Repeated Chapters/Content in books

I'm reading "Shadow of Freedom" and I'm a little disappointed that entire chapters have been repeated from previous books. This happened in the book or two before this as well. I'm reading them on my iPad, which purchases them off of iTiunes and I'm reading them in the order listed, I think this is the 15th book in the series. Not only that, but the books have gone from $6.99 and 1000+ pages to $8.99 under 500 pages and it has repeated content from earlier books. A big disappointment. I hope the rest of the series doesn't go down this path.

Fred wrote:I'm reading "Shadow of Freedom" and I'm a little disappointed that entire chapters have been repeated from previous books. This happened in the book or two before this as well. I'm reading them on my iPad, which purchases them off of iTiunes and I'm reading them in the order listed, I think this is the 15th book in the series. Not only that, but the books have gone from $6.99 and 1000+ pages to $8.99 under 500 pages and it has repeated content from earlier books. A big disappointment. I hope the rest of the series doesn't go down this path.

First Fred, welcome to the Forum, the first Old Tillman is on the house.

Second, I think the reasoning is that we had three books (A Rising Thunder-Shadows of Freedom-Cauldron of Ghosts) that all occured in basically the saem timeframe and the repeated chapters were to allow for a snese of timing and to relate to events in the other books.

Or else RFC got lazy...

Hopefully the next book will tie all the storylines together (Honor/Talbott/Torch/Mesa) and we won't have to worry about the Clone Chapters....

Fred wrote:I'm reading "Shadow of Freedom" and I'm a little disappointed that entire chapters have been repeated from previous books. This happened in the book or two before this as well. I'm reading them on my iPad, which purchases them off of iTiunes and I'm reading them in the order listed, I think this is the 15th book in the series. Not only that, but the books have gone from $6.99 and 1000+ pages to $8.99 under 500 pages and it has repeated content from earlier books. A big disappointment. I hope the rest of the series doesn't go down this path.

With the narratives of the books crossing paths and each having to stand more or less alone in a pinch, re-covering certain stuff is inevitable. Sometimes it can be re-covered from another POV, but then there will be complaints about the books reading more as "here's one office meeting, then here's another office meeting, followed by a third office meeting...." So there may not be fixes there that do not create worse problems.

Book prices do go up as a matter of inflation, and hardcover, paperback, and e-book prices will vary among one another as well. Do you have an instance in which two books from about the same time in the same format, bought new from a specific vendor, have a higher price and less content in one of the two books?

I do feel your frustration too - I just think there's a lot of room to suppose that it can't be helped or that the blame is buried deep inside the publishing industry.

Hutch wrote:

Fred wrote:I'm reading "Shadow of Freedom" and I'm a little disappointed that entire chapters have been repeated from previous books. This happened in the book or two before this as well. I'm reading them on my iPad, which purchases them off of iTiunes and I'm reading them in the order listed, I think this is the 15th book in the series. Not only that, but the books have gone from $6.99 and 1000+ pages to $8.99 under 500 pages and it has repeated content from earlier books. A big disappointment. I hope the rest of the series doesn't go down this path.

First Fred, welcome to the Forum, the first Old Tillman is on the house.

Second, I think the reasoning is that we had three books (A Rising Thunder-Shadows of Freedom-Cauldron of Ghosts) that all occured in basically the saem timeframe and the repeated chapters were to allow for a snese of timing and to relate to events in the other books.

Or else RFC got lazy...

Hopefully the next book will tie all the storylines together (Honor/Talbott/Torch/Mesa) and we won't have to worry about the Clone Chapters....

IIRC, David mentioned this in one of the afterwords to one of the books - that since the tales of Honor has now split into three separate series, that it would be necessary to have some duplicate information where the series intersected in order to provide a sense of connectedness between the series and to orient the readers WRT time and place.

I'm in the midst of re-reading sfts and there David warns about the repeated content and explains that he is using it as a device to coordinate the timeline and tie together storylines between books.

I don't mind as long as he uses a different pov when there is overlap.

Don

First, let me say thank you for the quick response.

I am not aware of the series splitting into three different ones, maybe this is the start of that.

Also, I do have a really good memory, not 100% photographic, but pretty good. Repeated content is very obvious to me, even if it's a single sentence.

From my viewpoint (a readers) I can say I feel cheated when I read something that is word for word from a previous book. So far it has been a group of paragraphs here or there, but this was just over the top, it was an entire chapter. It was chapter 20, 9 pages altogether. It was an entire copy/paste job. Word for word, exactly the same as the previous book. Why repeat this stuff? For continuity of storyline, well it's a series. If someone doesn't read the series they probably wont understand half the references, planets, characters, etc. Sure I understand some overlap, but an author shouldn't copy and paste an entire chapter from one book to the next. It just plain sucks from a readers viewpoint.

I understand about book prices inflating. However, for all of this to happen at the same time, for prices to go up, for the books that started at 500 pages to go upward to 1000 pages and then all of a sudden go back to 500 pages and then to have entire chapters that are copy and pasted from the previous book, well, it's too much. It feels more like someone was just out to make a few bucks and it cheapens the series.

At least this is my viewpoint, for what it's worth.

Fred

Fred wrote:First, let me say thank you for the quick response.

I am not aware of the series splitting into three different ones, maybe this is the start of that.

Yes, for a time the Honorverse "modern" storyline (to distinguish it from the Star Kingdom books and the Call of Duty books) essentially split into 3 series, informally labeled the Torch books, the Honor books (sometimes improperly called the mainline), and the Saganami or Shadows books. The Torch books were written by Eric Flint. There were 3 Shadows books (Shadows of Saganami, Storm from the Shadows, and Shadow of Freedom) and 3 Torch books (Crown of Slaves, Torch of Freedom, and Cauldron of Ghosts), while the Honor books came out with another three (At All Costs, Mission of Honor, and A Rising Thunder). The three series overlapped in time, and a few sections of text (typically about a chapter or so) was repeated between them to keep the timelines straight.

As of the next Honor story, all three storylines will be merged again; there will be no more Shadows or Torch books. So you won't see the problem of repeated text again.

SWM wrote:

Fred wrote:First, let me say thank you for the quick response.

I am not aware of the series splitting into three different ones, maybe this is the start of that.

Yes, for a time the Honorverse "modern" storyline (to distinguish it from the Star Kingdom books and the Call of Duty books) essentially split into 3 series, informally labeled the Torch books, the Honor books (sometimes improperly called the mainline), and the Saganami or Shadows books. The Torch books were written by Eric Flint. There were 3 Shadows books (Shadows of Saganami, Storm from the Shadows, and Shadow of Freedom) and 3 Torch books (Crown of Slaves, Torch of Freedom, and Cauldron of Ghosts), while the Honor books came out with another three (At All Costs, Mission of Honor, and A Rising Thunder). The three series overlapped in time, and a few sections of text (typically about a chapter or so) was repeated between them to keep the timelines straight.

As of the next Honor story, all three storylines will be merged again; there will be no more Shadows or Torch books. So you won't see the problem of repeated text again.

Interesting. I knew that the Torch series was at an end. I didn't realize that the Saganami series was.

Fred wrote:First, let me say thank you for the quick response.

I am not aware of the series splitting into three different ones, maybe this is the start of that.

Also, I do have a really good memory, not 100% photographic, but pretty good. Repeated content is very obvious to me, even if it's a single sentence.

From my viewpoint (a readers) I can say I feel cheated when I read something that is word for word from a previous book. So far it has been a group of paragraphs here or there, but this was just over the top, it was an entire chapter. It was chapter 20, 9 pages altogether. It was an entire copy/paste job. Word for word, exactly the same as the previous book. Why repeat this stuff? For continuity of storyline, well it's a series. If someone doesn't read the series they probably wont understand half the references, planets, characters, etc. Sure I understand some overlap, but an author shouldn't copy and paste an entire chapter from one book to the next. It just plain sucks from a readers viewpoint.

I understand about book prices inflating. However, for all of this to happen at the same time, for prices to go up, for the books that started at 500 pages to go upward to 1000 pages and then all of a sudden go back to 500 pages and then to have entire chapters that are copy and pasted from the previous book, well, it's too much. It feels more like someone was just out to make a few bucks and it cheapens the series.

At least this is my viewpoint, for what it's worth.

Fred

As for the price increase for ebooks, a considerable part of the increases was driven by Baen titles going into the Amazon Kindle store (and the terms that Amazon requires to carry a publisher's titles--which are required by the contract not to be disclosed), and part was raising the royalty rates paid to authors by Baen for ebooks (which were apparently different for the royalty rates for hardback, trade paperback and mass-market paperback books).

Baen ebooks (the Baen ebooks store that sells directly to the public--not all publishers do) has a brief explanation on the home page.

Vince wrote:

Fred wrote:First, let me say thank you for the quick response.

I am not aware of the series splitting into three different ones, maybe this is the start of that.

Also, I do have a really good memory, not 100% photographic, but pretty good. Repeated content is very obvious to me, even if it's a single sentence.

From my viewpoint (a readers) I can say I feel cheated when I read something that is word for word from a previous book. So far it has been a group of paragraphs here or there, but this was just over the top, it was an entire chapter. It was chapter 20, 9 pages altogether. It was an entire copy/paste job. Word for word, exactly the same as the previous book. Why repeat this stuff? For continuity of storyline, well it's a series. If someone doesn't read the series they probably wont understand half the references, planets, characters, etc. Sure I understand some overlap, but an author shouldn't copy and paste an entire chapter from one book to the next. It just plain sucks from a readers viewpoint.

I understand about book prices inflating. However, for all of this to happen at the same time, for prices to go up, for the books that started at 500 pages to go upward to 1000 pages and then all of a sudden go back to 500 pages and then to have entire chapters that are copy and pasted from the previous book, well, it's too much. It feels more like someone was just out to make a few bucks and it cheapens the series.

At least this is my viewpoint, for what it's worth.

Fred

As for the price increase for ebooks, a considerable part of the increases was driven by Baen titles going into the Amazon Kindle store (and the terms that Amazon requires to carry a publisher's titles--which are required by the contract not to be disclosed), and part was raising the royalty rates paid to authors by Baen for ebooks (which were apparently different for the royalty rates for hardback, trade paperback and mass-market paperback books).

Baen ebooks (the Baen ebooks store that sells directly to the public--not all publishers do) has a brief explanation on the home page.

And if, like me, you don't want to support Jeff Bezos, buy your Baen ebooks directly from Baen, and if you are looking for a discount on hardbacks/paperbacks, buy from Barnes & Noble. Even if you have a kindle, Baen will deliver the ebooks to you.