I will be using the John Howe sides. I have wanted these for years and was considering asking John if I could have some hardcover jackets made but then this announcement came.

I will have two sets, the HC edition and the WM edition. Planning on having the solid color wrappers out on one and the Howe wrappers out on the other.

Does anyone know if HC has published official cover pictures of the individual books? I find it hard to take a photograph myself with straight, parallel edges.

I'd be glad selling my Silm and UT, in case someone is interested (I'm located in Spain)

Sorry if I missed this (and as such is duplicate info) but FYI the UK edition of Box Set 2 is up for pre-order on Amazon UK. I don’t recall the date it was supposed to be available for pre-order but FYI.

Question, will the US and UK releases be of slightly different sizes? Have Box Set #1 preordered through AwesomeBooks, but want to switch to Amazon US for the upcoming releases.

WhiteMithrandir wrote:

Question, will the US and UK releases be of slightly different sizes? Have Box Set #1 preordered through AwesomeBooks, but want to switch to Amazon US for the upcoming releases.

We won’t know for sure until we see a WM boxset, but as of right now, there’s been nothing to indicate the WM boxset will be a different size than the HC one.

Thank you. I’ve pieced together a lot of the illustrated covers from BookDepository (RIP), Amazon UK, and US. It feels like I have a few different sizes going on between HC, HMH, and WM (the recent “UT”, “Numenor” and “Gondolin” tower over my “Nature”, “B&L”, and “Húrin”). AwesomeBooks pre-order price was quite good—even after shipping—so I’ll keep it and move to Amazon US for the rest. Thanks!

You gotta look at each release after The Nature of Middle-earth, as, by that point, the publishing of Tolkien in the US was sorted out to its current state.

I believe there’s three different US versions of Nature, as the US publisher shifted from Houghton Mifflin to the finalized William Morrow.

HMH and HC had different heights, that’s why I mention this.

Then it may be worth it to commit to the US releases. Standardizing the spelling, etc… I cannot imagine that the reference pages would be off by any significant amount, but that’s a risk I probably should not take? My experience with Amazon US preorders of Tolkien is that the price drops a bit before release, then plummets a month or so after shipping.