Over at Palm247 (http://www.pda-247.com/index.shtml), Shaun McGill asks his readers How many eBooks have you purchased? (http://www.pda-247.com/forum/showthread.php?threadid=22641)

While the question is certainly biased toward those Palm users who read e-books (the ones that read e-books and especially who buy them are most likely to reply with comments), it still is interesting in several ways:

1) So far, for number of e-books purchased, there are 6 with <100, 4 with <300, one with about 700 and another with more than a thousand. (Wow!)

2) Only one person said they read free e-books and didn't buy e-books.

3) There were several mentions of people who just prefer paper.

The big winners for the massive e-book purchases in this small sample of Palm users? Fictionwise/eReader, Baen and MobiPocket.

Over at Palm247 (http://www.pda-247.com/index.shtml), Shaun McGill asks his readers How many eBooks have you purchased? (http://www.pda-247.com/forum/showthread.php?threadid=22641)

While the question is certainly biased toward those Palm users who read e-books (the ones that read e-books and especially who buy them are most likely to reply with comments), it still is interesting in several ways:

1) So far, for number of e-books purchased, there are 6 with <100, 4 with <300, one with about 700 and another with more than a thousand. (Wow!)

2) Only one person said they read free e-books and didn't buy e-books.

3) There were several mentions of people who just prefer paper.

The big winners for the massive e-book purchases in this small sample of Palm users? Fictionwise/eReader, Baen and MobiPocket.

I tend to buy from Fictionwise, eReader, Baen and Mobipocket myself. Of course, if I owned a Kindle, I'd be buying my ebooks from Amazon, but I'm quite happy buying my Mobipocket ebooks for my Cybook. :)

And I'm definitely in the 500+ category as I've got over 1,000 ebooks.

Derek

It's a good question, though there are little details like what about something like Asimov's. If you buy an annual subscription, does it count as 10 ebooks? What about Fictionwise ss that sell for 95c, or Amazon shorts that sell for 49c. Do they count? I tend to buy a few of those, as well as various sf magazines from various sources like Lulu, publisher, not only Fictionwise.

Restricting to what would be clearly print books not magazines, so novels, collections, non-fiction books, I would say I am in between 100-200 bought. Books on Board and Baen probably about 40 each, Fictionwise about 30, various other places like Lulu, BookHabit, Steve Jordan, other small publishers, about 40 more maybe.

If I count magazines and ss, Amazon shorts and more esoteric stuff, probably I would jump to 200-300, or maybe even 400-500.

:eek: This is amazing. I had a hunch but no idea how many ebooks I had. I use Fictionwise/eReader, Mobipocket and other web sites to purchase ebooks. I have been downloading them since they've been available. I must confess I have not read them all. Some came in a bulk w/manuals, stories and such that I'll never read or use.
I'll use any format (I prefer the eReader) to read for any ebook that pecks my interest.:book2: I read them on a PC, but, mostly on my PPC. All my life I've always wanted a library in my house, but a PPC will have to do.:D

I guess I am a :bookworm:

I've purchased a little more than 200 ebooks, mostly from eReader.com, about a dozen Amazon shorts, and have around a hundred more etexts from Project Gutenberg. All of which I've read more than once.

I use Fictionwise when the price is right, Baen of course (I just this AM decided to buy the whole Jim Baen's Universe), and a couple other places.

Format does not matter to me except that I will pass on any book which comes in only PDF format. And that is for the obvious reasons of formatting on a small display. As in anything under 17" displays. ;)

I almost never visit the used book store anymore as so many books can be had, with some patience for sales from Fictionwise or elsewhere, for just a tad more then the used book price. Used PB's around here run about 50% of cover price. So between $3-$5 ea. but one cannot shop for them in the comfort of one's favorite hole-y underware and torn tee-shirt. :D

Still there are some, er...ummm...OK....MOST, reads which cannot be found as ebooks. I have made the decision to simply wait and hope for those and am exclusively going with ebooks from now on. I feel that is the only way to push/force publishers to come towards the light.

In all honesty between my 10-year's worth of NYT Xword puzzles and just my current ebook backlog, I would never need buy any more books or d/l another xword puzzle in my lifetime. But, where is the fun in that?

Oh, I have at minimum 500 ebooks right now. Read about 150-200 of them so far when I find the time.

Where is the answer "<1" ?

I've only had my Kindle since mid-February. In that time, I've bought 12 books from Amazon.com -- but 5 of those were special promotions at $0.00. From Baen, I bought 6 books. From Steve Jordan, I bought 10 books. And, just to kick around the secure MobiPocket stuff, I bought one book from Harper Collins. So far, I've only opened it in the desktop MobiPocket Reader on my PC, but I did register my Kindle PID with Harper Collins before I downloaded, so I thought I'd play around with that eventually.

So, the total comes to 30 books purchased. I've gladly accepted the dozen or so free books from TOR, and then there are the 400 or so that I've downloaded from MobileRead, Feedbooks, ManyBooks, and Munsey's. I have enough reading material around to sustain me in the event of a long trip. All I need is the power adapter for the weekly (or so) recharge.

Life is so good.

Where is the answer "<1" ?

Excellent question. Added. :p

i bought my eb1150 last december and have purchased around 10 ebooks for it so far. however, my original motivation for buying it was to read the PG books i had been downloading (but not reading... since i hate reading on my pc) for years. i have several hundred of those (most of them are not formatted yet) and i've also downloaded a few hundred books from MR. altogether i probably have close to 1000 or more. i don't know when i will have time to read all of them.

For me purchases for the Sony have been from (in no particular order):


Fictionwise
Sony Bookstore
Baen
Steve Jordan Books

I'm definitely in the ~400 range with the early stuff being ereader, but now mobipocket or fictionwise gets most of the business since i've transitioned to a dedicated ereader.

I'm with the 1 to 10 crowd, despite having owned a hardware reader for over 5 years.

In the beginning, after Gemstar's demise and before Fictionwise launched the eBookwise site, there was very little opportunity to purchase mainstream .IMP ebooks. As a result, I turned to PD (mainly from blackmask.com and PG) ebooks and/or "rolled my own" ebooks. I would scour for any reading material even if not in the .IMP format with the hopes of converting .html / .pdb / .prc / .lit formats into my reader's native .IMP formats. And a converting junkie was born. I've even converted whole websites (using HTTrack Website Copier) and read them on my REB 1200. And after joining mobileread.com, I've only been inspired even more to continue the same.

Nowadays, I convert and create ebooks most of the time and seldom have time to read any of them anymore. It's truly like a junkie going for his next fix. I see something that would be nice to have in ebook format and I spend considerable effort in converting it only to have it be put aside as the next fix comes along. And so on...

And now, after creating software (Mobi2IMP/PDFRead/deimp) to effortlessly convert between ebook formats, it will only add fuel to my fire.

But I'm enjoying myself, and in the end, that is all that matters to me.

Oops, I chose 51-100, but I forgot about all the books I bought for my Rocket eBook and Gemstar. I probably have purchased more like 101-200 if we count all the devices I've read books on.

Though I've only "purchased" one book from BoB, and a few years and years and years ago when Star Wars put out the ebook in the series in pdf,

I have converted several of my paperback books to ebook format.

How about a category for converting your own books, since I am almost ( I did buy one) emphatic about not buying any more DRM books.

By the by, this does not include all the copyright free books I've downloaded from Gutenberg and this site.

I know this site is for ebooks, but my currently preferred method is audio books. Much better on my failing eyesight, and I can work around the house, as well as go to sleep, listening to books.

-Alyson

Still getting the hang of these blogs..
My reply was for the original message, not the one before mine.

sorry

Alyson
:smack:

I have about 3,500 ebooks. I've purchased none of them.

I have no objection for paying for electronic content. I have strong objections to the lack of a standard format that everyone supports, and to restrictive DRM.

I want to download an ebook once, and read it on whatever device I happen to have at hand. My current ebook device is a Tapwave Zodiac 2, which is a Palm OS device. My preferred format for electronic books is HTML, since I can read that native on desktop and laptop, and easily convert it for the Plucker offline HTML viewer for Palm OS. Most of my ebooks are in Plucker format.

But in order to cover all the bases, I must maintain eReader, MobiPocket Reader, PalmPDF, and PalmFiction (handling Palm DOC, zTxt, plain ASCII, RTF, and Word documents), and recall which text is in which format, read with which viewer. That's just nuts.

I'd love to actually buy ebooks, but until more publishers understand there is a market, settle on a common format, price reasonably, and don't saddle books with overly restrictive DRM, I'm not. There is more freely available in public domain, or under CC or other licenses that explicitly permit copying and sharing that I want to read than I have time for, so I'm not exactly lacking in stuff to read. And for the stuff that's only commercially available, I still buy a fair number of paper books, and consider electronic books an additional format, not a replacement for paper. I have some books in both formats.

At the moment, MobiPocket seems to be the closest thing to a standard format, and I can live with that. Versions of the viewer are available for just about everything save Mac OS/X, the format allows decently crafted ebooks, and the DRM provisions are as reasonable as I expect to see. If everyone got behind it and offered their books in that format, I'd buy in a heartbeat, but I'm not holding my breath waiting.
______
Dennis

Having all my books in EBook Librarian, it was a simple matter of opening the program and reading off the number of books. I'm in the 101-200 books bracket. I'd say that probably 80-90% of the books are BAEN, the rest from ebookwise.

This excludes the books I've made for myself from fan-fiction websites.

I've just recently made the decision not to buy any more ebooks in "secure" format as I am planning on switching my ebook reader soon and apparently cannot download the secure books I bought in a different format (except of course from BAEN - we love BAEN!).

"Secure" yeah... secure in the way that the publisher secures his right to sell me the same book in a different format every time a new generation of ebook reader comes on the market. No way am I falling for that again! They can keep their secure books secure... in their store.

LeserattePD

I have more than 1100 from FictionWise, around 5 years Webscriptions, plus lesser amounts from EReader, Mobipocket, Harlequin, Regency Reads, Diesel, Books on Board and individual authors.

I'm the one at 24/7 who has more than 1,000 ebooks. Those are the ones bought to be read on a Blackberry/Windows/Palm hand held or desk top. I also have quite a few for my Rocket ebook reader, HIE and Franklin ebook readers. I have put most of those away however because I always have my (now)Blackberry with me to read on. I am leaning towards getting a dedicated device that is cheaper, lighter, and reads more formats than my other dedicated readers but the right one hasn't come out yet.

I did get started reading ebooks on my Palm and have bought books primarily from Fictionwise, Baen, Powells and Mobipocket, although I do frequent a few eclectic ebookstores. What can I say, paper is nice but ebooks are lighter and always with you.

I've bought 221 books in ereader format (for Palm) and 19 books since February for my Kindle. With the Palm, I would buy a dozen at a time, to make it worth my while. So I always had a stash that I hadn't read yet. With the Kindle, I've downloaded 15-20 samples, but I won't buy each one until I've read the sample and am ready to read the book. So there is a different purchase thought pattern now. :bookworm:

Wow, you folks just go on crazy buying sprees. I generally have a "to read" stack (not really a stack any more with ebooks) but never more than a half dozen or so. I want to make sure I read (or at least try to read) everything I buy.

BOb

I'm guesstimating I'm in the 11-50 (though closer to the 11-15 mark). Heck I may even have less than that, but I rounded up just in case... I just got my reader last week and stocked up, but I've bought some pdfs in the past to read on my laptop. I'm including the dictionaries and such in my numbers.

Most of the ones I've bought are from lulu.com and fictionwise, though I have bought ones in the past from small independent sites too.

Even though I bought a handful of books, I've converted several word docs containing fanfiction and have been reading those the most, recently. Of course fanfiction was my main motivation for purchasing a dedicated reader in the first place. I also found a few of the pdfs I was planning to read don't convert so well, so I'm not sure when I'll get around to reading those...:book2:

51-100 for me. Less than 50, but the last Fictionwise sale doubled my purchases.

Mostly from Fictionwise but in .lit format. I do not have a dedicated ebook device and use my trusty PDA as my ebook reader.

Well I've got over 500, but probably less than 1000, all from Baen or Fictionwise. Since both those are multiformat, I'm not keeping separate track of mobi vs rocket. I've bought a couple of books encrypted for my Rocket, but stopped doing that a long time ago, and all but one of those have been re-released by Baen.

I've got enough SF to read that I haven't started after all the PG stuff.

Wow, you folks just go on crazy buying sprees. I generally have a "to read" stack (not really a stack any more with ebooks) but never more than a half dozen or so. I want to make sure I read (or at least try to read) everything I buy.

BOb

Ditto.

I'm ashamed to admit that I've got literally thousands of eBooks that I've not read. I've read almost none of the books that I've posted here, and probably under 10% of all the Baen books that I've bought. I've bought every "Webscriptions" release that Baen have ever made simply to show my financial support for the "good guys" of the publishing industry.

I'm trying my best to catch up :).

Less than 10. I don't buy anything until I read what I've got, which includes several printed books. Then I procure about 5 new books, and that has included so far 3 e-books.

I will say I'd buy a heckuva lot more, even DRM'd Sony Formatted books, if they were AVAILABLE, and PRICED RIGHT. I send Sony daily requests for titles, and have opened several "support" tickets for pricing discrepancies (where they are wanting $18 for a book available as an $8 paperback).

To date they have never added a title or author I've requested, or adjusted a price I've reported.

I went into this with my eyes wide open, so I'm not caught off-guard by this. I knew I'd be frustrated, and I was right.

I've bought 100+ ebooks (none with DRM) for reading on my Palm. Most of them have come from Fictionwise, but a few have also come from Baen and other smaller publishers. I've read about half of them with Mobipocket, but I'm starting to switch over to eReader format because the Fictionwise guys are less evil than Amazon.

I've only purchased 10 so far: 6 from Baen, 1 from Fictionwise and 3 from Amazon. (Plus 1 blog from Amazon)

It's not that I have anything against purchasing, but I've only had my Kindle for a couple of weeks, and I've got so much stuff from the Baen Free Library and the Tor Website promotion and Manybooks.net and so on that I haven't read anywhere *near* all of it.

Plus, well, 10 books in less than a month, that's a fair amount, really.

At least 200 maybe more.

And I count the e-magazines as one per issue not per subscription.

I purchased about 60-70 ebooks and downloaded about 600-700 of which I have read about 300. I would buy many more if there existed the perfect ebook store in which the selected were three orders of magnitude beyond what is typical now, the price was no more than 2/3 of a paper book, and it was EASY to purchase and download books. Of course I wouldn't mind DRM *provided* once I had purchased a book I would have guaranteed access to it for my lifetime despite the bookstore going out of business, the current DRM becomes obsolete and so on.


As I said this requires a perfect ebook store.

I think my correct answer should be: way too many

Amy

Bought over three hundred, downloaded scads for free, ereader is my medium of choice

I'm definitely in the 500+ section. Started with pdf and ereader formats, but since I got my Cybook I pretty much stick to mobipocket. Have bought from Ereader, Diesel, Fictionwise etc, but have found that BooksonBoard tend to be the cheapest so generally buy there unless they don't have the book I want.

CiaraG.

Have bought from Ereader, Diesel, Fictionwise etc, but have found that BooksonBoard tend to be the cheapest

Really? I found Fictionwise to be the cheapest, although sometimes instead of price reduction they give you micropay rebate, still it is the same money as long as you plan to come back and buy again. For example right now I have $7.19 on micropay acc. Next time I want to buy a book that costs approximately $8.00, I will use micropay rebate.

Really? I found Fictionwise to be the cheapest, although sometimes instead of price reduction they give you micropay rebate, still it is the same money as long as you plan to come back and buy again. For example right now I have $7.19 on micropay acc. Next time I want to buy a book that costs approximately $8.00, I will use micropay rebate.

For the first week or so of the release Fictionwise has bigger rebates - even up to 100% - if you do not mind getting them as micropay. But after that BonB has the better price usually.

OK. Thanks.
I will keep an eye on both of them.