Given that capitalism happened this question cannot be answered in a fully verifiable way, so I'm primarily asking for your personal thoughts.

This popped up into my head a while back. A lot of books today are part of a series, standalone books exist but aren't the standard. It seems like a move driven in part by profit potential, it's easier to sell a work if it's connected to a prior work the people are already invested in. Could this still have happened under socialism in your opinion?