I'm currently running a lv 43 stamina based nb and am attempting to respec to magicka. I know I need a few skills from the mage's guild line, but unfortunately I decided against doing any of the quests when I started. I plan to go back and breeze through the story quests, but upon doing some research, I've found that the lorebooks are the primary means of leveling the skill line. I've already collected quite a few lorebooks throughout my faction's zone.

Here's my question: do the lorebooks I've already gotten retroactively count towards my mage's guild exp or am I screwed out of all those exp points? If the answer is the latter, then that's a horrible system that ZoS has adopted. It should be clearer that the lorebooks are used to progress the mage's guild and/or count retroactively if you've already picked them up.