Your Dead Tree Book Shelves?

[rhadin]

Originally Posted by TenaciousBadger

I realised that, for me, TBR piles are another "out of sight, out of mind" technique. I rarely read the stuff I set aside, especially with ebooks. There's a ton of new stuff out there, so much so that I forget about the TBR and when I browse through it, it's just "meh, no longer interested".

This is a problem (insofar as one views it as a problem) that has increased geometrically with the advent of ebooks and the rapid growth of self-publishing that ebooks has fostered. I suspect that readers have become hoarders, even though we are reading more than we did in the pre-ebook days.

I've noted in my own TBR habits a rise in the number of TBR books and a decline in the number of books that move off the TBR pile. I can directly trace this growth and decline equilibrium to my purchase of my first dedicated ebook reader device.

I find that although my hardcover TBR pile does grow, it grows much more slowly than the ebook TBR pile. I also note that the hardcover books do, eventually, get read, which is not true of the ebooks.

I think the difference is that I paid a significant amount of money for the hardcovers and so feel a vested interest in not wholly wasting my money just to be a hoarder. OTOH, the vast majority of the ebooks were free -- either as a result of author pricing at publication or discount coupons. Many of the ebooks are books that I would not have bought at any price except free.

I think this price issue is the key because I have also noted that if I have paid for an ebook, it tends to be put at the top of the TBR pile and often does get read. I really need to learn not to hoard free ebooks!

[astrangerhere]

My partner and I had six 6-foot shelves up until I got my Nook. That has now been reduced to 1 full shelf full of graphic novels and trades of comic books, and one full shelf of imported Japanese books, nonfiction books and the fiction i opted to keep in paper rather than replace in e-format.

All the rest has been traded in to used book stores or donated to PTAs.

[Shimarenda]

My wife and I have 9 bookshelves around the house, all of them practically full. That's one of the reasons she decided Kindles would be a good thing. We're going through the books now and culling them. Reference books and hardback fantasy will likely stay, but a number of things will go--including the paperback reading copies of the aforementioned fantasy books.