TBR Shelves

[Atunah]

For a time I went into a freebie click frenzy. I got my first kindle in 2008, and at that time freebies were fantastic books. I am talking books that ended up being close to $10 again later. Those were mostly publishers. Then there was a time, I think around 2010 or so where suddenly freebies were everywhere. I got caught up in the shiny.
I stopped doing that in 2011-2012 or so and now only get free books that are equally vetted from those I pay money for. Sometimes they end up being books I was about to pay money for.
I deleted about 900 books a few months back, which were mostly from that early kindle period.

I do note in calibre what I paid for a book, that is mostly to keep track of my budget over time. But on my kindle, they all go in a collection called unread and in the genre and subgenre collections. Since I been buying books and getting free books since 2008, there are many times I can't even remember if I paid for a book or not.

So at this point I treat them all the same since I vetted them the same. Many of my freebies now I have to say are back list titles that were at one point put out by big publishers.

So for me, I don't read a book first just because I paid this or that for it. Only time I do that is if I am in a series and have been waiting for the new one and I have to read it right away. But in general, it doesn't matter to me. Maybe that is because of the type of freebies I get.

In the end, if I did my vetting right, its all about the book. I buy more with money though than I get free books. I am just selective on that.

[bookaho!ic]

Originally Posted by DiapDealer

That's fair.
(Although a similarly high number (426) of purchased, unread TBR books could bespeak the same lack of discrimination, no?)

well the almost 600 freebies are from going through amazon daily deals and not alot of discrimination just picking books on the genre i like

however the purchased ones are all by authors i like, full collections eg jodi picoult, stephen king james patterson or are ones i have picked up because i liked a freebie.

I am not one that spends money willy nilly and have put thought into my purchases just not my freebies...

[faithbw]

When I first started e-reading, I did consider freebies to be part of my TBR. Then not too long ago I purged by TBR and the freebies were the first to go. Most of the freebies I did read weren't that great and I stopped downloading them ages ago.

[sun surfer]

I've never taken freebies. That is, those that I wasn't already actively seeking out (there are many great free books here on MR, if you are already searching for them).

I have plenty enough TBR and my standards are too high (and my time too short) to ever bother with even taking, let alone reading, books just because they are free.

I will add one caveat though - I consider myself lucky because I'm very fond of classics which are so easily obtained free with the ascension of e-readers. So I know that even if I were completely broke, I could easily read for years and years, if not my entire life, on free high-quality classics (and of course I could probably get other more recent books I'm interested in through a library and so read most of all that I wanted completely free if need be). If someone didn't like classics as much though, and had a tight budget, I could see more of an allure to freebies.

[pdurrant]

I answered no, but that's not quite accurate. I do have some freebies in my TBR list - about 160. And I've read 180 or so other freebies.

But the vast majority of freebies in my calibre database are just something that sounded interesting in a genre I usually like from a traditional publisher. But very rarely self-published. There are far too many self-published freebies to go collecting them, especially as the quality is so variable.

[CWatkinsNash]

I solve this dilemma by not having a TBR.

[DiapDealer]

Originally Posted by CWatkinsNash

I solve this dilemma by not having a TBR.

And we have a winner!

[dreams]

Originally Posted by Atunah

For a time I went into a freebie click frenzy. I got my first kindle in 2008, and at that time freebies were fantastic books. I am talking books that ended up being close to $10 again later. Those were mostly publishers. <snip>

I did the same, although they were mostly from Sony and later epubs from other stores. Then when I got my Kindle, there were still some great freebies from known authors and publishers. I can read my epubs on my KFire, so no problem.
Now, I usually only pick up freebies from known authors / publishers or previously published authors. I do pick up quite a few interesting looking unknown authors, as I have been very surprised by some. I do check if it has been mentioned here and all the reviews of 3 and below before I add it to my library. I have very few that I have abandoned due to bad editing, plot, etc.. It doesn't bother me at all to start a book and then delete it, if I don't care for it.

[crossi]

I only download books I expect to read. I don't look for free books then decide if I want them, I look for books I want then see if I want to buy them. The only free ones I've got were a few replacements for paper books where the ebook was free. Thank you Baen. Oh and a few public domain classics downloaded when I first got my reader.

[Tarana]

Freebies, with extremely rare exceptions, don't justify even the expense of a one-click.

For yourself, clearly, this is true. That's fine and certainly valid. I think it depends on your selections and where you are getting the freebees. I got Game of Thrones AND Clash of Kings for free from Amazon. I get a freebee every month from Phoenix. I've been very pleased with many of the fantasy and science fiction that has been free through Kindle and B&N, many of which turn out simply to be backlist of established writers. I only get free books if it is in one of my preferred genres AND only if the description for the book really interests me. Doesn't really matter to me whether it's from a traditional publishing house or self-published. Sometimes the story from a self-published author is better than what is on the best seller list. I cannot understand, how anybody can tolerate certain authors and just recognize that I am apparently not that author's audience.

My suggestion, if you feel guilt, is to set up your freebees in a separate library. Last year I spent a month only reading freebees and it was great. I could enjoy the book with no expectations since the author was nearly always unknown to me. If you don't like the book, you have no guilt whatever to make yourself finish it. If you enjoy the book, you can look for more from that author. I too have a huge TBR list (and many are audiobooks, so much pricier), but that's just my fault for overspending. If I wasn't hoarding ebooks, I'd be hoarding more fabric.

[cadele]

I don't download as many freebies these days as I once did. I do like the ones where the first of a series by a known author goes free. They do factor in my TBR.

Completely unknown authors whose freebie interested me enough to try, I don't count. And I usually only get those if the ratings are okay. (If it is free I would rather just get the book without having to faff around with the preview first.)

I have found some good, unknown to me, authors that way and I don't have a bias against self published. People have to start somewhere and if the book fails to live up to expectations then it is just a long preview I never wasted further time on (DNF).

[Purple Lady]

Originally Posted by Atunah

For a time I went into a freebie click frenzy. I got my first kindle in 2008, and at that time freebies were fantastic books. I am talking books that ended up being close to $10 again later. Those were mostly publishers. Then there was a time, I think around 2010 or so where suddenly freebies were everywhere. I got caught up in the shiny.
I stopped doing that in 2011-2012 or so and now only get free books that are equally vetted from those I pay money for. Sometimes they end up being books I was about to pay money for.
I deleted about 900 books a few months back, which were mostly from that early kindle period.

I do note in calibre what I paid for a book, that is mostly to keep track of my budget over time. But on my kindle, they all go in a collection called unread and in the genre and subgenre collections. Since I been buying books and getting free books since 2008, there are many times I can't even remember if I paid for a book or not.

So at this point I treat them all the same since I vetted them the same. Many of my freebies now I have to say are back list titles that were at one point put out by big publishers.

So for me, I don't read a book first just because I paid this or that for it. Only time I do that is if I am in a series and have been waiting for the new one and I have to read it right away. But in general, it doesn't matter to me. Maybe that is because of the type of freebies I get.

In the end, if I did my vetting right, its all about the book. I buy more with money though than I get free books. I am just selective on that.

This sounds a lot like what I did - downloaded every freebie I could find when I got my first reader, and there were a lot of mainstream and a lot of quality freebies back then. There were also a bunch of Amazon pricing mistakes back then too. I'm still planning to go thru my freebies at some point and get rid of the ones that I will probably never read.

[Atunah]

Originally Posted by Purple Lady

This sounds a lot like what I did - downloaded every freebie I could find when I got my first reader, and there were a lot of mainstream and a lot of quality freebies back then. There were also a bunch of Amazon pricing mistakes back then too. I'm still planning to go thru my freebies at some point and get rid of the ones that I will probably never read.

There was some good stuff back in the day, even some for 49 cents, 1 cent, 10 cent. This was all before the agency went in place. It took me about 3 weeks to finish the culling. I updated my goodreads and calibre at the same time so I did them one by one. With 2 browsers since the my account page keeps refreshing every time you delete a book. That is annoying if you do like I did and start from the beginning, so backwards. I felt much better afterwards.

[Purple Lady]

Originally Posted by Atunah

There was some good stuff back in the day, even some for 49 cents, 1 cent, 10 cent. This was all before the agency went in place. It took me about 3 weeks to finish the culling. I updated my goodreads and calibre at the same time so I did them one by one. With 2 browsers since the my account page keeps refreshing every time you delete a book. That is annoying if you do like I did and start from the beginning, so backwards. I felt much better afterwards.

So that means I will feel much better in a year or so when I finally get around to it? If that soon.

[Marcy]

Like many it seems, I went freebie-nuts when I first got an ereader. I downloaded a lot of crap. Now I will look at a freebie and see if it sounds interesting before downloading it. I usually will only download a freebie that is in a genre I'm interested in and has a decent cover/synopsis. Having a pbook edition available is a helpful indicator of at least editing.

I recently went through my book pile and purged a bunch of the junk I downloaded in those early days. They really turned out to not be "free" since they wasted a bunch of my time sorting the rare wheat from the chaff.