B-b-b-buying spree! EBook vs. paper

[Lynx-lynx]

Originally Posted by Katsunami

What initial 75% unlimited use code? I must follow that thread more closely.

Oh yep ..... it pays off to pay attention to that thread

[wawasteele]

I don't think I've bought 36 pbooks for myself in my lifetime! I used the library when I was a kid. After I was married I still used the library, I couldn't afford to buy books, especially after the kids arrived. I always wanted to buy books. I always wanted, and still would like, a huge room in my own home filled with leather bound books. That will never happen.

But now, I do have some money to spend on books and like being able to think I am paying back authors for all the free reads I've had over the years, although I still use libraries a lot, but not for pbooks anymore, everything is e.

I have gone on buying sprees with some of the Kobo coupons and some sales at Amazon and even B&N, but I'm guessing my largest was..well..let me go ck..ooops! I have beat 36! I had no clue. I checked Calibre and on Nov 12, 2010 I bought 46 books! Their total price was $14.84 making it an average price of $0.32 per book.

The largest group I have ever done besides that was 7 books.

[Sydney's Mom]

Originally Posted by AnemicOak

I think the record on this forum is Sydney's Mom with 457 books back when Harlequin had their $4 off a $4 minimum unlimited code and folks were buying books for $0.05 each.

I absolutely forgot about this!! Yes, it took me an entire day, because you had to re-enter codes. But the books were only a nickel. I bought the 45 cent ones on Blossom's recommendation.

457 books. Wow. And how many have I read? Unfortunately, I am like a little kid--I want what is new and shiny. I haven't even finished Double Down yet. But, all those books are epub, and will be read eventually. It is the free kindle books I just have sitting in the cloud.

When I was a kid, we didn't have money for books. The first book I bought was after I was working, Jaws, which I read when I was supposed to be studying for my Advanced Calculus class. I bought 1L when I was applying to law school, then nothing until I graduated and got a job. I have 3 floor to ceiling bookcases, stacked 2 or 3 deep, full I mystery paperbacks I would buy at the bookstore on the first floor of our building. I didn't feel guilty buying so many, justifying it by saying I would probably be eating dog food when I retired, but at least I would have books! But I probably never bought more than $200 (at $5 a pop)

When we moved out to the burbs, I had a library nearby. Then someone on the train gave me a supermarket bag full of romances, and I switched to those. But I still love mysteries, general fiction and political books. But I am probably set with romances.

Debra

[susan_cassidy]

I tend to wait until I run out of stuff to read, then using the Amazon Kindle recommendations, I go through and find a bunch of stuff to read. But usually only 7 or 8 at a time, max. I did buy a whole series a couple of times, though, when they were on sale for $1.99, usually 7 or 8 dollars. I think there were about 13 or 14 books in the first series, 10 in the second. I love long series, and sometimes, I just buy 2 or 3 of them at a time, but eventually end up buying the whole series, no matter how long it is. I recently got through a series with 23 books in it. It was fun reading all those books about the same (good) character.

[Katsunami]

Originally Posted by susan_cassidy

I tend to wait until I run out of stuff to read, then using the Amazon Kindle recommendations, I go through and find a bunch of stuff to read.

I did that when I was reading paperbacks. Read everything I had, and then after I had nothing more to read, I'd go and find a new series, or buy more WotC books. Most of the time I bought one or two series/trilogies, 6 books at most.

I did buy 10 paperback books at one time, but they were actually packaged into 4 omnibus books. (3 and 2 for the first series, and another 3 and 2 for the second series.)

[FizzyWater]

Originally Posted by Katsunami

What I was thinking however: would I have bought all of these books *in paperback*, if the price of the paperback had been €1.17?

Me, probably not. I never bought more than 5-6 (one complete series) at once.

You? Would you buy something like 36+ paperbacks at once if you:

- had the chance to get them at a price of €1.17 / $1.60...
- knew the normal price of the paperback would be €7.95 / $10.95...
- knew you would eventually end up with all of them anyway?

Have you ever bought such an amount of ebooks at once?

Yes, and yes.

We have 3 or 4 Half-Price Book stores in town (lost track when I pretty much stopped buying paper books). Three of them on are on "loop" on our outerbelt (highway circling the city). Some Friday nights after work I would hop in the car and hit all three, one after the other and come home with a hundred books!

God help me, when I moved from my apartment into my condo in 2012, I had 4500 books in boxes (in the apartment, in storage) and spent 6-8 weekends before I moved finding homes for all of them (friends of the library donations, nursing home donations, and finally just sold what was left back to Half Price Books). I do *not* miss that clutter in my home!

And back when Fictionwise existed and had great sales, I often went on ebook buying sprees. I know I did at Kobo recently, too, when they had some great coupons (and before they stopped discounting most of the big publishers again).

Ebook "hoarding" can be a bit more dangerous that print because it just goes on the harddrive. No clutter to trigger my conscience and make me think twice before buying another one.

Overall, my purchasing of ebooks dropped drastically when Agency Pricing went into place, and luckily, I've never gone back to that level of purchasing. I borrow a lot from the library these days. But every now and again - like with the Kobo coupon codes - I'll have a spree weekend.

[jgaiser]

Most I've bought at one time was about 17. Patrick O'Brian's (Aubrey/Maturin series) went on sale. 20 complete novels in the series and I owned 3. Still working my way through those.

[calvin-c]

Originally Posted by Katsunami

You? Would you buy something like 36+ paperbacks at once if you:

- had the chance to get them at a price of €1.17 / $1.60...
- knew the normal price of the paperback would be €7.95 / $10.95...
- knew you would eventually end up with all of them anyway?

Yes. Don't remember exactly how many but certainly over 20 & possibly as high as 50. I remember the bill was over $80US.

I wouldn't any more because our new house doesn't have as much storage room as our old one but new/old, when I shop in a bookstore it's for used books. That usually means thrift stores where the books are $1-2 each. There's also no guarantee that you can come back the next day to buy what you don't buy today-thrift stores work on a 'what you see is what we have' basis so I buy books I want when I see them regardless of how many that is.

ebooks? I think the most I've bought at once is a dozen. I could be wrong as I don't keep track and I've certainly added many more than that to my wishlist in one day but ebook stores never run out of product so I don't feel any need to 'buy it now'. (Technically the 'never' isn't true but it's close enough for government work IMO.)

[Kumabjorn]

When Amazon released the Ed McBain series they had a one day sale at $0.99 so I clicked and clicked and clicked and was able to get all but one (time zone difference) so yes I have gone on a buying spree that I would never have done with paperbacks. Not sure I'll do it again though, broke a nail on the mouse.

[Victoria]

Not during p-book era, due to storage issues and coin.

However, I now buy ebooks in batches during a sale, or given a gift certificate. I consider building a healthy stash of ebooks sensible retirement planning. I replace favourite paper books I'll reread, because I expect to be in smaller space. Also, I'll be on a tighter budget, and book prices will likely keep pace with inflation.

This all sounds very rational, and it is, but sometimes I just go overboard

[BelleZora]

Although I always had shelves of paper books, I was never tempted to hoard them because I couldn't stand clutter. Something about ebooks has freed my apparent inner hoarder. They are all neatly organized in Calibre. I just sorted them out, keeping only the ones I really want to read in the near future in my main library...739 books. Never would I have allowed myself that many paper books. I don't even want to mention how many books, mostly freebies and public domain, are in secondary Calibre libraries.

Still, as hobbies go, collecting ebooks on sale is not really terribly expensive or detrimental to health. Before buying my first ereader and discovering MR (and Calibre and Alf: responsible for making hoarding feel secure and joyful) I could not have imagined that I would own so many books.

Full disclosure: I buy many more full price ebooks than I ever bought paper books, preferring second hand book stores. I often regret that those wonderful shops lost my business.

[Katsunami]

Originally Posted by Victoria

Not during p-book era, due to storage issues and coin.

Same...

However, I now buy ebooks in batches during a sale, or given a gift certificate. I consider building a healthy stash of ebooks sensible retirement planning. I replace favourite paper books I'll reread, because I expect to be in smaller space. Also, I'll be on a tighter budget, and book prices will likely keep pace with inflation.

Indeed, but I only retire in about 32-35 years, if everything stays as it is now. I hope I can still read EPUBs then, and that Calibre is still alive, or I'll be running it on a 35 year old computer, reading stuff on a 35 year old Kindle, attached to the mains permanently because of a dead battery

This all sounds very rational, and it is, but sometimes I just go overboard

Kobo went overboard I got four books for my aunt (who has my old Kindle Touch, but knows ZILCH about computers, so I buy her books), using some of the posted Kobo codes. I downloaded the books... and 2 out of 4 books were not books I ordered. They were John Grisham books. The 3rd and 4th failed: License already in use (ADE error).

Uh oh.... Shit.

*Breathe in. Breathe out. No need to explode yet.*

- Logout. Clean cookies and temp files. Login.
- Redownload books... success. All four correct ones.

Thanks for the free Grishams, Kobo. Your mistake. Maybe I'll read them someday.

[Katsunami]

Originally Posted by BelleZora

Although I always had shelves of paper books, I was never tempted to hoard them because I couldn't stand clutter. Something about ebooks has freed my apparent inner hoarder. They are all neatly organized in Calibre. I just sorted them out, keeping only the ones I really want to read in the near future in my main library...739 books. Never would I have allowed myself that many paper books. I don't even want to mention how many books, mostly freebies and public domain, are in secondary Calibre libraries.

Waaah, you're me. I even organize my libraries the same. One main, where all bought and free "intend to read" books are, perfectly tagged and organized and all, and secondary libraries containing huge amounts of PD and Freebee books. (Some contain entire sites. If I discover the site's organizational pattern, it's often SOL, and I have a lot of freebee's.)

Some PD books I have at least in 10 different versions of. If I want a PD book, I'll find it, move some versions in my "Workplace" library, pick the best, ditch the rest, and fix the best one up for my primary library.

Still, as hobbies go, collecting ebooks on sale is not really terribly expensive or detrimental to health. Before buying my first ereader and discovering MR (and Calibre and Alf: responsible for making hoarding feel secure and joyful) I could not have imagined that I would own so many books.

So true. Now that I use an e-reader, I have more books than I could ever imagine, cheaper than I could ever imagine.

Sometimes I wonder if it doesn't degrade reading. With paperbacks, I'd carefully select what I wanted to read, because it was expensive, and when I was out of money as a student, I'd re-read. (I read English. The libraries in the Netherlands have VERY SMALL English sections.)

Full disclosure: I buy many more full price ebooks than I ever bought paper books, preferring second hand book stores. I often regret that those wonderful shops lost my business.

Yes... I like books, I love libraries, and I would love to have my very own private library with 10.000 paper books in it... I love book stores and second hand shops (if they sell good books that don't fall apart and don't look gross), but e-readers are just so much more convenient, after stripping the DRM from the books.

[BelleZora]

Yes, Katsunami, book lovers have so much in common, regardless of age or nationality.

Another reason that ebooks are so alluring is that they open the world to us. Sadly, I read only in English, but I am now able to easily find excellent translations of the world's most wonderful books. Most of my life I have been limited to whatever I could find in bookstores, usually just American, Canadian, or English books. I just read a devastating but glorious book originally written in Hebrew and will soon read books written in Korean and Irish. Two new favorite mystery writers write in Norwegian and Afrikaans. I owe my new international perspective to ebooks (and MR).

[speakingtohe]

I haven't bought that many ebooks at once, but probably more paper books at once.

At a going out of business sale I bought a whole trunkload. Mostly hardcover reference. They were probably around $5-$10 each, and I blew more than my paycheck, but I felt richer in a strange way. I had a happy feeling every time I picked one up. Hope you do too with your ebooks. (and yes I get a happy feeling from ebooks too whether bought or library)


Helen