[DiapDealer]

Originally Posted by issybird

I think ereaders (the people, not the devices) of the voracious type have been very slow to adapt their buying/hoarding habits to the new reality*. Back in the paper day, you needed a backlog, so you always had something to read on hand.

Guilty. Birthdays, Christmas, trips to the mall (those programs in elementary school where you ordered books and they brought them to you!)--these were all used to stock up on as much reading material as possible. I never knew when I might have the chance to buy books again.

Originally Posted by issybird

There also was the factor that you had to pick something up when you saw it, as it might not be available later**.

I've never really encountered this issue. Even though they might disappear off the bookseller's shelf, they were usually available from the library. My tastes weren't (aren't) quite so eclectic that titles ever became totally unobtainable to me. The switch to ebooks has pretty much eliminated that possibility altogether in my case.

Originally Posted by issybird

Both of these factors have been largely obviated by digital books so there's no reason to have a huge virtual stack of unread books, but old habits die hard, as they say. Huge sales (Kobo!) were also a factor, but much less so now; there's especially little reason to cross platforms.

Those habits DID die hard for me. They just didn't take a long time to do it. A handful of epiphanies about how I buy and read, and--poof!--no more stockpiling/curating hangups. Deleting all the freebies I wasn't ready to read (or was never going to read), and all the books I was never going to want to re-read left me with a very manageable "owned" TBR. From then on, my main tbr list became entirely virtual. So no guilt was attached to completely ignoring it and buying something else to read instead.

Originally Posted by issybird

Yeah, I know, rereading. To the extent you do, it would make some difference, but that's when platform matters. And after the huge shakeout, I don't think anyone's library is at a big risk with Kindle or Kobo or Google. (I can hear it now, "I wouldn't trust any seller to keep my books." My own reaction is, "That was then; this is now.")

I'm sure I've mentioned several times that I don't do a lot of rereading, so this is much less of an issue for me. But I do do it occasionally. In those rare cases, I don't mind checking websites for previously purchased copies. And even if those library backups proved to be unavailable (for whatever reason), chances are, I wouldn't mind buying them again (especially if the author is still alive and writing). I've said before that I consider the experience of reading a good book (even only once) to be well worth the average price of admission. In fact, I usually consider it to be a huge bargain. The possibility of a book I want to read again being entirely unavailable for purchase anywhere in the future??... Well, that's simply not something I'm even remotely concerned with.

Originally Posted by issybird

I guess my personal bottom line is that I can't see myself not being able to find books to read. Even if Kobo and Kindle simultaneously went belly up overnight, I'd dust myself off and make a quick side trip to OverDrive or Project Gutenberg while I regrouped. Curating a large elibrary seems less and less worth the effort to me, compared to the benefits of on-demand reading. And I suspect most who have large elibraries are still in the red when it comes to money spent, as compared to what they'd have spent on each book purchased at market price when read.

That's me in a nutshell. Buy 'em (or find 'em), read 'em, and jot down what I thought about 'em on Goodreads. Worry about re-reads later (because I've already gotten my money's worth). It's been quite a liberating experience for me.