Ebook Buying Addicts' Support Thread

[pdurrant]

Ah - I've just bought another book. It was on my wishlist, and had just dropped to £1.99 (from £4.49), and is still £7.99 at Kobo!

I'm still under budget, but I think I've rather blown my remaining February Budget in the first three days.... no more unexpected purchases for me until March!

Definitely a good buy though.

[issybird]

OK, I just used a coupon at Kobo UK to get a wish list book for about $4. It's $32.29 at Kobo US, so even after the coupon it would not have been a trifling sum.

Still two books under budget and I don't anticipate more purchases, but three books in three days in February means I have to be careful not to fall into old habits. Slippery slope and all that.

[DrNefario]

Some of my wishlist seems to have gone way up, recently, but I was caught out by a sudden £1.99 just now, too.

[pdurrant]

It is, of course, to be able to get these very much wanted books at bargain prices that we resist other tempting offers.

But as issybird says, we must be careful not to fall into old habits.

[Tarana]

I did break and bought a couple of books using Kobo discounts. One was a wishlist book. I got it as an omnibus (which was less than the individual title!). Another was a mystery omnibus then ended up under $1. I've avoided a lot of 'bad spending' with Kindle Unlimited, but that will come to an end at the end of this month (I was getting the 3 month special with 3 Audible credits). It's a good program if there are books in it that you want to read and you read more than $10 a month of them. For the rest of the year though, I want to focus on the books I already own and haven't read or listened.

Dropping one of my magazine subscriptions. Analog Science & Fact is more my sister's type of scifi (idea) than mine (action). I have lots of reading in Asimov, Lightspeed and Galaxy's Edge. I finally got around to reading the first Galaxy's Edge that I bought during the Kobocalypse and it is outstanding! The last story is a serialized novel, which would have forced me to buy the next one, but fortunately, I bought the first 5 Galaxy Edge editions at that time (.40 each).

[Rev. Bob]

I have discovered a bad thing...

As I mentioned some time ago, when the company was still offering B&N gift cards as a points redemption option, I use an app called Viggle to accumulate reward points while watching TV or listening to music. It's a pretty simple idea: one point/minute when you check into a show, 20 points/ad (mostly; some are higher), and 100 points/song (max 20/day, and no repeats). It's not much of a challenge for me to rack up 2500 points in a day, just as a point of reference.

Recently, they've started running their own digital rewards store, which I was mainly interested in for the movie/TV offers, as some of those are available as UltraViolet redemptions.

Imagine my surprise when I discovered that they now offer ebooks. Standard EPUBs that one can access through OverDrive and ADE, to boot.

Their selection's not huge, somewhere around half a million titles, and the only Big Five house that appears to be participating is HarperCollins, but it's a start. I've already moved three books from my "generally available" to "get through Viggle" list, and I intend to redeem at least one of those next time I'm at my regular computer.

Point pricing seems to vary a bit. My first test case is a $2.99 novella that'll cost me 8000 points, but I've seen other books that range up to 27,000 and even over 40,000 points each, so take that with a shaker of salt. This is very much a "dip my toe in to test the waters" experiment...but considering I've got over 410K points banked at the moment, it's not like I'm risking much.

[pdurrant]

Originally Posted by Rev. Bob

Imagine my surprise when I discovered that they now offer ebooks. Standard EPUBs that one can access through OverDrive and ADE, to boot.

[snip]

Point pricing seems to vary a bit. My first test case is a $2.99 novella that'll cost me 8000 points, but I've seen other books that range up to 27,000 and even over 40,000 points each, so take that with a shaker of salt. This is very much a "dip my toe in to test the waters" experiment...but considering I've got over 410K points banked at the moment, it's not like I'm risking much.

Hmm... so you have about $100 worth of points. I can see the temptation!

But try to treat it like cash. Don't buy an ebook just because it's available, only buy because you really want it, and it's a good deal.

[Rev. Bob]

Originally Posted by pdurrant

Hmm... so you have about $100 worth of points. I can see the temptation!

It's not that simple, as I said. That Big 5 novella is $2.99/8000, but a certain small-press book is $9.99/27000, and one of the Big 5 novels I checked was $12.99/43000 while American Sniper is $6.99/27000. Clearly, there are other factors at work; it's not a simple points-to-cash translation.

To venture into other media, an HD movie tends to average about 38000 points, and an iPad Air 2 is just under 2.1 million points.

[CRussel]

Good intentions shot to heck! The eARC for Dragon in Exile showed up today. Boy was that a hard fall off the wagon! OK, drag your sorry self back up onto it...

[issybird]

Originally Posted by CRussel

Good intentions shot to heck! The eARC for Dragon in Exile showed up today. Boy was that a hard fall off the wagon! OK, drag your sorry self back up onto it...

Some things can't be resisted. Better to pay full price for something you need to read NOW than the equivalent sum for several anemic bargains bought in part because of price.

That said, you've indulged, now back on your diet.

[pdurrant]

An accounting problem: How do I allocate a lifetime subscription? There's a very interesting Kickstarter oferring a lifetime subscription for their ebook reissues of not-previously-digitised old SF/Fantasy books. They have been going a couple of years, and have 26 SF/Fantasy books in their current catalogue, which is also included in the lifetime subscription. They plan to do about 12 books a year.

For fixed-length subscriptions (e.g. the Lightspeed Magazine Kickstarter), I allocated according to the number of issues. But the lifetime subscription is compleyely open ended. So long as I'm around and they're around I'll be getting rought one new book per month.

And there's also the question of whther I can afford the subscription in my budget.

Hmmm.... I think I'd better pass. I could always buy a lifetime subscription later for $125 instead of $100.

How about if I count it as a five year subscription? That would be for 60 future issues and 26 existing issues, a total of 86. Then I'd only need to count $30 in this month's budget....

Except I don't think I have even that much left. Although I do now realise that I've not done my accounting for this year's Lightspeed Magazine kickstarter properly....

I suspect I'll pass, but I will go and re-do this month's accounts properly.

[CRussel]

Originally Posted by pdurrant

An accounting problem: How do I allocate a lifetime subscription? There's a very interesting Kickstarter oferring a lifetime subscription for their ebook reissues of not-previously-digitised old SF/Fantasy books. They have been going a couple of years, and have 26 SF/Fantasy books in their current catalogue, which is also included in the lifetime subscription. They plan to do about 12 books a year.

I suspect I'll pass, but I will go and re-do this month's accounts properly.

I know, but it's more than a little tempting, AND you're doing a good thing helping to get these works well digitized. The catch, of course, is if you really think you're likely to want to most, or even many, of the works that are being digitized.

I was in the first Kickstarter a couple of years ago, but I honestly haven't read any of the ones they've digitized as a result, so I suspect I'll pass this time.

[pdurrant]

Originally Posted by CRussel

The catch, of course, is if you really think you're likely to want to most, or even many, of the works that are being digitized.

And that is the question, of course. And having had some time to think about it further, I'd decided you're right. I probably wouldn't want to read even a tenth of the books, so there's no point in subscribing.

It is a good cause. Just not for me.

[MikeB1972]

Originally Posted by pdurrant

And that is the question, of course. And having had some time to think about it further, I'd decided you're right. I probably wouldn't want to read even a tenth of the books, so there's no point in subscribing.

It is a good cause. Just not for me.

It's not a great cause IMO, they are selling the books they digitise on their website. How is this any different than SF Gateway? (other than the fact that Singularity want you to pay up front for acquiring the rights).

And this quote from the FAQ says they aren't even going to get the rights for everything they try and sell.
"Some of the books that we ebookify will be "orphaned," with no current copyright holder. Even so, we're going to do our very best track down the authors (or their estates) and get their blessing."

[Rev. Bob]

Originally Posted by MikeB1972

And this quote from the FAQ says they aren't even going to get the rights for everything they try and sell.
"Some of the books that we ebookify will be "orphaned," with no current copyright holder. Even so, we're going to do our very best track down the authors (or their estates) and get their blessing."

If nobody has the rights, how do you propose that someone get the rights? To me, that sounds like "Even though we could do what we want here, because there's nobody to answer to, we still want to connect with the authors/estates and make sure they're cool with this."

But then, I'm not sure how copyright law and orphaned works that aren't old enough to be public domain intersect.