I wouldn’t be surprised if I learned that a majority of books in series have been written with the idea in mind that some readers are coming in fresh. That does

I wouldn’t be surprised if I learned that a majority of books in series have been written with the idea in mind that some readers are coming in fresh. That does not mean that a book is free from having followed the prior works. An author cannot change the frame of reference they were operating within when they authored a work. That’s the reason the “cultural artifact” is the publication order. If we set aside books in a series that were written and edited to completion concurrently and published staggered, then i don’t see how an author could possibly publish a book while managing to entirely circumvent the reality that they have knowledge of the previous books they have written and do not have full knowledge of the ones they have not, no matter how hard they may try.