MobileRead Forums - View Single Post - Have you ever purchased a book when it was available at a library?

haertig · 06-23-2025, 12:21 AM

A handful of times I have used library loans like I used Kindle Unlimited - as an extended "Look Inside" for Amazon ebook purchases. Sometimes those Look Inside things would show you Tables of Contents and other meaningless stuff (for previews) and then when you got to the actual text of the novel you wanted to preview, you only got to see a few sentences. If the book was on KU, or available in my local library, I sometimes checked it out there to read enough of it to see if it was worth purchasing. You don't need a lot of previewing to see if you like an authors writing style or not, but that preview can't be just TOC and other garbage.

Since I am a slow reader, KU was usually not cost effective for me to read books because I could outright buy the book for less than the monthly KU fee would cost me to read it strictly on KU. Similar for library loans, I wouldn't have enough time in the loan period to finish the book. So, by using library loans and brief KU subscriptions (when they were on sale for 99¢) as extended previews, I could create well curated lists of books for buying later (often times waiting for sales and promos to pop up to trigger the purchase).

I did the majority of this "extended preview check-out" stuff on KU, but I did do it a few times for local library loans. KU doesn't have big name popular authors for previewing, but local libraries do.

Unfortunately, as KU and Amazon "advanced" (if you call it that), and made "Download for USB Transfer Later" go away, I no longer use KU or buy ebooks from Amazon. I just have a personal thing about letting Amazon into my Kindle via WiFi. So I just don't allow that (permanent Airplane Mode for my Kindle). And, to double-nuke my "extended previews", the wait list time for a big name popular authors at the library(the authors newer books) is so long these days that it no longer works for extended previews. I still use local library loans for a lot of the stuff I read, but it's always older stuff that doesn't have long wait lists, if any wait list at all. There are enough books that I haven't read yet that I don't have to bother myself with only the new, long wait list, ones.

So nowadays I don't "borrow from the library first, then purchase later". But I used to...

06-23-2025, 12:21 AM	#30
haertig Wizard Posts: 1,897 Karma: 31522252 Join Date: Sep 2017 Device: PW3, Fire HD8 Gen7, Moto G7, Sansa Clip v2, Ruizu X26	A handful of times I have used library loans like I used Kindle Unlimited - as an extended "Look Inside" for Amazon ebook purchases. Sometimes those Look Inside things would show you Tables of Contents and other meaningless stuff (for previews) and then when you got to the actual text of the novel you wanted to preview, you only got to see a few sentences. If the book was on KU, or available in my local library, I sometimes checked it out there to read enough of it to see if it was worth purchasing. You don't need a lot of previewing to see if you like an authors writing style or not, but that preview can't be just TOC and other garbage. Since I am a slow reader, KU was usually not cost effective for me to read books because I could outright buy the book for less than the monthly KU fee would cost me to read it strictly on KU. Similar for library loans, I wouldn't have enough time in the loan period to finish the book. So, by using library loans and brief KU subscriptions (when they were on sale for 99¢) as extended previews, I could create well curated lists of books for buying later (often times waiting for sales and promos to pop up to trigger the purchase). I did the majority of this "extended preview check-out" stuff on KU, but I did do it a few times for local library loans. KU doesn't have big name popular authors for previewing, but local libraries do. Unfortunately, as KU and Amazon "advanced" (if you call it that), and made "Download for USB Transfer Later" go away, I no longer use KU or buy ebooks from Amazon. I just have a personal thing about letting Amazon into my Kindle via WiFi. So I just don't allow that (permanent Airplane Mode for my Kindle). And, to double-nuke my "extended previews", the wait list time for a big name popular authors at the library(the authors newer books) is so long these days that it no longer works for extended previews. I still use local library loans for a lot of the stuff I read, but it's always older stuff that doesn't have long wait lists, if any wait list at all. There are enough books that I haven't read yet that I don't have to bother myself with only the new, long wait list, ones. So nowadays I don't "borrow from the library first, then purchase later". But I used to...