Who else hates when a series is in two different formats?

[Alyssa]

Okay...I doubt I'm the only one, but I absolutely HATE when a book series has the first two in paperback, and the rest in only hardcover. Most of the time, they wait for a while and then publish the paperback into hardcover and vice versa, but it drives me nuts.
Alyson Noel's Immortal series is an example. The first three books, Evermore, Blue Moon, and Shadowland are all in paperback. Then Shadowland, Dark Flame, and Night Star are in hardcover. It makes me so crazy. I want them ALL in hardcover.

[[deleted user]]

i have this problem but not only with hardcovers and paperbacks but with height i.e the city of bones series first to short next to big same with eragon!
drives me insane

[Bridget]

I totally agree. I like all my books (if they are in the same series) to match. When they switch to the first printing being only in hardback, I either have to wait a whole year or deal with my bookcase being in disarray. And sometimes they go from hardback to the tall paperback before finally getting the standard trade-size paperback (some of James Patterson's books).

I also find it frusterating that after I buy the hardback, when the paperback is released the next year it has 'deleted scenes' in it! (Christine Feehan's Carpathian series) The only reason for that is to make me spend more money and it's outrageous!

Grrr

[aPriL does feral sometimes]

It makes me insane. I had tantrums about it when I was young. Now not so much. Audiobooks and Audible eased the frustration.

[Veronika]

i am the same way too! i want to buy the millennium series, but i want them all in paperback but the third one hasn't come out in paperback STILL! ....and i refuse to buy the first two and then buy the third in paperback, when it is finally released, because I want them to all be the same height. i'm so picky lol

[Moon]

I usually like to have all my books in a series match too. This irritated me with the Mercy Thompson novels because I started buying them when the series reached book 3, but after that they were being released in hardcover. So I wait until the paperback comes out to buy it and if I feel the need to read, there's the library. I like the books but not enough to pay hardcover prices for them. But books like Kane Chronicles and Secrets of the Immortal Nicholas Flamel I must have in hardcover because that's what the first books are.

My Dark Tower books are in four different editions, so I don't think it will matter what book I get the new release in. Since it happens between books 4 and 5, it probably won't make me crazy like the end of the series did. Or maybe it will, who knows?

[Gecko]

Ha. I kind of like the mismatched look, actually. Which is fortunate, because I really like to shop at secondhand books stores.

[Samantha]

Its not only the paperback to hardback that im struggling with. I read quiet a few series and my biggest hate is when they change the cover art to somthing completely different so that next to each other you wouldn't know they were the same series.

This mostly happens because the books are getting popular so the publishers want to try to attract different customers. I always feel like shouting "Ive been a customer for this series since it was a baby!! What about the attractiveness of my bookshelves!!!"

[Philip]

I get it, though sometimes people get a little overly invested.

I was once full-on yelled at by a guy at Gen Con because we changed the design of the spines of the Dragonlance books so now they didn't match on his bookshelf. And I mean this guy was UPSET--as though we'd broken into his house and pooped on his carpet.

I have that collector mindset, too, but we should all remember that it's about the CONTENT, not the cover!

[Vikki]

I'm like that as well, its one of my pet hates.

Friends in the rest of the UK have a problem about getting books in paperback, they can only get the hardback copies. I seem to be lucky as we have a bookstore here in Northern Ireland that seems to do them in paperback (I'm thinking it must be because they're an Irish company, not British and we have lots of stores here!).

The one thats annoyed me most recently is the Sookie Stackhouse books. I've got books 1 - 8 all in the same style, book 9 is the same size but has Anna Paquin on the cover instead of the original covers, book 10 is paperback with the stars of the TV show on the cover but its bigger than the rest... and now book 11 is bright yellow and looks nothing like the rest. Vampire Academy isn't a lot better... 4 different lots of covers for 6 books, and the last is the worst, looks nothing like the rest.

I read the Famous Five books when I was a kid and I have no idea how many different covers I have for them.