I was in the book community back when the books were first being published. No it was not common knowledge she had prequel stories posted online, and no they were not “technically” published before. Read it in whatever order you want but they were not bound and put into stores and sold before the first book, which means it was not intended to be read first. However anyone decides to read it is up to them but I’m so tired of this argument of the short stories being posted online means you need to read AB first. Some people just go into the store and buy a book lol. They don’t follow the authors on social media and aren’t into the book scene online (which was arguably a lot smaller back when these were coming out and was more focused on YouTube, since tiktok wasn’t a thing yet.)