Roqoo Depot has spotted some more details on the X-Wing series bundle, including the price: $56.99 for all 9 books. It’s eBook only and will be out on July 30.
The individual X-Wing paperbacks and eBooks are currently listed for $7.99 a pop; A full set would cost you $71.91 (plus sales tax, if applicable.) So if you’re looking to catch up on the series, this is probably your best bet outside of used copies and/or the library. (Unless you already own them all, of course!)
I still wish we were seeing the series reissued as trade paperback collections (maybe if Mercy Kill sells really well?) but this is a nice way to give some EU classics a little refreshing.
Definitely picking up this bundle, but I’d love a trade paperback reissue as well.
The Star Wars section in bookstores is super-confusing. And actually, I was at a FanForce meeting a few months ago, right after we heard some news about Mercy Kill, and I brought it up and they were all like ‘Oh, I didn’t read those, there are so many and I don’t know which one is first’ and blah blah blah… These are not newbies, these are dudes my age who have been into Star Wars and reading the books since the 90’s at least.
I mean, granted, I didn’t read them either back in the day (although not because I was too lazy to look up the ordering.) But there are probably a lot of fans like that. Reissue them as trades, clearly numbered, and you have 3 books instead of 9! And they’ll stand out on those crazy, overstuffed shelves as a series. AND these are books that EU fans seem to universally love, books that act as an easy gateway to the EU as a whole. It just makes sense.
I’d do the same with the Thrawn trilogy. Or even all the other myriad trilogies. Hell, the NJO. Cut the clutter and make it easier for folks to pick things up at an obvious point, instead of halfway through some random series. Streamline and simplify the massive backlist.
It probably doesn’t make financial sense to do it on a large scale, but the X-Wings do seem like a good case to test the waters.
I feel like there is more excitement around the release of Mercy Kill than I’ve seen for any other book in a long time. (Or maybe it’s just me)
Anyone else here thinking the same?
I like the idea of combo re-issues. But doing them three at a time would kind of create some odd story breaks, if memory serves. Maybe do the first four Stackpole books as one (They mostly come together in one big story anyway), then the initial Wraith trilogy as volume two, and throw the other two (plus Mercy Kill when it hits paperback) into the third volume?
I suppose they would argue that the book timeline does that job reasonably well but you have to know its there to use it.
Doesn’t it say X-Wing series on the spine? I usually just work that out from the advertisements inside the book for the previous/upcoming books but not everyone would do that. And if they were going to re-release them anyway…