Ebook Buying Addicts' Support Thread

[CRussel]

Well, after going several weeks without buying a book except for a Baen Bundle, I broke down yesterday and bought Stars and Empire 2. But at 10 novels, all space opera, for $0.99, I really couldn't pass it up. Not technically a freebie, but close enough that I won't beat myself up. Given that I already had one (Quarter Share, by Nathan Lowell), that makes it 11 cents a book. But I need to keep my self focused and not buy anything that isn't absolutely required for the rest of the month. I splurged and ordered a new Voyage, and the price for it was behaving myself about random book buys.

[HomeInMyShoes]

My last purchase was May 12th, 2014. I paid $1.99 for Mother Night by Kurt Vonnegut.

[pdurrant]

I succumbed to the Diana Wynne Jones omnibus in the Canadian Kobo store. Just too good to pass up.

[Fbone]

I purchased the latest Preston & Child from the UK store. They are an auto-purchase. It was couponable in the UK.

[pdurrant]

Of course, not all ebook buying is bad. In fact, looking back over the year, I think the only purchase I actually regret is the 19 Dr Who comic adventures, as I'm not really into graphic novels.

[CRussel]

I wish I could say the same, Paul. Oh, in general, I think I did better this year than last about buying too many books, but still I can look on far too many that I shouldn't have bought. (I bitterly regret that Catherine Asaro, for example.) Sigh. Well, I'm just going to have to try even harder next year.

[pdurrant]

Well, having just read a stinker from it, I almost regret a Humble Bundle, but since I only paid $1 and it had one book I wanted and one book I've enjoyed, I have to count it a success.

[ATDrake]

Well, normally I don't post here anymore* since I've embraced the fact that I'm a hoarder and an enabler and have no intention of changing.

But after some consideration, I did resist picking up a deep-discount francophone ebook from Hachette's Black Moon Thriller imprint which I was vaguely tempted by, because it's just so rare that anything from the (non-self-pub) French-language publishers (non-couponable) ever goes on sale. Like, once in a blue moon rare.

I was thinking of getting Pierre-Yves Tinguely's Codex Lethalis kind of pour encourager les autres sales and because despite my initial non-interest in the apparent storyline, there was actually a pretty nice in-depth 3-star review on the Amazon France website saying that while this was a very formulaic sort of thriller, it did the formula quite well and I'm kind of morbidly curious about what US-style hard-boiled police procedural cops vs serial killer thrillers set in Los Angeles written by Franco-Swiss authors who live in Europe end up being like‡.

But after buying a few other of the sale thrillers at a lower price point, I decided I could satisfy my morbid curiosity about French-flavoured US-set typical genre-style writing with just Frédéric Mars' Non-Stop Manhattan agents vs maybe-terrorism and murder thriller at the 99 cent mark, and police procedurals (especially the ones involving the gory violent kinds of serial killers with horror-ish overtones) are really not one of my preferred subsubgenres anyway, unless there's something unusual about the setting or characters or storyline which grabs my attention.

So I'm pretty meh on spending $2.99 to read someone's debut novel which involves "boiled eyeballs", even if it regularly costs $7.99 under another publisher and would probably be $11.99+ off sale like the other regularly-priced Hachette books from the same imprint. At the 99 cent mark, maybe if it drops in the future, but right here and now? No, I don't think so.

That said, I did scoop most of the other discounted Black Moon Thriller sale books since they had interesting-sounding storylines or settings (or were from authors I already liked) and will be putting that $2.99 saved towards the slightly higher price-pointed sale ones I'd been hoping would drop a bit more and which I've have decided is unlikely to happen since Hachette seems to be experimenting with different price points for the same authors anyway and I might as well buy them before they raise the prices again.

And I reserve the right to change my mind, should I come across more glowing reviews stating convincingly that PYT's debut thriller is a wonderful and engagingly-done work which serves as a fine introduction to a promising new author, not to be missed.

* Also, I flat-out didn't pretty much didn't buy any new ebooks† at all for roughly an 11 month period anyway. So I think I've kind of used up my "resisting the urge to purchase stuff" quota for the next few years. Admittedly, I did it out of sheer apathy, but I still did it.

† Deep discount backlist re-releases of stuff I've previously read and own in paper don't count. Nor do Baen bundles which happen to contain them.

‡ I freely admit I'm picturing some kind of amusing cargo-cult-like construction which is slightly but obviously off, perhaps in an Uncanny Valley fashion.

[Tarana]

I cannot read using the Kindle app. I find the margins on my iPhone 5 to be an abomination. The screen is too small . . . does not properly support KF8.

I'm rather puzzled over the margins you describe. I have the Overdrive, Kobo and Kindle apps on my Itouch 5. They all have the same narrow margins. I wonder if (a) there was an update that you didn't get or (b) some setting that is making your app act differently? I use larger text, so larger margins would indeed be annoying to me. Can't say anything about the KF8 since I guess I don't notice it.

[issybird]

I've been organizing my ebooks in line with my reading goals for 2015 and it's sobering. I won't give a total of unread books (I can't, heh, I don't want to know), but I have years' worth of high-priority reads.

The kind of good news is that I held it to seven books bought in each of the last three months of the years, and only three in September. This reflects, as will be obvious to denizens of this thread, changes in Kobo's discounts. But seven books per month is still far too many, given the size of my backlog. So, it's with great trepidation that I'm setting myself a lmit of an average of one purchased ebook per week next year. This will be hard for me. Good vibes appreciated.

[DrNefario]

I'm kind of in the same boat. I'm struggling hard not to buy another book before the end of the year. If I succed, it will be only the second month in 2014 where I have read a greater value of books than I have bought.

The truth is I have plenty of excellent books to read, and really don't need any more, no matter how tempting, but I still can't stop myself adding to my wishlists and checking deals all the time, and I've treated myself to a fair few unnecessary purchases over the holiday period. There is a lure to the shopping side of it which seems to be completely independent of the reading side.

[issybird]

Originally Posted by DrNefario

The truth is I have plenty of excellent books to read, and really don't need any more, no matter how tempting, but I still can't stop myself adding to my wishlists and checking deals all the time, and I've treated myself to a fair few unnecessary purchases over the holiday period. There is a lure to the shopping side of it which seems to be completely independent of the reading side.

Indeed. The compulsion to buy a book now, even if I have no immediate need to read it and there's no reason to think it won't be available when I do get to it, is a pull I don't resist nearly strongly enough. I've long known that I'd save quite a bit of money if I changed to an on-demand system, where I only bought a book when I was about to start it (and the beauty of ebooks, of course, is that this is doable), price not being a consideration.

I think in part it's a carryover from pbook days, where you really did need to have a library of sorts on hand, for your next read. (Not that I didn't overbuy pbooks, too, as my groaning shelves attest.) Past time for me to get over ehoarding, though, which is the kind of saving that isn't.

[BelleZora]

Originally Posted by DrNefario

...[snip] There is a lure to the shopping side of it which seems to be completely independent of the reading side.

No kidding. Since it is not rational to continue buying books only to add them to my hundreds of unread books, I must have a goal that allows book purchases for the MR book clubs or that I want to read NOW, but limits the backlog. I received $160 in Amazon gift cards this past week (Christmas and birthday) and briefly considered limiting my spending to that in 2015, but that won't ever happen. So I'm adopting issybird's goal of one book purchase weekly. I failed at 2014's $40 monthly budget, so I feel a bit silly thinking I can make this work. But I'm giving it a shot.

[pdurrant]

Originally Posted by issybird

So, it's with great trepidation that I'm setting myself a lmit of an average of one purchased ebook per week next year. This will be hard for me. Good vibes appreciated.

That's a tough challenge. My advice would be to start with no more than one every two weeks, so that when a really good offer comes along you have some slack.

I didn't do that this year in my challenge, and it made the last few months really hard (although helped by the terrible odds on the Kobo contests).

[pdurrant]

Originally Posted by issybird

I've long known that I'd save quite a bit of money if I changed to an on-demand system, where I only bought a book when I was about to start it (and the beauty of ebooks, of course, is that this is doable), price not being a consideration.

Even with my backlog (750 unread at present), I think it would cost me a lot more if I moved to a 'only buy it just before reading model'. My having (a more than) sufficient cushion to keep me in reading material, I'm able to wait for special offers, coupons and other kinds of good deals on books I want to read.

My mean purchase price for 2014 is just $1.61. My mean read book cost for 2014 is $2.55. So the average cost of books in my TBR pile is going steadily down.

If I was buying 'on-demand' at (say) $4.99 per ebook, my read book cost would have doubled for 2014. And that ratio is going to get worse.

And it's not as if I'm filling my TBR with books that are only 'OK' or just 'look interesting', as I must admit I used to do from Fictionwise. Nearly all my purchases in 2014 are from favourite authors or series, with just a few well-recommended new authors/series when they were on really good offer.

There are advantages to a large TBR. Even though I'd still prefer to have mine down to under 200.