Originally Posted by
zelig
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Had a lengthy discussion about this and there's a loooong answer and a short answer. This is the short one: Whenever you skip a release, you lose your number. If you skip the book tomorrow, you won't be able to jump back in for the book announced after The War of the Worlds. There will only be this one book before the next Wells if that helps.
So in other words, assuming there is only one non-Wells volume announced between each Wells order period:
If you only bought Time Machine, the non-King “rights train” looks like this:
Non-Wells 1 -> Wells 1 -> non-Wells 2 -> Wells 2 -> non-Wells 3 -> Wells 3 -> non-Wells 4 ...
That is, ordering the first Wells volume individually doesn’t grant rights to the next Wells volume; it only grants rights to the next volume in the chain of announced titles. To guarantee a matching Wells volume 2, you would need to buy the non-Wells volume immediately preceding it.
If you ordered the Wells set, the rights chain looks like:
Non-Wells 1 -> Wells 1, 2 and 3 -> non-Wells 2 -> non-Wells 3 -> non-Wells 4 ...
Purchasing the set gives you all three Wells books (delivered over time) but only grants you rights to the next non-Wells book. Having ordered Wells 2 and 3 ahead of time doesn’t grant rights to any subsequent non-Wells books (beyond the next one)
Is that right, Paul?