Which volumes of HoME would you recommend?

[William Cloud Hicklin]

I mean, could this really be a economically viable project? Or are there really enough Tolkien maniacs and academics around for it to justify the 13 books?

Just barely. Rayner Unwin originally committed to just four volumes, which CT envisioned (at first) as the Lost Tales, the Lays, and a sort of UT-style miscellany. Unwin expected to break even at best, even though no advance or pre-profit royalties were paid (similar to the LR thirty years before). CT's motivation was as much as anything to respond to many readers (like me) who had been asking about the Lost Tales etc and wanted to know if they would ever see the light of day. (The foreword to UT contains an oblique reference to the possibility).

However, the Lost Tales sold much better than expected, selling out the initial print run and I believe cracking the lower end of the bestseller list, and the project was expanded, piecemeal. The Lord of the Rings was never part of the original plan, and even when he finished The Lost Road CT still thought the LR would take only two volumes! It was also as I understand it a rather late decision to include the complete texts of the Annals of Aman and Grey Annals together with the post-LR Quenta Silmarillion, making two volumes where one had been envisioned; and Vol XII didn't become a history of the Appendices until CT was already in the middle of it.

Vols 1, 2, and 6-9 made a profit in their initial hardcover release. 4 and 12 lost money. The rest just about broke even. Of course, their continued availability in paperback has improved the numbers slightly: but CT has not nor ever intended to make any significant amount of money on what was simply a labor of devotion and scholarly interest. If he really wanted to coin his father into gold there were much, much, easier, sleazier and more lucrative things he could have done!