Quote:
Originally Posted by LadyKate
Ok now I am wondering if it is the numbers of the freebie books that bother you? I suggest just putting those freebies into calibre and making notes on them. They only take a couple of k or meg so are not going to be much of a bother on your computer.
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There are three issues with freebies, as I see it.
The first is sheer numbers. The more freebies, the harder it will be to know what you've got and to find something you'd like to read. This is not to pick on the poster upthread, but close to 6000 freebies is absurd. Even if you read a book a day, that's over 15 years' worth of reading, assuming you acquire nothing else in the interim.
The next issue is time. To make those freebies useful, you've got to add metadata, tag them, annotate them. The more freebies, the more granular the sorting has to be. This takes time, and why spend it on books that won't be read? Freebies aren't free if your time has a value.
The third reason is that most freebies are absolute and total junk. Why bother, especially given points one and two?
I'm not saying there isn't a point to a carefully curated collection of freebies according to your druthers and standards, but discernment up front is a necessity. Unfortunately, 6000 freebies is a probably a lost cause; it could never be worth the time to go through them, one by one, researching each to find out why it appealed in the first place. At most it's worth making one quick pass for the absolute cream and then drawing a line under them. And learning your lesson.
