Reddit mentions of The Return of the King: Being the Third Part of The Lord of the Rings (3)

I recently went through the same process, wanting to buy the books but not get the errors all over the Amazon reviews. Go for the 50th anniversary edition. It is the definitive edition so far, it has no errors as far as I am aware, and you have a couple options on how to get it. You can go for the one volume book that aralanya posted, which is very nice but also very hefty, as they are all in one binding. I didn't want a huge book, so after some looking I found these (FOTR, TTT, ROTK) individual books, which contain the 50th anniversary text but divided amongst three volumes, including the special 50th anniversary forward.

To your first question, no. The book is very long, contains a lot of stuff that isn't in the movies, and there are a lot of names, places, and history to keep track of, most of which are in languages that Tolkien just fucking made up. But you should still read it because it's just an awesome book. I actually think it's easier to understand if you watch the movies first, because you'll kind of know what to expect.

what I'm thinking is more along the lines of: it's always cheaper to buy books in one volume than multiple volumes. for example on amazon I can buy The Lord of the Rings in one volume for $16.00 yet if I buy ONLY Return of the King it costs $8.76 What I'm saying, at the very least, is: If it were broken up into novellas the series as a whole would cost more for you.

I think we can both agree on that. The publisher's profit margins are another story.