Groups vs. Lists

Hello,

I have a question regarding lists vs. creating groups within lists. To give some background, I run a high school resource website that provides notes, outlines, and other study materials. We have chapter outlines for many textbooks, but we are constantly receiving requests to add outlines for new textbooks.

My plan was originally to create a list for each textbook and allow a user to subscribe to the list and be notified when we add notes for that textbook. After reading the KB document on lists vs. groups, it might make more sense for me to make one list (called Textbook Updates) and then create groups for each textbook within the list.

However, the problem with this is that I'd like to have a sign up form dedicated to each textbook. If I use the groups method, then I'd need to display ALL of the textbooks on a specific textbooks sign up page.

Also, I'd like to have one page where I have a list of ALL textbooks (we're talking about 30+ textbooks) allowing a user to sign up for updates to more than one textbook at a time. Ideally, I could split the group (textbook) names into the different subjects they belong to, e.g. all US History textbooks would be in one header and all of the Biology textbooks would be under a different header. I believe I'd only be able to control the order of the group names list.

It doesn't seem like there's a solution that would allow me to 'have my cake and eat it too'. Ideally, I'd be able to assign a default group for each sign up form I create without requiring the user to make a select. Does that make sense?

Any help would be greatly assisted!
Thanks,
-Chris