Ebook Buying Addicts' Support Thread

[pdurrant]

I've just discarded another 28 freebies from my TBR pile. I have so many books I've bought that I want to read, that I'll never get around to some of the freebies, and so I'm trying to thin thenm out to leav only the ones I would have bought anyway.

[issybird]

I decided to look a little more closely at my numbers. Of the 30 books I've bought this year, 2/3 were wishlist bought either because they went on sale or with promotional credit. No regrets there. The other third, however, was evenly split between purchases where the sale created the want and those purely on a whim. These are the ones I have to monitor. There's no excuse for the former; while the latter are somewhat more justifiable especially when I read them soon, there's still the issue that they account for a disproportionate amount of my cash outlay; i.e., one sixth of my total purchases represented one third of what I spent. A problem when I already have so books and ill-considered purchases rarely turn out to be best reads.

[DNSB]

Reading this thread definitely makes me feel like I am suffering from a first world problem -- I can't seem to build up a TBR list.

I rarely keep track of how many books I purchase in a month but for November I decided to keep track of my purchases. I purchased 32 books of which most were on sale or part of a series I already own. I read 43 books which includes the last 9 books in the Honor Harrington series (I started a re-read of all the Honorverse books after reading Uncompromising Honor from the October Baen bundle). I have the Baen bundle for December coming up soon which will add 3 new books plus a couple of books which I have already read in dead tree form.

[HLS]

Originally Posted by DNSB

Reading this thread definitely makes me feel like I am suffering from a first world problem -- I can't seem to build up a TBR list.

I rarely keep track of how many books I purchase in a month but for November I decided to keep track of my purchases. I purchased 32 books of which most were on sale or part of a series I already own. I read 43 books which includes the last 9 books in the Honor Harrington series (I started a re-read of all the Honorverse books after reading Uncompromising Honor from the October Baen bundle). I have the Baen bundle for December coming up soon which will add 3 new books plus a couple of books which I have already read in dead tree form.

I have a list I keep in a collection called next to read. I drop all the books that look really good in there and I hae a collection called books read in 2018 so to keep track on how many books I read a year. My goal was to read 12 to 20 I think I am at around 35-40 read books in 2018. I am proud of myself for earlier this week I deleted around 25 freebees that I am confident I would never read

[pdurrant]

Originally Posted by DNSB

Reading this thread definitely makes me feel like I am suffering from a first world problem -- I can't seem to build up a TBR list.

I rarely keep track of how many books I purchase in a month but for November I decided to keep track of my purchases. I purchased 32 books of which most were on sale or part of a series I already own. I read 43 books which includes the last 9 books in the Honor Harrington series (I started a re-read of all the Honorverse books after reading Uncompromising Honor from the October Baen bundle). I have the Baen bundle for December coming up soon which will add 3 new books plus a couple of books which I have already read in dead tree form.

If you're finding time to read 43 books a month, I can understand why you're not building up a TBR list. Even on my 'worst' year, I only bought 394 books. (which is about 33 a month.)

Clearly you need to haunt the offers threads, and perhaps you *should* be getting freebies from new authors to try.

[ReadingManiac]

Originally Posted by pdurrant

Welcome to the thread.

I've just discarded another 28 freebies from my TBR pile. I have so many books I've bought that I want to read, that I'll never get around to some of the freebies, and so I'm trying to thin thenm out to leav only the ones I would have bought anyway.

My goal for 2019 will be to thin out the massive collection of freebies, discarding anything that doesn't grab me right away.

[Tarana]

Readingmaniac, you could also consider creating a separate library for freebies. Then it's not really in your way. Download all the metadata and then peruse at leisure. By separating the freebies from your primary library, they are there in case you change your mind.

I have a freebie library of about 1,800 ebooks. I simply cut myself off from the freebie emails since they rarely include an established author these days. I choose not to delete the freebies i have since I was fairly selective in the first place. If that blurb didn't really interest me, i didnt get it. I don't want to waste valuable reading time going over the meta unless I'm looking for something to read.

Still, you have to start sonewhere. Good luck!

[DNSB]

Originally Posted by pdurrant

If you're finding time to read 43 books a month, I can understand why you're not building up a TBR list. Even on my 'worst' year, I only bought 394 books. (which is about 33 a month.)

80-100 hours per month according to my count, a lot more according to Kobo's count which includes quite a few minutes when I put my ereader down while doing something else but not long enough for it to go to sleep. As for your worst year, that would be an average year for me.

OTOH, I still have around 2000 hardcovers and ghod alone knows how many paperback and magazines. My son still doesn't realize how close he came to being a victim of retroactive birth control when he took my 7 signed Robert Heinlein novels for show and tell at his school. I literally bled for those signatures.

Originally Posted by pdurrant

Clearly you need to haunt the offers threads, and perhaps you *should* be getting freebies from new authors to try.

I do haunt some of the offers threads (one for me, one mostly for my significant other) plus several via email. As for freebies, every now and then, I do select a few and have found a few authors that way. For most of the new authors I try, it's the $0.99 to $3.99 specials I pick up. The problem is that I find a series and next thing, I'm picking up the next 6 books in the series for a few dollar more.

[HLS]

I am having trouble deciding what books to read next even tho I have a "next to read" collection. I did delete about 25 books I know I will never read but I still have around 520 books on my kindle and 20 to 30 on my kobo and 80 on my nook. I read about 30 to 40 books this year. If I can keep that momentum up I should get all my books read in like 15 years lmao

[HLS]

I just deleted a lot of books/mags/newspapers off my nook. Took forever for the library is not that user friendly

[astrangerhere]

Originally Posted by kcladyz

I am having trouble deciding what books to read next even tho I have a "next to read" collection. I did delete about 25 books I know I will never read but I still have around 520 books on my kindle and 20 to 30 on my kobo and 80 on my nook. I read about 30 to 40 books this year. If I can keep that momentum up I should get all my books read in like 15 years lmao

You could export your Calibre collection to a spreadsheet and use a random number generator to "draw out of a hat" as it were. It's the paperless version of a "book jar."

[Tarana]

DNSB, my late sister had your problem. Fast reader and the time to do it. Kindle Unlimited helped some, particularly with limited budget. Other than getting another hobby that works with your lifestyle, don't know what to tell you. Our group accumulates more books than we can read, so the opposite problem.

[bookaho!ic]

so far this month only three books bought so far but there are 10 on my wishlist on kobo that are currently 99p each sooo tempted

[ReadingManiac]

Originally Posted by Tarana

Readingmaniac, you could also consider creating a separate library for freebies. Then it's not really in your way. Download all the metadata and then peruse at leisure. By separating the freebies from your primary library, they are there in case you change your mind.

I've separated them into a folder on my Kindle, but if I discard them, it will be because I definitely didn't like them. Anything i might change my mind about will stray in the freebies folder.

[HLS]

even tho i dumped a lot of free bees i think i exausted my urge to buy more books. there is nothing out there im interested yet. gives me time to start reading what I have already. I wrote down a list of the next 10 books I want to read