw in the reader back to the series, if the name is totally different you may lose readers who don't know about the next book.