Say it ain't so, Lee

I am a huge fan of Lee Child's writing and of the Jack Reacher series.  I have bought every one of the books, so last spring, when I found, in the iBook store, a collection of short stories called First Thrills, published by the International Thriller Writers and edited by Lee Child, I bought it. It contains 25 first rate thriller stories, including one by Child. The book was copyrighted in 2010.

This morning, I was browsing the iBook store again and found First Thrills, Volume 2, Volume 3, and Volume 4. Oh, yeah, volume 1 was also there. I grabbed 2, 3. and 4 because volume 1 was so good. I didn't take 1 because I thought I already had it.

I was right. Not only did I already have vol. 1, I also had 2, 3, and 4. It turns out the first edition was split into four volumes and repackaged separately. Had I gone to the book page in the iBook store, I would have read this sentence: "This original collection is now split into four e-book volumes. . ."

Shame on me for not reading through the book description.

Shame on Lee Child for being so crass.

C'mon, Lee, we buy your books because they have your name on them. We expect something original. We don't expect to buy the same thing over again.