Quote:
Originally Posted by BurBunny
If I'd not had the financial investment of having already purchased the book, I might never have persevered and finished them. Likely I'd never have gone beyond the first chapter.
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Today you can easily find online samples of most new books out there, reviews, opinions... so a one chapter sample is not that relevant for me.
Anyway if it's a new US book, I spend time in bookstores several times a week so it's easy to sample. With UK/overseas only books it is trickier, but I usually can decide to order or not based on subject, author, sample and I rarely got "burned" - actually I probably ordered on the 100 books scale from the UK/Canada/Australia/ and maybe 25-50 from France/francophone sphere in the past 5-10 years and there is only one book from the UK that I deeply regretted spending money on and two more that I sort of regret in the sense that I have not read them yet and now they have been published here in the US and are available at better prices, but I plan to read them sometimes.
But with free shipping from BD and nowadays the weak pound, buying books from the UK is just routine for me...
This being said, I easily have 100 books unread, partially read... sitting on my shelves, most likely more, while for paid ebooks maybe around 10-15 partially read/unread, but it rarely is because I ordered something and did not like.
I like to buy books and I also like to have many books to read at my convenience, and considering that many older books can be had for 4-5$ today, rarely over 10$, it is not even an expensive habit.