I like to buy trades on Google Play Book store from time to time when they go on sale, but Google lumps all of the single comic book issues with the graphic novels and it's a pain to go through everything. I think I've found a good way to filter out everything but the Graphic Novels.
Before I get into the details, I'd like to add a few comments about buying digital comics. A few years back I was iced in at my in-laws over the Thanksgiving break and I wanted something to do. I had my android tablet, so I grabbed a few graphic novels. The reality is I only have so much room for paper in my house and I love to read. It was an issue I struggled with for quite a while because I love the feel and smell of the paper in a Graphic Novel. Hey, don't judge me!
Ultimately I found a balance. I want to make it very clear that I still support my Local Comic Book store and I pay full price for my kiddo's Hardback Graphic Novels even though I can buy them cheaper online or digitally. For speculating and a select few comics I just love to read each month, I still go to my favorite LCS every few weeks to pick up my subs. For the purpose of buying reader copies, I usually wait to get the collections on sale through Google. Sometimes, I even buy a local copy and a digital copy. Yea, I know crazy.
Anyway, the reason you are here is because you want to know how to filter out comic book singles while searching the Google Play Book store. If you go into the search bar and put the following phrase, it will return only trades based on volumes A.K.A. Graphic Novels.
vol subject:”Comics & Graphic Novels”
Once you have that, you can start narrowing your search down by specific tiles. For example, here is another search with all of the Trades for Marvel's Darth Vader series on Google Play Books using this search term:
vol Darth Vader subject:”Comics & Graphic Novels“
Once there, click the image for Volume 1 and you'll see a section below the main portion of text that says See entire series. Click that and you will see just the Graphic Novels for Marvel's Darth Vader. As of this articles published date, there were only 3 volumes through issue #19. I suspect volume 4 will cover the final chapters through issue #25.
Here is another search for all of the Deadpool Graphic Novels on Google Play using this search term:
vol deadpool subject:”Comics & Graphic Novels”
This also works for other publishers like Image comics. Here is the search term to get all of the volumes of the Walking Dead on the Google Play store.
vol walking dead subject:”Comics & Graphic Novels / Horror”
One of the challenges I found is that search does not list the volumes in order. I'm digging around to see how to address that. If you know how, please feel free to leave a comment below.
In the case of the Walking Dead, you may have noticed I added / Horror to the search term. You can leave it off, but I found adding the more specific category cut out some of the non Walking Dead noise that showed up in the search. One of the downsides of doing this is if you get the category wrong, your search may turn up empty. I use the main category and only add sub-categories when I want to narrow it down further.
Here is a list of all the Graphic Novels on the Google Play Book Store. Top Level Category will include all:
vol subject:”Comics & Graphic Novels”
These sub-categories will narrow down your selection further.
vol subject:”Comics & Graphic Novels / General”
vol subject:”Comics & Graphic Novels / Crime & Mystery”
vol subject:”Comics & Graphic Novels / Fantasy”
vol subject:”Comics & Graphic Novels / Horror”
vol subject:”Comics & Graphic Novels / Literary”
vol subject:”Comics & Graphic Novels / Manga”
vol subject:”Comics & Graphic Novels / Media Tie-In”
vol subject:”Comics & Graphic Novels / Science Fiction”
vol subject:”Comics & Graphic Novels / Superheroes”
I hope this helps you as much as it did me. If you know off additional search parameters that we can add on the Google Play Search bar to filter out comics we are not interested in, please leave a comment below and I'll update this article.
