Ebook Buying Addicts' Support Thread

[pdurrant]

Originally Posted by amward

How many freebies do we have to get before they count do you reckon?

I don't think they count at all. I feel no need to add freebies to my TBR list. I get them just on the off-chance that I might want them in the future, and since they're free, and storage is cheap, there's no disadvantage to getting them now.

Some might argue that there's not much difference between very cheap and free, but I'd count even a $0.01 ebook as a purchase.

There is, after all, always a chance that any book might become free between now and the time you'd get around to reading it. And while there are very occasionally offers that work out as cheaper than free, they're so rare I ignore the possibility.

[wyndslash]

hehehe, free books while browsing at a bookstore today, it turns out that my sister can redeem a gift certificate with her credit card (it's a promo from a credit card company) so i can get free books....

[wyndslash]

Originally Posted by CWatkinsNash

I can do a book a day for a while, but I can't sustain it for more than a couple of weeks before I need to slow down for a bit. Otherwise I get "book overload".

heh, that's what happened to me during my summer vacation. i read too many books from one genre that i ended up getting sick of it and taking a break from it

Originally Posted by anamardoll

This, it's like sprinting. You have to slow down and take a breather. Or, rather, I do.

I always set my GoodReads challenge to 365, but I don't ever expect to meet it. I just like to see my little progress bar.

yeah, i love just being able to count how many books i read for the year. does GR record it, you think? i mean, records of past years' challenges? i first set mine to 100, then upped it to 150 when GR told me to xD

[maggievnc]

Originally Posted by Figwit

My name is Figwit and I am an ebook buying addict too. I try to limit myself to the cheapies or the freebies where possible but now and then the inner dragon has to be fed with something a bit more expensive. I will have to live a very long life to read all the books I have collected as I have overflowing bookshelves of paper books too.

Hey, I coudn't identify more with your confession...
I got actually cured (well, partly cured....) after having donated about 400 printed books to the local library, from which at least 50% were not red!

I think the solution for accumulating e-books due to your dragon demands is to have a deal with him (or her..) that for each book you download you are committed to read X books.....
how about that?
p.s. i think you have a great sense of humor and a good "hand" for writing.

Good luck to all of us, although i truely believe that among all addictions - collecting books is, in general, a good one...

[caleb72]

I realised I've only actually bought around 84 of the 350 or so ebooks I have. I'm doing OK from a financial point of view I think.

Of course due to major bookstores closing down I also managed to buy quite a few paperbacks during that period as well.

EDIT: Should mention that those not bought were definitely not stolen.

[pdurrant]

Originally Posted by maggievnc

for each book you download you are committed to read X books.....
how about that?

This is a good one to try. I wanted to keep X above 3 for the whole of this year. I did quite well until Fictionwise's 60% discount in May. Now X is below 1. I hope to get it back to 1 before the end of the year.

For some of us a bit of complete abstinence is necessary, I think.

[wyndslash]

i'm almost determined to finish reading the stuff that i already have from my TBR list by the end of the year. hopefully, i don't get side-tracked any longer

EDIT: I also have to say, that while browsing in the bookstores earlier in the mall, i keep getting a high just from touching the beautiful new books. liking both pbooks and ebooks is going to be costly

[Poppaea]

Hello,

my name is Poppaea and I am an ebook hoarder. Thanks to Kovid I am spared the fate of a hoarding messie and I am grateful for that.

I have 1,170 ebooks in Calibre.

BUT I only bought 31 of these

for making me realize it is the hoarding and not the buying I am guilty of. My estimation would have been at least a hundred bougth books

[pdurrant]

Originally Posted by Poppaea

for making me realize it is the hoarding and not the buying I am guilty of. My estimation would have been at least a hundred bougth books

It sounds like you're doing fine. Even 1,139 free ebooks don't count. 39 bought books is no problem at all!

[Poppaea]

Originally Posted by pdurrant

It sounds like you're doing fine. Even 1,139 free ebooks don't count. 39 bought books is no problem at all!

Only partially. The idea was to NOT spend money on book as I spent a lot on ereaders and normally read mostly classics anyway. Now with the freebies I was sucked into spending as I had the occasional mystery-freebie and bought the following books in the series. This has happened a couple of times now. And I also bought books that aren't public domain jet that I wanted badly.

So these books were more than I bargained for

[ATDrake]

I've been tempted by Amazon's Summer sale and I still intend to pick up a few more things, but the list of candidates has become vastly cut down after I discovered that some of the more tempting prospects come in Topaz format (mostly the interesting-looking academic-ish stuff, aargh).

I don't care how cheap they are, I'm not paying for Topaz format (unless the book is exceptional and that's the only way I can get it when I want it, which these aren't).

Also, anything over $1.99 that I can get at the library, I don't need to buy unless it's a worthy well-reputed book of the sort I would normally buy. And I don't think I actually see many of those in the sale list, though there are a few prospects that I might go look up at the library to check if they actually do merit my money (a process which I suspect will eliminate quite a number from the potential list).

[wyndslash]

@atdrake: same here. i usually check out if it's available at my uni's lib, then if it's not and the price is good enough, then i'd buy it. i bought a lot at that sale

and i'm not sure i'm familiar with topaz format. care to enlighten me?

[ATDrake]

Topaz format is that stuff when it looks kind of like a PDF version of the book where you can change the font size up or down, but otherwise looks like they just dumped a page scan of a paper book onto your Kindle.

It's widely despised because it tends to look ugly and be unstable and crash/freeze the older models of Kindle (and huge filesizes with little reason for them).

Here's an example of one of the Topaz books that I've been tempted by, which happily turns out to be the same price in ePub over at B&N: A Brief History of the Spanish Language

If you download the sample to your Kindle, you'll see what I mean.

[wyndslash]

oh, i see, thanks! ugh...i'm having a hard enough time with pdf files on my kindle *sigh*

[Kevin2960]

My name is Kevin2960 ... I'm an eBook addict ... and one day I plan to Learn how to read !