This one is totally my fault – but do I have to rebuy my Scalzi?

I tweeted to @scalzi a few weeks ago about this issue, but I was unsurprised by the lack of response. He’s “just” the author – what can he do?

Not to denigrate what he does. He’s put together a few nice sci fi books, and I’ve enjoyed them. I’ve even rebought a few at Goodwill (I can’t seem to find actual used bookstores anymore). But he can’t control the bullshit the publishers pull.

It seemed like a cute idea at the time.

It was great at first. You get one episode of The Human Division a week. 99 cents each. A bargain! And such anticipation.

My smarter friends waited until the full book was released, and sort of told me “I told you so”. Me? Not so much.

As the series wended on, I couldn’t tell which chapter was which. They weren’t linked in any order, and there were no numbers on the “book” covers to help me out.

As I waited for each chapter, I’d try to reread the previous chapters (walking at 4 miles an hour on my lunch break). As we got nearer to the end, I had to stop; it was too confusing to try to sort them out. Gah.

I haven’t read it since.

I tried to; that’s when I tweeted at John Scalzi. Why isn’t there a way to “stitch them together” without just cracking them open in a software program and forcing them to be one book?

I want to read it again. But I don’t want to buy it again.

Can we trade in our ebooks?

That would be ideal. The ebook seller has the records of my purchases. They can allow me to flag the books for “exchange” and swap out my separate files for one big ebook.

Who loses? Right now, I guess Tor and bn.com are assuming I’ll just buy it. But if ebooks are the wave of the future, why not set up systems for making it easier for the end users?

Especially if you want to have a market advantage over Amazon … lead with a “book binding” innovation. Especially since I paid $5-6 more buying each chapter rather than waiting for the final full book to come out.