To Omnibus or Not to Omnibus: That is the Question...

[Greg Anos]

I wonder what is the preferences of the readers here. To omnibus blocks of stories/novels or not. I started out with not omnibusing but I am changing my mind.

What say ye, o wise and learned readers of MobileRead?

[Jellby]

It depends, for short stories, which should be read in chronological order, or with very close theme/character connection, I'd prefer omnibus.

For longer works, individual books would be better.

It was natural for me to put Carroll's "Sylvie and Bruno" two parts in a single book, or the two parts of "Martín Fierro". With Alice's books, I doubted, but finally decided on separate books because I wanted to keep the often-forgotten idea that they're two books and not one. The d'Artagnan books are too long to be included in a single book, so are the Forsyte Chronicles... but the Conan stories are short and were already collected by another user, so I could make an omnibus.

[HarryT]

As you may have noticed, I like to put a series into a single omnibus edition myself. Makes it makes easier to manage. But that's purely my personal preference.

[AnemicOak]

Personally I like individual books for everything but short story collections (or related novella's and stuff) or two parters like Jellby mentions.

I don't mind an omnibus (as long as there's a good TOC), I just don't prefer them.

[poohbear_nc]

I prefer omnibus for short stories, and novels in series. I'm currently reading the MR edition of the H. Rider Haggard novels - it's great having 3-5 grouped together. Also worked great with the Mapp & Lucia novels.

So yes - omnibus!!

[toomanybooks]

I prefer omnibus books because there are less files to manage.

[pdurrant]

Originally Posted by toomanybooks

I prefer omnibus books because there are fewer files to manage.

Fixed that for you :-)

It's an oddity in English that although there are distinct words for describing smaller amounts of discrete (fewer) and continuous (less) things, there's only one word for describing greater amounts (more).

[HarryT]

It's one of my pet hates that the "small number of items" checkout in Sainsbury's (a big UK supermarket) says "10 Items or Less". You can't have "less" items - it should of course be "fewer".

[pdurrant]

Originally Posted by HarryT

It's one of my pet hates that the "small number of items" checkout in Sainsbury's (a big UK supermarket) says "10 Items or Less". You can't have "less" items - it should of course be "fewer".

Or "No more than 10 items" :-)

[radius]

Originally Posted by Ralph Sir Edward

I wonder what is the preferences of the readers here. To omnibus blocks of stories/novels or not. I started out with not omnibusing but I am changing my mind.

What say ye, o wise and learned readers of MobileRead?

I'm neither wise nor learned, but put me down for separates instead of omnibuses for everything except collections of stories too short to be considered even novellas.

I appreciate the implicit inclusion of reading order, but I don't like books to be overly large for a number of reasons:

1) generally harder for the reading device to handle (although this matters less over time)
2) ereader software occasionally crashes; it's easier to find my place in a small book than in book 2 of 15 in an omnibus
3) easier file management for me; I'm one of those people whose reading stack *is* the reader... I delete books off the device as they are read but I can't do that with collections. That leads to me feeling like I'm slogging through a book forever because it is so long. I guess I geet some weird psychological feeling of progress as I finish and nuke books off my ereader
4) More covers and titles; I have trouble remembering whether certain books are in particular omnibus volumes. Having all the titles available in the regular library view is handier for me most of the time
5) harder to flip back and forth between stories in an omnibus; if you read more than one book at a time (in different time slices obviously) you have to juggle your bookmark management with more attention when reading an omnibus. With separate books I just let the ereader remember where I left off.
6) cleaner source; when I assemble books, I have enough patience and concentration to clean up and proof one book, but not an entire series all at once. I believe that the quality of books at the beginning of an omnibus edition is likely better than that at the end.

[=X=]

Yeah I have to agree with radius on all his points.

While I like the idea of an omnibus, I find I like to monitor my reading progress. With an omnibus, it is hard to determine how far into a book you are.

[poohbear_nc]

One other point in favor of an omnibus - it keeps all the books together on home page. If I download say 5 books in a series, over time while I am reading the first one, the others drift further and further away from the home page - it's very easy to forget to move onto the 2nd volume and get sidetracked with a new purchase. Consider it a "senior" memory aid.

[Sweetpea]

I agree with Radius. I prefer separate books over omnibuses...

I would still buy an omnibus, but I'd cut it up in the seperate books before reading.

[hnoto]

I also liked the idea of an omnibus. However, in practice, I found my reader does not like anything longer than 500 pages. (It takes forever to load.) Probably the newer readers have fewer issues with this than my 505.

[dreams]

I like the idea of having the books in an omnibus, but find that my 505 takes forever with the larger files. So, I actually prefer to read the books separately on my Reader.