Do you regret your ebook impulse buying?

[dsvick]

Originally Posted by K-Thom

Yeah, sneaky little devils that they are. That thought occured to me too when I browsed through their stuff ...

I actually downloaded them all knowing full well exactly why they had done it. I also like the pricing on their for purchase books as well. Which is why for every book I purchase from them I am going to send an email to the publisher and the author telling them I purchased it and why.

[pdurrant]

Originally Posted by dsvick

I actually downloaded them all knowing full well exactly why they had done it. I also like the pricing on their for purchase books as well. Which is why for every book I purchase from them I am going to send an email to the publisher and the author telling them I purchased it and why.

When you do come to buy, don't forget to take a look at the webscription month where the book was originally sold. You might well find more books in the month that you want - if a month has three books you want, you're up on the deal (generally $15 instead of $18), and you get another three free books or so.

[sakura-panda]

When I started working at the library in high school, I kept checking out books that I thought I wanted to read without considering whether I had time to read them. At one point I think I had 20 books at home that I had checked out! After I renewed some of them a couple of times, I decided that I really didn't need to keep so many books at once and dropped down to about three or four at a time.

Now that I buy books, instead of borrowing them, I still like to get about three or four books at once. Even before buying my reader, I'd go to the bookstore to buy one $15 paperback that I knew they would have and spend another $40 on three more books that I didn't know I wanted before I got there. With ebooks, I seem to not count the free ones and I end up with seven or eight books in my cart, although only four of them cost me money.

For 2010 I am trying to limit myself to "just in time" book purchases -- buying the one book I want to read. However, it is so difficult for me to do that I have found it easier to not buy any books at all.

I only regret one ebook purchase -- His Majesty's Dragon by Naomi Novik -- and only because the price on it dropped before I took the time to read it. (If I had read it before it became a free book, it wouldn't have bothered me at all. It's just the idea that since I hadn't bothered to read it, there was no benefit to buying it as early as I had!)

[dsvick]

Originally Posted by pdurrant

When you do come to buy, don't forget to take a look at the webscription month where the book was originally sold. You might well find more books in the month that you want - if a month has three books you want, you're up on the deal (generally $15 instead of $18), and you get another three free books or so.

I never thought of that. I've only read through the webscriptions process once and plan on going back and read it in more detail when I get my reader

thanks for the tip though!!

[Sydney's Mom]

I have had my kindle for a little over a year, and have bought about 30 books, which is about what I bought before I had my electronic reader. But that was before MR taught me how to use my local library. Since I got a Chicago Public Library card, I buy ebooks pretty much like I bought pbooks - I get most of what I want from the library, unless it is an author or series I really like, in which case I buy it. I no longer buy a bunch of books before I go on vacation. I find the samples at Amazon really cut down on impulse buying - I downloaded a couple hundred samples of a certain genre, and it is almost like reading a book. As I finish each one, I either buy the book (very few), delete the sample, or add the book to my Wishlist. Oh,and I just realized you can make your Wishlist private, in case you don't want everyone to see the junk you are reading. I think samples have changed by book buying habits more than my ereader.

[Alisa]

[QUOTE=Sydney's Mom;739134Oh,and I just realized you can make your Wishlist private, in case you don't want everyone to see the junk you are reading.[/QUOTE]

You can also have multiple wish lists. I have a public list and a private list. Sadly you can't have lists where you specify who can see them. There are things that I might put on my wish list but they're more than I would want most people paying for a gift but my husband might buy them for me.