Own an Amazon kindle and how many Amazon book purchased for it? [POLL ENDED]

[sirmaru]

Originally Posted by AnemicOak

That's cool, we're all different. A New History of the Peloponnesian War is actually on my want list, but I'm waiting for a 75%+ off code from Kobo and will buy it there so I can get it for $8-ish or less. I have quite a bit of non-fiction in my library, but most has been bought from Kobo since I could get it for much much less than Amazon ($8-$20 on Amazon, $1-$5 on Kobo with codes). Most of my Amazon purchases are fiction and if I had to guess at an average I'd say it's about $2-$4.

Since you have similar choices in some respects to me, if you are a US resident and have Prime, you may be interested in borrowing FREE Volumes 1 to 3 of Churchill's "A History of the English Speaking Peoples" here:

http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_no...king%20peoples

I'm currently in Volume 3 of the William Manchester 3 volume biography of Churchill ranging in price from $ 11 to $ 15 available here:

http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_no...l%20and%20lion

[AnemicOak]

Originally Posted by sirmaru

Since you have similar choices in some respects to me, if you are a US resident and have Prime, you may be interested in borrowing FREE Volumes 1 to 3 of Churchill's "A History of the English Speaking Peoples" here:

http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_no...king%20peoples

I'll certainly take a look

I'm currently in Volume 3 of the William Manchester 3 volume biography of Churchill ranging in price from $ 11 to $ 15 available here:

http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_no...l%20and%20lion

I actually have the first of those, from when it was on sale a while back, but haven't gotten to it yet.

[bbpo8]

The last few months, my wife and I acquired a Kindle keyboard and a DX. We've purchased about 4 e-books for my wife. I've downloaded about 300 free e-books, mostly classics in foreign languages. Amazon has an outstanding selection of free classics, mostly well formatted.

I also use the DX to view PDF documents for my research.

For a number of reasons, I bought a Kobo Aura HD, and go through the Kobo bookstores for the books that I want to purchase. Maybe 10 books there, with an average price of about $8.

[Yapyap]

I own two Kindles (Keyboard and Paperwhite 1).

I voted for "over 1000", as my Books tab on Manage Your Kindle shows 1013 items - but that includes free books as well as the Amazon-given dictionaries and user guides in multiple languages.

In actuality, my spreadsheet shows me that I have purchased 543 not-free ebooks from Amazon since 2010, for the total cost of $1482.33. That makes my average Amazon purchase cost $2.59. Only five of my Amazon-purchased ebooks have cost over $10 (another five have been $9.99), and all those were bought before I realised that "going on holiday in another country" was an option worth considering. (In comparison, 93 of the bought books cost under $1.)

I read fiction almost exclusively and these days, other than for a few series I like enough to pre-order and read immediately, I only buy books when they're on a (temporary - daily/weekly/monthly) sale. My TBR is long enough that I don't need to add more books at regular price anymore, other than the rare read-immediately ones.

[Helgetus]

I voted more than 1000 books but that includes a daily newspaper. The no. books I ordered is about 100.

[svenlind]

According to the Amazon Cloud I have bought 129 books in the last 3-4 years.

Calibre says I have 443 books.

The majority of the remaining books are bought from Fictionwise. Some are from Danish booksellers, and some are PDF manuals about equipment I have bought.

Calibre is a very good place to store your manuals, then they are much easier to find if you tag them in an appropriate way.

[ProfCrash]

467 books at last check, but some of those are complete volumes of an authors work. I have about 12 of those. This is over a 5 year period of time, so a little under 100 books a year.

My Mom uses my Kindle account and she buys what she wants. I don't get a ton of the free books because they do not look interesting to me. So I am sure my average is close $10 a book. (shrugs)

It is a matter of priorities, I enjoy reading and I don't buy much music or DVDs. My Mom and Dad paid for college so I pay for my Mom's books. I don't care what she pays. If I can't afford it at some point int time, I can tell her and we will work something out.

Personally, I think there are plenty of ways to put together an expansive library without spending a ton of money but who cares if you do? If you can afford it, then go for it. There really shouldn't be a need to comment on peoples spending habits.

I voted for the 201-1000 option. I too read mostly histories and typically pay more for new releases than I probably should. I estimate that I'm paying about $15 on average for newer released histories written by scholars. However, I have hundreds of freebies that are histories written by authors before Gutenburg even invented the printing press! I've no clue what my average book cost is, taking in account the freebies and cheaper, older books that still cost something, but I will guess around the $2 to $5 range.

[Katsunami]

Originally Posted by sirmaru

It would be interesting to see how many folks reading and posting here actually own an Amazon Kindle and how many books you have purchased for it from Amazon.

I have owned a Touch and now a Paperwhite, but only purchased two books from Amazon, because they were available nowhere else. I prefer EPUB as a base format. I also have two free/public domain books because Amazon's was the best version.

All of my other books come from other stores, with Kobo being the main one, because of their discount codes.

edit: it seems you said that an average ebook costs $10. That is a very high price. Most books I buy have a full price between $4.99 and $7.99 (many of them from A-list authors). By using the Kobo promo codes, and buying at different stores whenever there are sales, I typically pay less than $3 per book. In my last buying spree, I paid less than $2, and I got 23 Delphi classics (each containing MANY books) for $1.50 a piece.

Sometimes I pay full price. This sometimes happens if a store has a huge sale/promo code, and I buy an entire series there. It can happen that the store does not have one particular book in that series, and then I buy it somewhere else.

I've never ever paid more than $7.99 for an ebook (Musashi and Taiko, by Eiji Yoshikawa), but they were discounted by 50% using a code.

[ProfCrash]

I probably should look at Kobo more seriously but many of my books are purchased by my Mom and she is not going to do the purchase at a different store, strip and convert, send to Kindle dance. I have had to talk her through using FaceTime more then once. So easy is better.

But I should get in the habit of checking Kobo for the coupons

[jocampo]

I'm reaching the 200, I think. But I mostly buy MS-SQL and IT books. And the average is not 10 bucks, for sure. I've paid between 30 and 50 dollars for some of them, so I think I've spent over of 1k on books.

Yes! I spend a lot on Amazon's books, but it keeps me on track with my career and ahead of younger kids leaving University every year, lol ...

And why Amazon? Because pretty much is the only store who carry the MS-SQL books I need. O'Reilly and Apress are now close but prices are usually higher by 20 bucks or more.

[CuriousJay]

While I think your poll is interesting, it's really difficult to get any useful information out of it.

If a user keeps a close eye on all those free-book-of-the-day lists floating around the internet, you could easily get *hundreds* of books without spending any money. I know I have at least 150+ of these daily deal type books in my Kindle library.

Fiction, and other popular books, are easy to find on the cheap. However, if you read technical books like jocampo, then you will be paying out the wazoo! I occasionally see science books going for well over $100. Yes, I realize they don't sell very many and that drives up the price. It reminds me of grad school 30 years ago when I routinely paid more for a semester's books than I did in tuition! Or if you read histories, or most any non-fiction genre, that are written by scholars, you will pay more than you would for newly released fiction books. Even still, you can often find some bargains.

[Katsunami]

I also think that one reads fiction much faster than non-fiction. At least, I do. If I read fiction, I just read the story, but if reading non-fiction, I actually study it.

Originally Posted by Katsunami

I also think that one reads fiction much faster than non-fiction. At least, I do. If I read fiction, I just read the story, but if reading non-fiction, I actually study it.

Me too, plus the non-fiction books I read tend to be longer than the fiction books, and they have endnotes/footnotes which I read. I also highlight more in non-fiction books. I could easily read a 300 page novel in one day if it was interesting, yet an 800 page history or biography might take me two weeks if I keep getting sidetracked to go look up related information in other books/docs. I just finished a 1000+ page biography on Hitler which took me over a year to finish simply because the subject matter was difficult to take in large quantities. I read a chapter here and there and had to put it down for weeks at a time. The biography was well written, but the subject matter was brutal!