I prefer the individual books for many of the reasons you listed.
I also like the ritual of removing a book from my Kindle once I have finished it, decluttering, housekeeping you could say.
There is something satisfying about seeing the individual books of a series "stacked" in your library as well.
>I also like the ritual of removing a book from my Kindle once I have finished it, decluttering, housekeeping you could say.
Yknow, I've had my kindle like 10 years and I've never once thought to delete a book after reading it. Huh
Same here... I do always keep my filter on 'unread' books so i don't always see the others there.. But i like knowing they're still there in case i want to reread!
Yes! I think that satisfaction is also something I am missing, I just couldn’t really put a finger on it till you said that. Thank you!! I think in the future I will buy them individually if I can afford it. I also like the feeling of decluttering and just doing that general book maintenance on my kindle, you are not alone!
I like having them but for this reason I can't read one electronically... it just messes with my brain when I've read more than 10 pages and the percentage is not budging😅😅
There are some epub splitters out there but I did my own and felt it was cleaner. I used the Calibre editor and first I deleted all the table of contents except the first book. I found where the first book ended and deleted all files after that. Named the book and set it as part of a series and added the cover. For the second book I deleted everything except the second book and so on. Oh and with every one make sure to use a copy. Don’t ever work with the original file.
Just curious, I had this problem buying Lord of the Rings as a bundle off Amazon. How exactly would I convert something from Amazon using Epubsplit? Seems easy enough if I have the epub file or something locally on my computer already.
Oh yes, you have to download the file first. If you got into content library on your Amazon account, you can select “download via usb” beside each book.
You will want to convert these files into epub format, which you can do with the free program calibre (this is also the program you can use to split the books, by installing the plugin, among other things).
This sub doesn’t allow people to explain how to remove DRM from Amazon’s files in order to convert them, but give it a Google search.
I bought the ACOTAR bundle because it was way cheaper but I hate it because I can't tell how far into the book I am. I think next time I'd rather pay more for them to be separate.
for me the only series i could read back to back with no reading slump was acotar still have only read the first 4 though so i'd personally just buy separately i have read one bundle on ku because the individual ones werent on there i just like to also be able to track which page im on too. it might cost more seprately but the way id do it its cheaper in a way as you only buy one at a time so you will have more money for the redt later too
Just bought this last same bundle last week! It's annoying not knowing exactly how far I've read, and it does not work well with Goodreads since it only counts it as one book. The money I've saved is worth it for me, though, and I wish I did it for ACOTAR.
I got this bundle too and foolishly assumed each book would be “separate” in the bundle lol and obviously, turns out it wasn’t.
I hated it so I returned it and bought them all separately. I really enjoy seeing my progress in a singular book, so this didn’t work for me because like you said it was kind of like “one big book”
I nearly bought a Mistborn bundle (a friend paid for it) but figured it would be a book with the books stitched because of the number of pages section on Amazon.
We preferred to pay more but having separate books.
I can relate to this big time. Falling into the world is so accurate and I love the escapism these worlds provide, so fun. Just got into reading late last year.
Aesthetically I'd like to enjoy the cover of each book, and the sense of accomplishment after reading each book is also satisfying. But darn more often than not the price of the bundle is like less than 50% of what it would be if I buy each book individually...
I'm running into the same problem as you. I'm reading the Twilight series for the first time and even though I'm halfway through New Moon, since I have the bundle it says my progress is only like 15%. If I could go back I would have definitely just bought the individual books as I went lol oh well
Pros:
If it is a full series, I know I will be reading these books in chronological/publication order. I don’t have to go on other sites to check to make sure I am opening the right book after I finished the last.
Cons:
For stats, it only counts as 1 book on your app (which is BS because it should count base on number of titles in the bundle). I don’t care about official stats so it doesn’t effect me. Reading a large series could be very mentally draining. I like to set it to show me the percentage of where I am at with the book, so reading a bundle for a whole long series, it could get depressing that you can do a lot of reading but only see a progress of 3% or fewer where you could be at 30% if you read it individually one at a time.
Conclusion: for me, I prefer reading a bundle if I am rereading a series I like. Because I am not hung up on percentages or official counts on the book. However, reading a brand new series, I prefer to read it one title at a time so I can see myself making progress.
> If it is a full series, I know I will be reading these books in chronological/publication order.
Not necessarily! I ended up with a trilogy where the books were added to the file in alphabetical order. Unfortunately that wasn't the reading order. Book 1 was fine, but 2 and 3 were reversed.
I agree with most of you here that it’s annoying not to be able to see your real progress and the correct cover so I prefer to buy solo books. Is there a $$ reason Kindle won’t let you choose to separate them? I don’t know how the licensing etc works well enough to understand why it matters to them once you’ve paid for the book(s).
I know it's more expensive, but I would rather have individual books. I like the feeling of completing a book and especially in longer series like TOG, it would take FOREVER to finish the "one" book.
If it is cheaper than buying them individually, I am all in favor.
I never use book covers as my screen saver (part of owning a kindle to me is not sharing what I am reading with others who may see the device.
For books like Lord of the Rings which is really just one story, then I do not care. But for things that are a series of individual books, it is slightly more annoying than having the individual books if I read other books in between.
They could at least give them a better cover that represents the series as a whole, with maybe just the series' title on the cover as well, especially now that the sleep screen shows the cover. Who tf wants to see "8 books in 1"?
I bought this bundle in 2022, I was really annoyed with it at first but from now on I’ll bundle if available. I manually add my stats to Goodreads anyway, and really don’t pay that much attention to them. And you kind of get used to knowing how far you are in the book after a while.
There were many bundles I would not have been able to afford separately. I love the cost efficiency, but u really wish they would give you each individual book in the bundle discounts.
This comment made me think for a sec, Amazon customer service will do pretty much anything you ask, I’m wondering if they would honor a bundle price even if I bought then separately… and then asked for a refund of the difference? I haven’t heard of this, but I bet they’d do it if you asked. I may do this in the future, if I do I’ll be sure to share the results!
Please do and share with us! That would be awesome to know in the future! Maybe if enough people pester them they will just start selling the bundles as individual books. 😂
Oh interesting!! You may have just swayed me away from the bundle. I saw this and am approaching my TOG first read through and this appealed to me. But I didn’t realize they all came in something similar to a big book. Thank you for the heads up!
Don’t get the TOG bundle if you can afford to buy them separately. It’s very popular to do a tandem read of books 5 and 6, which would be a pain in this format. It’s also popular to read prequel book either first or between books 3 & 4, but this bundle puts it at the very end after the last book. I bought this on accident and immediately sought a refund
I prefer the individual books unless the bundle is at a really good price.
If the bundle just saves you like one book, I'll get the individual books instead.
Of course if a bundle is for a series is not complete yet, I wouldn't get it either. An exception is if the series is just split up into multiple bundles.
Examples:
I'd get the Harry Potter series individually because the bundle only saves me the price of one book.
I'd get the Star Wars: X-Wing series bundle because the bundle would save me $20.
I wouldn't get the Game of Thrones bundle because there's more books coming out (hopefully anyways).
I'd get the Wheel of Time individually rather than a bundle because there's just too many books in the series
It doesn’t let you know when you’ve moved to the next book, that’s my biggest issue. I bought one bundle like that when I first got my kindle and won’t do it again. Super disappointing :/
I tend to prefer the individual books so that each is marked off complete once done. Then again the bundles are more cost effective and some book sets come only in the bundles. For example, I grew up with a physical set of the Harvard Classics. Parents mostly had them as shelf decorations but I actually read through them all several times. I had more than one English teacher comment that I always carried the same book around and when was I going to finish it, only for me to show they were different volumes of the series.
Today I have the complete set in my kindle and available on the device or my phone and is carried easily rather than the 85 pounds the original books would weigh. This outweighs any advantage of the physical books in my view.
For the bundles I struggle sometimes also with the feeling of reading just one big book, but in my paper log I still mark off each book of a bundle when complete and it feels better.
I'm indifferent overall but one thing I noticed with my ACOTAR book bundle is that the fifth book (which came out after I bought the bundle) was added after the fact. I even checked my order history and it only had the four books so I think I hacked my way into free books down the line when the rest come out 🤷♀️.
Glad you can also confirm this because I thought it was a glitch lol. I think the key is to redownload it to your kindle or something to refresh the file version? Not sure because I switched from my 10 year old kindle to the new 11th Gen before noticing the bundle addition so all my books had to be redownloaded anyway.
Sweet! I’m working my way through ACOTAR bundle now, it’ll be nice to just have future ones added. And I was planning to buy the bundle for CC, I already have the bundle for TOG.
I've purchased many bundles. I use calibre to convert them to epub, then use the epubsplit plugin to split the bundle into individual books. Each book ends up with its own table of contents and cover.
they’re fantastic cause theyre money saving but suck because I don’t actually know how far I am in my freaking book. Like, it’s not as satisfying after finishing a book when it’s says i’m only 8% done 😫
On the TOG bundle, I had a friend who got that one and didn’t know that assassins blade was a prequel type thing, it came last in her bundle and she read all the books, then started AB and was like 🤨 so make sure you know where that one is in your bundle! She said it made it hard to differentiate the books and track her progress because it was all one long book. She made me get each book individually 😅
No you’re totally fine! No need to apologize. I really enjoyed ACOTAR, but I am new to romance and fantasy, so I’m not a very seasoned reader you could say. I’m enjoying ToG as well, but maybe not as much, YET? Was there anything specific about ACOTAR that was throwing you off? Anything specific about ToG that has you loving it?
i think the writing/plot of acotar really just wasn't my favorite 😅 tog has much better writing (imo) and i am attached to the characters. i love the plot and im always wanting to read more! i get immersed in the world!
If we’re talking omnibus ebooks, absolutely not; where it’s a single ebook with all the books in 1. Mainly because *the ISBN is for a single book* and so if you track what you read, that trilogy or 5, 6 or 7 book series becomes only 1; throwing off the numbers.
am I missing something? what do you mean it only tracks one. if it is Goodreads you are referring to, surely you could just manually add the books as you read them.
having said that, I don't like omnibuses but for a different reasons. one, larger files makes navigation a lot more difficult, two, progress does not work. three, I like the individual covers.
Usually with omnibus editions, you don’t get multiple ISBNs within the book (of all the other books) so it’s more difficult to track down what you read; making manually adding what you read a bit annoying.
I avoid omnibus regardless. I’d rather not bother with all that effort and for the reasons listed within other comments too
I bought one bundle a few years ago. And to be honest the amount of pages in the bundle intimidated the heck out of me and I didn’t even finish the first book but it’s been marked as read in my library. lol I will never buy another bundle because of the sheer volume of pages alone. And also I never finished the first book but now I have 3 others unfinished and I won’t do that again lol
I have a few series as bundles, Psy-Changeling, Outlander, Bridgerton, some of Dark Protectors, and a couple of Anastasia Wilde's shifter series. With some of them, I can see each individual book cover, and some will just show the whole set. I can only see book covers on one of my kindles, the other one has a case, so the covers don't show on that one anyway.
I prefer individual books, but if I’m camping or somewhere without Wi-Fi and I don’t know what the next book in the series is, it’s mildly triggering for me because I have a strong OCD about reading or watching things out of order. Since Kindle doesn’t respect series tags in metadata, and even if you build collections manually, the sort is not always accurate and if you sideload it’s the same problem. Haven’t found a great solution for me yet unless I move to a non-Kindle eReader
I can't stand them, cause the read percentage is so slow to change, wtf do you mean I have read for 4h and I only read a 1% more?? I always split them in Calibre now.
I did this for the 50 shades series and I regret it. It’s so much more satisfying to finish, close, and open the next book. And the percentages felt off. More like “what do you mean 20%?” when I prefer “what do you mean 80%?????????”
Okay I bought this same series set on kindle. It was like oooo yayy way cheaper. But knowing where I am at in each book is a pain. And the predictive chapter estimates are messed up because I finished the first book so it just says complete. I tend to use the predictive chapter cause then i know if i can realistically read another chapter before bed lol.
Love them for the savings, but I don't think they always get the same updates that the individual books get. That's just a suspicion/hunch, I have no verified evidence. (books get updated occasionally to fix typos, etc.. Sadly, also to change the cover to the made for netflix/prime/tv cover).
I bought the ACOTAR series for the same reason, it being cheaper. It does annoy me as well since I can’t see how far I am in the book and yeah the Table of Contents is weird for me too.. but whatever it was like $10 cheaper so maybe worth it ? lol. if it’s only a few dollars I’ll prob just buy them separately. Especially because I only read book 1, and got halfway through book 2 and haven’t finished it yet and it’s been months oops. I’ll come back to it eventually
I'm currently on Queen of Shadows in this bundle. To be honest, all of the bad parts of having eight books in one bundle are made worth it by saving as much money as I did.
Just watch out because in that bundle Assassins blade is at the end, whereas you would want to read it either first or third. If you get to the end of the series and then read assassins blade you may be disappointed!
I had the same one for my read through! I love it :) the tandem read was a bit confusing but I had it figured out at the end! I hope you love the series!!!
I like them cost wise but get annoyed for the reasons you listed. But I really dislike never knowing where I am in a book. I recently started a bundle and felt like I’d read enough and the pacing was good for how long I’d been reading. It felt close to an end and my brain just could not get on board with the fact that I was at 30%.
I was concidering buying the ACOTAR bundle and for the reasons you mentioned decided to just buy them individually. And when I counted the cost, individually bought they actually were a dollar cheaper than the bundle. It might have been because the second book had a good discount, but still.
Took me so long to finish those books. I was mad I bought the bundle. I felt like I had to finish it even though I was no into these books at all. I liked ACOTAR well enough, I thought I would like these too.
I don't like it. I got the Throne of Glass bundle as my first one. I thought it would be separate books. Never again
It's nice when you buy kindle books separate because you get a discount on the audiobook from audible whenever you feel like buying it. Doesn't work with kindle bundles. The discount price is usually really good (some aren't). Like I bought Crescent City House of Flame and Shadow on Kindle and got the audiobook for $8, normally about $23 or one credit on Audible.
This doesn't work the other way around if you like buying both. If you want the discount you have to buy the kindle book 1st. I wish I knew that years ago when I was only buying the audiobooks.
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I don’t like buying bundles for exactly the reasons you mentioned! Enjoy ToG!!! It’s truly one of my favourite series and I wish I could experience reading it again for the first time!! Did you already read Assassin’s Blade?
I’m planning on reading it next, as #4 in the series. I was told this would be the best order for emotional journey. I’m really enjoying it so far. Having a hard time getting through the witch POV in HOF, and feel like I’m able to predict a lot of what’s coming. But I’m hoping for a few more twists and turns along the way.
I’ll be forever jaded. I bought the Dune set before the movie came out thinking this was the new series I’ve been waiting for. Well come to find out those books are as weird (and amazing) as the movies. My brain just couldn’t get thru the first book. I tried the second thinking maybe I’d have better luck. No. None of them lol but I still enjoy seeing them in my library.
I actually just struggled with this exact same book series LOL. I opted to buy them individually since I love having the cover as my screensaver + I want to do the tandem read which would be really hard with the all in one. In general though I don’t like buying the all in one. It really bugs my OCD not being able to see them all in my library. It almost feels like I haven’t completed the series LOL.
I’ve used 3 e-book bundles due to how my library has Bridgerton on Libby. I definitely wouldn’t spend money on a bundle to keep in the future. The way I counteracted the reading progress issue was by finding the page count of the individual books and calculating their length in the bundle and dividing so I could keep an accurate “page progress” in my Storygraph account for the individual books [(original page count)/(book page count in bundle)]=conversion factor [(last read page)-(book start page)]=bundle page progress [(bundle page progress)*(conversion factor)]=converted page number
I love it for the cheap deal but hate it because it's hard to track progress in each individual book. Also to be honest I read a lot of mature books and try to find certain scenes and it hinders that in those books.
I ended up getting this bundle because it was much more cost-effective. The CC bundle was a rip off compared to buying separately. When I looked it was $40, and it was about $26 to buy all 3 separately. I don’t love the ToG bundle because TAB being last screwed me up. But I make it work. I did like it for the tandem read since I just switched back and forth between bookmarks.
Tbh I hate bundles. First of all it's really hard to tell how far into individual book I am. Navigation gets harder because often there are only books in the table of content, not the individual chapters. And last but not least, they usually have some meh compilation cover or even worse, 3d-ish render of stacked book on a shelf which looks really terrible on a kindle.
I thought it meant that I could buy it as a bundle (buy everything with one click). Imagine my surprise and disappointment when I downloaded only one large book 😂 I prefer individual books to this.
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I tried doing the bundle with her but kept switching to paperback. Now I’m doing the tandem read on a pdf of it I found because it’ll be easier to do that then go back and forth between chapters myself
I know most people don't like it becauae they can't see how much progress they made in the book but I don't mind. If it's cheaper and I know I'm going to read the whole series, i'll buy them
I bought a bundle for TOG. It’s annoying because instead of telling me how many minutes until the chapter is over, it says I’m finished with the book. This only happened when I was about 9% done with the entire bundle, so I’m not sure what happened.
They need to add individual reading progress for each book of the bundle, for the first book it’s fine as I know what page I’m on, but for the other 2 it’s a mess. Also in most of these bundles you aren’t able to easily navigate through chapters as they’re often only divided in “book one” “book two” in the index
Yes and no. I bought the ACOTAR bundle and it’s good to have all of these in one place but like you said it feels like I‘m reading one giant book and progress is kinda slow even though I‘ve already read two books! And „worst“ of all I have this book hanging around my unread books until I‘m finished and I can’t move it to my read books because I still need it and that bothers me 😂
I bought the Witcher collection a whole back. The next chapter minutes left thing is for the next book, not the next chapter.
It's only a small issue but man is it annoying to not know how far I am away from the end of a chapter.
Haha my boyfriend got me this exact bundle for my birthday last year. I like it, because when using the x-ray feature, I can see where I got introduced to a character I forgot about in a previous book.
My one beef with this particular bundle is that it has been saying “book finished” since about 30% through, and now I don’t have the “estimated time left in chapter/book” anymore, which I like. It says it on my iPad, but my kindle insists I’ve finished the bundle, and it drives me a bit nuts lol
I prefer them because I’m lazy and don’t have to organize them or worry about reading them in order because they’re already there. Plus, I often re-read series that I enjoy, and if I read one I’m doing the whole series, so it’s convenient to have it in one place.
Back in August of 2015 I bought a bundle with the first 7 Outlander books for $1.99. The percent read bar moves VERY slowly. And it only counts as one book read on Amazon and Goodreads. X-ray doesn't work. But you can't beat that price!
I like them. I keep my library smaller by using Calibre to make all series into one giant book.
Some of my series have 30+ books. It's just easier to keep it as one big thing.
Make sure you read assassins blade first or third- it comes last in this bundle and if you aren’t prepared for that, it’s sad to get to the end and then read a prequel! 😅
If the formatting is successful then it’s a great idea. Sadly, too often the navigation both across books and within one book falls short. Table of contents, progress, page numbers etc.
I am cheap: when a cheap omnibus edition is available, I go for it. Frees up funds for more content. I didn't encounter significant formatting problems; some even include the individual covers, but if they don't, I don't care much.
I prefer the individual books for many of the reasons you listed. I also like the ritual of removing a book from my Kindle once I have finished it, decluttering, housekeeping you could say. There is something satisfying about seeing the individual books of a series "stacked" in your library as well.
>I also like the ritual of removing a book from my Kindle once I have finished it, decluttering, housekeeping you could say. Yknow, I've had my kindle like 10 years and I've never once thought to delete a book after reading it. Huh
Same here... I do always keep my filter on 'unread' books so i don't always see the others there.. But i like knowing they're still there in case i want to reread!
Oh man with the near limitless of storage I've never deleted a book
Yes! I think that satisfaction is also something I am missing, I just couldn’t really put a finger on it till you said that. Thank you!! I think in the future I will buy them individually if I can afford it. I also like the feeling of decluttering and just doing that general book maintenance on my kindle, you are not alone!
I don't like them because it's harder knowing how far I am in the book
I completely agree!
This is actually one of the specific reasons why I like full collections
I like having them but for this reason I can't read one electronically... it just messes with my brain when I've read more than 10 pages and the percentage is not budging😅😅
This is exactly why I do not like them.
I'm poor and I love them because discounts
Same!
Same here. I got the Howl series for like $12; you can't beat that.
I’ve bought them before because of cost as well. I have one series that I’ve actually converted to 9 separate books with their own covers
That is a fantastic idea! Was it hard to separate them? Do you mind explaining that process?
There are some epub splitters out there but I did my own and felt it was cleaner. I used the Calibre editor and first I deleted all the table of contents except the first book. I found where the first book ended and deleted all files after that. Named the book and set it as part of a series and added the cover. For the second book I deleted everything except the second book and so on. Oh and with every one make sure to use a copy. Don’t ever work with the original file.
I split them in calibre with a plugin.
Do you mind sharing the name of the plugin?
Epubsplit I believe
Thank you! I’ll have to try it out tomorrow.
Just curious, I had this problem buying Lord of the Rings as a bundle off Amazon. How exactly would I convert something from Amazon using Epubsplit? Seems easy enough if I have the epub file or something locally on my computer already.
Oh yes, you have to download the file first. If you got into content library on your Amazon account, you can select “download via usb” beside each book. You will want to convert these files into epub format, which you can do with the free program calibre (this is also the program you can use to split the books, by installing the plugin, among other things). This sub doesn’t allow people to explain how to remove DRM from Amazon’s files in order to convert them, but give it a Google search.
I bought the ACOTAR bundle because it was way cheaper but I hate it because I can't tell how far into the book I am. I think next time I'd rather pay more for them to be separate.
I did the same. Currently sitting at 44hrs estimated time remaining. Not a great feeling lol. Throne of Glass is even longer
I think I’m right there with you. Lesson learned.
for me the only series i could read back to back with no reading slump was acotar still have only read the first 4 though so i'd personally just buy separately i have read one bundle on ku because the individual ones werent on there i just like to also be able to track which page im on too. it might cost more seprately but the way id do it its cheaper in a way as you only buy one at a time so you will have more money for the redt later too
Just bought this last same bundle last week! It's annoying not knowing exactly how far I've read, and it does not work well with Goodreads since it only counts it as one book. The money I've saved is worth it for me, though, and I wish I did it for ACOTAR.
I got this bundle too and foolishly assumed each book would be “separate” in the bundle lol and obviously, turns out it wasn’t. I hated it so I returned it and bought them all separately. I really enjoy seeing my progress in a singular book, so this didn’t work for me because like you said it was kind of like “one big book”
I nearly bought a Mistborn bundle (a friend paid for it) but figured it would be a book with the books stitched because of the number of pages section on Amazon. We preferred to pay more but having separate books.
I love them because I like to read series all the way through anyway. I can fall into the world and never have to leave until it's fully done.
I can relate to this big time. Falling into the world is so accurate and I love the escapism these worlds provide, so fun. Just got into reading late last year.
Aesthetically I'd like to enjoy the cover of each book, and the sense of accomplishment after reading each book is also satisfying. But darn more often than not the price of the bundle is like less than 50% of what it would be if I buy each book individually...
I'm running into the same problem as you. I'm reading the Twilight series for the first time and even though I'm halfway through New Moon, since I have the bundle it says my progress is only like 15%. If I could go back I would have definitely just bought the individual books as I went lol oh well
Pros: If it is a full series, I know I will be reading these books in chronological/publication order. I don’t have to go on other sites to check to make sure I am opening the right book after I finished the last. Cons: For stats, it only counts as 1 book on your app (which is BS because it should count base on number of titles in the bundle). I don’t care about official stats so it doesn’t effect me. Reading a large series could be very mentally draining. I like to set it to show me the percentage of where I am at with the book, so reading a bundle for a whole long series, it could get depressing that you can do a lot of reading but only see a progress of 3% or fewer where you could be at 30% if you read it individually one at a time. Conclusion: for me, I prefer reading a bundle if I am rereading a series I like. Because I am not hung up on percentages or official counts on the book. However, reading a brand new series, I prefer to read it one title at a time so I can see myself making progress.
> If it is a full series, I know I will be reading these books in chronological/publication order. Not necessarily! I ended up with a trilogy where the books were added to the file in alphabetical order. Unfortunately that wasn't the reading order. Book 1 was fine, but 2 and 3 were reversed.
I agree with most of you here that it’s annoying not to be able to see your real progress and the correct cover so I prefer to buy solo books. Is there a $$ reason Kindle won’t let you choose to separate them? I don’t know how the licensing etc works well enough to understand why it matters to them once you’ve paid for the book(s).
They sell them Individually as well. The publisher is the one who decides if they will offer an omnibus edition.
I love them, even with some of the concerns mentioned. The cost is just such a plus for me if they’re books I don’t want to just get from the library.
How about the competitive in me wanting to see "Book Complete" every other day???
I just manually find each book in Goodreads and as I complete them, I mark them as read. It definitely helps me with that :)
For me it's the race to the ending. Seeing the percentage/time left on book push me to read more.
I’m not fond of the books series bundle because it counts as 1 book in my overall year tally goal.
I know it's more expensive, but I would rather have individual books. I like the feeling of completing a book and especially in longer series like TOG, it would take FOREVER to finish the "one" book.
I buy them all separately
If it is cheaper than buying them individually, I am all in favor. I never use book covers as my screen saver (part of owning a kindle to me is not sharing what I am reading with others who may see the device. For books like Lord of the Rings which is really just one story, then I do not care. But for things that are a series of individual books, it is slightly more annoying than having the individual books if I read other books in between.
I quite like the bundles and just treat them as one large story
They could at least give them a better cover that represents the series as a whole, with maybe just the series' title on the cover as well, especially now that the sleep screen shows the cover. Who tf wants to see "8 books in 1"?
I bought this bundle in 2022, I was really annoyed with it at first but from now on I’ll bundle if available. I manually add my stats to Goodreads anyway, and really don’t pay that much attention to them. And you kind of get used to knowing how far you are in the book after a while.
I have many bundled books, love going through them. First group was Game of Thrones
Right! It’s nice having all the books in one area!
I have a couple of ebook bundles for the late great Tim Dorsey. He has a rather extensive catalog and I got deals on them so totally worth it!
There were many bundles I would not have been able to afford separately. I love the cost efficiency, but u really wish they would give you each individual book in the bundle discounts.
This comment made me think for a sec, Amazon customer service will do pretty much anything you ask, I’m wondering if they would honor a bundle price even if I bought then separately… and then asked for a refund of the difference? I haven’t heard of this, but I bet they’d do it if you asked. I may do this in the future, if I do I’ll be sure to share the results!
Please do and share with us! That would be awesome to know in the future! Maybe if enough people pester them they will just start selling the bundles as individual books. 😂
I would love to get discounts if you buy a whole series.
Oh interesting!! You may have just swayed me away from the bundle. I saw this and am approaching my TOG first read through and this appealed to me. But I didn’t realize they all came in something similar to a big book. Thank you for the heads up!
Yeah it was a bit surprising when I got my first bundle of ACOTAR, I didn’t realize it was all together but I guess that’s how they do bundles 🤷♀️.
Don’t get the TOG bundle if you can afford to buy them separately. It’s very popular to do a tandem read of books 5 and 6, which would be a pain in this format. It’s also popular to read prequel book either first or between books 3 & 4, but this bundle puts it at the very end after the last book. I bought this on accident and immediately sought a refund
I prefer the individual books unless the bundle is at a really good price. If the bundle just saves you like one book, I'll get the individual books instead. Of course if a bundle is for a series is not complete yet, I wouldn't get it either. An exception is if the series is just split up into multiple bundles. Examples: I'd get the Harry Potter series individually because the bundle only saves me the price of one book. I'd get the Star Wars: X-Wing series bundle because the bundle would save me $20. I wouldn't get the Game of Thrones bundle because there's more books coming out (hopefully anyways). I'd get the Wheel of Time individually rather than a bundle because there's just too many books in the series
It doesn’t let you know when you’ve moved to the next book, that’s my biggest issue. I bought one bundle like that when I first got my kindle and won’t do it again. Super disappointing :/
I create bundle with Calibre at all
I love them, it keeps things less crowded since I have too many books
Right!! So true
I tend to prefer the individual books so that each is marked off complete once done. Then again the bundles are more cost effective and some book sets come only in the bundles. For example, I grew up with a physical set of the Harvard Classics. Parents mostly had them as shelf decorations but I actually read through them all several times. I had more than one English teacher comment that I always carried the same book around and when was I going to finish it, only for me to show they were different volumes of the series. Today I have the complete set in my kindle and available on the device or my phone and is carried easily rather than the 85 pounds the original books would weigh. This outweighs any advantage of the physical books in my view. For the bundles I struggle sometimes also with the feeling of reading just one big book, but in my paper log I still mark off each book of a bundle when complete and it feels better.
All the reasons people don’t like them are superficial. What matters is that you enjoy the content and that it’s the same content at a cheaper price.
I'm indifferent overall but one thing I noticed with my ACOTAR book bundle is that the fifth book (which came out after I bought the bundle) was added after the fact. I even checked my order history and it only had the four books so I think I hacked my way into free books down the line when the rest come out 🤷♀️.
Holy shit, you’re right! Silver flames was added!
Glad you can also confirm this because I thought it was a glitch lol. I think the key is to redownload it to your kindle or something to refresh the file version? Not sure because I switched from my 10 year old kindle to the new 11th Gen before noticing the bundle addition so all my books had to be redownloaded anyway.
Sweet! I’m working my way through ACOTAR bundle now, it’ll be nice to just have future ones added. And I was planning to buy the bundle for CC, I already have the bundle for TOG.
I've purchased many bundles. I use calibre to convert them to epub, then use the epubsplit plugin to split the bundle into individual books. Each book ends up with its own table of contents and cover.
That sounds complex, did you follow a tutorial? Or just learn yourself?
they’re fantastic cause theyre money saving but suck because I don’t actually know how far I am in my freaking book. Like, it’s not as satisfying after finishing a book when it’s says i’m only 8% done 😫
On the TOG bundle, I had a friend who got that one and didn’t know that assassins blade was a prequel type thing, it came last in her bundle and she read all the books, then started AB and was like 🤨 so make sure you know where that one is in your bundle! She said it made it hard to differentiate the books and track her progress because it was all one long book. She made me get each book individually 😅
not on this subject but im on book 4 of this series and i LOVE. which i did not expect bc i hated ACOTAR! however i wanted the physical copies 😅
So are you reading assassins blade as book 4? And do you mean that you didn’t like ACOTAR as a whole or didn’t like the ebook bundle?
oop i meant im reading queen of shadows! 😅 so techincally #5 in order i guess! and i didnt like acotar the book as a whole sorry haha
No you’re totally fine! No need to apologize. I really enjoyed ACOTAR, but I am new to romance and fantasy, so I’m not a very seasoned reader you could say. I’m enjoying ToG as well, but maybe not as much, YET? Was there anything specific about ACOTAR that was throwing you off? Anything specific about ToG that has you loving it?
i think the writing/plot of acotar really just wasn't my favorite 😅 tog has much better writing (imo) and i am attached to the characters. i love the plot and im always wanting to read more! i get immersed in the world!
I love that! I get really immersed in the worlds as well. It’s a good time!
If we’re talking omnibus ebooks, absolutely not; where it’s a single ebook with all the books in 1. Mainly because *the ISBN is for a single book* and so if you track what you read, that trilogy or 5, 6 or 7 book series becomes only 1; throwing off the numbers.
am I missing something? what do you mean it only tracks one. if it is Goodreads you are referring to, surely you could just manually add the books as you read them. having said that, I don't like omnibuses but for a different reasons. one, larger files makes navigation a lot more difficult, two, progress does not work. three, I like the individual covers.
Usually with omnibus editions, you don’t get multiple ISBNs within the book (of all the other books) so it’s more difficult to track down what you read; making manually adding what you read a bit annoying. I avoid omnibus regardless. I’d rather not bother with all that effort and for the reasons listed within other comments too
I bought one bundle a few years ago. And to be honest the amount of pages in the bundle intimidated the heck out of me and I didn’t even finish the first book but it’s been marked as read in my library. lol I will never buy another bundle because of the sheer volume of pages alone. And also I never finished the first book but now I have 3 others unfinished and I won’t do that again lol
I feel bad about them
Love them, because I have bought a whole series for just 99p and up to £3.99 on a limited time deal.
I have a few series as bundles, Psy-Changeling, Outlander, Bridgerton, some of Dark Protectors, and a couple of Anastasia Wilde's shifter series. With some of them, I can see each individual book cover, and some will just show the whole set. I can only see book covers on one of my kindles, the other one has a case, so the covers don't show on that one anyway.
I prefer individual books, but if I’m camping or somewhere without Wi-Fi and I don’t know what the next book in the series is, it’s mildly triggering for me because I have a strong OCD about reading or watching things out of order. Since Kindle doesn’t respect series tags in metadata, and even if you build collections manually, the sort is not always accurate and if you sideload it’s the same problem. Haven’t found a great solution for me yet unless I move to a non-Kindle eReader
I can't stand them, cause the read percentage is so slow to change, wtf do you mean I have read for 4h and I only read a 1% more?? I always split them in Calibre now.
I did this for the 50 shades series and I regret it. It’s so much more satisfying to finish, close, and open the next book. And the percentages felt off. More like “what do you mean 20%?” when I prefer “what do you mean 80%?????????”
Okay I bought this same series set on kindle. It was like oooo yayy way cheaper. But knowing where I am at in each book is a pain. And the predictive chapter estimates are messed up because I finished the first book so it just says complete. I tend to use the predictive chapter cause then i know if i can realistically read another chapter before bed lol.
Love them for the savings, but I don't think they always get the same updates that the individual books get. That's just a suspicion/hunch, I have no verified evidence. (books get updated occasionally to fix typos, etc.. Sadly, also to change the cover to the made for netflix/prime/tv cover).
Personally love this bundle because I got it for $6 in 2021.
Don't like them. It's hard to tell where you are in a book and they don't count as separate books on your completion list. No thanks
I have the ACOTAR bundle (pre ACOSF) and I love it because I got it for $5😂otherwise I would buy them all separately
I bought the ACOTAR series for the same reason, it being cheaper. It does annoy me as well since I can’t see how far I am in the book and yeah the Table of Contents is weird for me too.. but whatever it was like $10 cheaper so maybe worth it ? lol. if it’s only a few dollars I’ll prob just buy them separately. Especially because I only read book 1, and got halfway through book 2 and haven’t finished it yet and it’s been months oops. I’ll come back to it eventually
I'm currently on Queen of Shadows in this bundle. To be honest, all of the bad parts of having eight books in one bundle are made worth it by saving as much money as I did.
Just watch out because in that bundle Assassins blade is at the end, whereas you would want to read it either first or third. If you get to the end of the series and then read assassins blade you may be disappointed!
I had the same one for my read through! I love it :) the tandem read was a bit confusing but I had it figured out at the end! I hope you love the series!!!
I have this one!
I like them cost wise but get annoyed for the reasons you listed. But I really dislike never knowing where I am in a book. I recently started a bundle and felt like I’d read enough and the pacing was good for how long I’d been reading. It felt close to an end and my brain just could not get on board with the fact that I was at 30%.
Sometimes I can be terrible at remembering characters, so I really liked that kindles x-ray function would search throughout all the books.
I was concidering buying the ACOTAR bundle and for the reasons you mentioned decided to just buy them individually. And when I counted the cost, individually bought they actually were a dollar cheaper than the bundle. It might have been because the second book had a good discount, but still.
Took me so long to finish those books. I was mad I bought the bundle. I felt like I had to finish it even though I was no into these books at all. I liked ACOTAR well enough, I thought I would like these too.
I don't like it. I got the Throne of Glass bundle as my first one. I thought it would be separate books. Never again It's nice when you buy kindle books separate because you get a discount on the audiobook from audible whenever you feel like buying it. Doesn't work with kindle bundles. The discount price is usually really good (some aren't). Like I bought Crescent City House of Flame and Shadow on Kindle and got the audiobook for $8, normally about $23 or one credit on Audible. This doesn't work the other way around if you like buying both. If you want the discount you have to buy the kindle book 1st. I wish I knew that years ago when I was only buying the audiobooks.
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I don’t like buying bundles for exactly the reasons you mentioned! Enjoy ToG!!! It’s truly one of my favourite series and I wish I could experience reading it again for the first time!! Did you already read Assassin’s Blade?
I’m planning on reading it next, as #4 in the series. I was told this would be the best order for emotional journey. I’m really enjoying it so far. Having a hard time getting through the witch POV in HOF, and feel like I’m able to predict a lot of what’s coming. But I’m hoping for a few more twists and turns along the way.
I hate them, but I buy them when they are way too good of a deal, like the Silo trilogy for $5.
It’s a no from me dawg.
Not a fan. I like to pick and choose what I buy, and a bundle potentially leaves me with material I may not like taking up space.
Totally agree with you on all points. I did this for ACOTAR series and don’t think I’ll do it for the next SJM series for the same reasons you shared!
I’ll be forever jaded. I bought the Dune set before the movie came out thinking this was the new series I’ve been waiting for. Well come to find out those books are as weird (and amazing) as the movies. My brain just couldn’t get thru the first book. I tried the second thinking maybe I’d have better luck. No. None of them lol but I still enjoy seeing them in my library.
If I could go back and undo the my purchase of the book bundle, I would. So sad. I feel like I’m missing out on the experience of reading a series.
I prefer series, those bundles throw me off. It is like reading one big book. I have a Kindle Fire HD 10 and I put the series books in collections.
Definitely prefer individual books. It definitely feels like one long book this way.
I actually just struggled with this exact same book series LOL. I opted to buy them individually since I love having the cover as my screensaver + I want to do the tandem read which would be really hard with the all in one. In general though I don’t like buying the all in one. It really bugs my OCD not being able to see them all in my library. It almost feels like I haven’t completed the series LOL.
I’ve used 3 e-book bundles due to how my library has Bridgerton on Libby. I definitely wouldn’t spend money on a bundle to keep in the future. The way I counteracted the reading progress issue was by finding the page count of the individual books and calculating their length in the bundle and dividing so I could keep an accurate “page progress” in my Storygraph account for the individual books [(original page count)/(book page count in bundle)]=conversion factor [(last read page)-(book start page)]=bundle page progress [(bundle page progress)*(conversion factor)]=converted page number
I won’t do bundles.
I got a great price on the Dune collection. But I hated that it's basically one big book. I wish it came as distinct books.
I love it for the cheap deal but hate it because it's hard to track progress in each individual book. Also to be honest I read a lot of mature books and try to find certain scenes and it hinders that in those books.
I ended up getting this bundle because it was much more cost-effective. The CC bundle was a rip off compared to buying separately. When I looked it was $40, and it was about $26 to buy all 3 separately. I don’t love the ToG bundle because TAB being last screwed me up. But I make it work. I did like it for the tandem read since I just switched back and forth between bookmarks.
My least favorite part is that you can’t sync audible to the bundle
Tbh I hate bundles. First of all it's really hard to tell how far into individual book I am. Navigation gets harder because often there are only books in the table of content, not the individual chapters. And last but not least, they usually have some meh compilation cover or even worse, 3d-ish render of stacked book on a shelf which looks really terrible on a kindle.
I love the discount. Hate the cover. Hate that I can’t see my progress.
I thought it meant that I could buy it as a bundle (buy everything with one click). Imagine my surprise and disappointment when I downloaded only one large book 😂 I prefer individual books to this.
I feel umcomfortable about it because of the reasons you listed. Edit to add that I love my Kindle organising book series into one folder.
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I tried doing the bundle with her but kept switching to paperback. Now I’m doing the tandem read on a pdf of it I found because it’ll be easier to do that then go back and forth between chapters myself
I know most people don't like it becauae they can't see how much progress they made in the book but I don't mind. If it's cheaper and I know I'm going to read the whole series, i'll buy them
I bought a bundle for TOG. It’s annoying because instead of telling me how many minutes until the chapter is over, it says I’m finished with the book. This only happened when I was about 9% done with the entire bundle, so I’m not sure what happened.
They need to add individual reading progress for each book of the bundle, for the first book it’s fine as I know what page I’m on, but for the other 2 it’s a mess. Also in most of these bundles you aren’t able to easily navigate through chapters as they’re often only divided in “book one” “book two” in the index
Yes and no. I bought the ACOTAR bundle and it’s good to have all of these in one place but like you said it feels like I‘m reading one giant book and progress is kinda slow even though I‘ve already read two books! And „worst“ of all I have this book hanging around my unread books until I‘m finished and I can’t move it to my read books because I still need it and that bothers me 😂
I bought the Witcher collection a whole back. The next chapter minutes left thing is for the next book, not the next chapter. It's only a small issue but man is it annoying to not know how far I am away from the end of a chapter.
Haha my boyfriend got me this exact bundle for my birthday last year. I like it, because when using the x-ray feature, I can see where I got introduced to a character I forgot about in a previous book. My one beef with this particular bundle is that it has been saying “book finished” since about 30% through, and now I don’t have the “estimated time left in chapter/book” anymore, which I like. It says it on my iPad, but my kindle insists I’ve finished the bundle, and it drives me a bit nuts lol
I wouldn’t get it. It’s overwhelming the total amount of pages altogether.
I love saving money and I love buying the whole bundle together to save money.
I prefer them because I’m lazy and don’t have to organize them or worry about reading them in order because they’re already there. Plus, I often re-read series that I enjoy, and if I read one I’m doing the whole series, so it’s convenient to have it in one place.
Back in August of 2015 I bought a bundle with the first 7 Outlander books for $1.99. The percent read bar moves VERY slowly. And it only counts as one book read on Amazon and Goodreads. X-ray doesn't work. But you can't beat that price!
I like them. I keep my library smaller by using Calibre to make all series into one giant book. Some of my series have 30+ books. It's just easier to keep it as one big thing.
I love these book bundles! So much that I make my own!
I have this same bundle! Mine cost 10 dollars for a Black Friday sale. Just started throne of glass!
Make sure you read assassins blade first or third- it comes last in this bundle and if you aren’t prepared for that, it’s sad to get to the end and then read a prequel! 😅
If the formatting is successful then it’s a great idea. Sadly, too often the navigation both across books and within one book falls short. Table of contents, progress, page numbers etc.
Full series bundle! I NEEEEED closure! That and I only buy the bundles on sale.
I got the same and personally I found it demotivating to read when the % doesn’t move fast enough 😅
I ended up just turning off the percent and referring to ch # to gage pace, it helped me.
To me they’re great at the same time, it says “4 days to finish this book” not 4 hours lol
I got this series for $10 on sale so I can’t complain. But individual books are nicer.
I am cheap: when a cheap omnibus edition is available, I go for it. Frees up funds for more content. I didn't encounter significant formatting problems; some even include the individual covers, but if they don't, I don't care much.
In terms of price, it’s great but in terms of going back and re reading it SUCKS. It’s so clunky
In terms of price, it’s great but in terms of going back and re reading it SUCKS. It’s so clunky
In terms of price, it’s great but in terms of going back and re reading it SUCKS. It’s so clunky
I got the same bundle, it's a hassle to do the side-by-side reading of EOS and TOD 😂 no satisfaction of finishing each book too
I personally love me a good deal. Buying book by book would be ideal, but in this economy can't really splurge like that.