Ebook Buying Addicts' Support Thread

[pdurrant]

Congratulations!

[HLS]

I thinkI am getting better. went a full week without buying an ebook

[ekbell]

Originally Posted by Tarana

I have a Paul inspired spreadsheet for my audiobooks, that I created last year for TBR. All it has is title, author, year purchased and where the audiobook is located. Even with something this basic, it took me a week to gather data and type it up. I have around 400 audiobooks in the list. Putting it all into Calibre would take a lot longer, taking away from my precious reading and needlework time. Currently, I put completed titles in my PERSONAL library with either the matching Whispersync or Guttenberg mobi file, or a blank book, filled in with the metadata and a location of the audiobook (yes, sometimes it's the mobi file from the library, but I digress).

Yes, I agree that dumping everything into Calibre and using its features is preferable, however sometimes the learning curve to use some of these features is difficult. Paul gave us a step-by-step on how to do that yes/no column a little while back, which eliminated my need for more libraries, but I still can't figure out how to use the virtual library. In addition, I don't know how well the virtual library will come out after a crash. I had a crash recently, and not only had to manually add back my libraries, but also had to reinstall all my plugins. If there were a virtual library, would it have been lost? I don't know.

I found the Import List plug-in helpful when I wanted to add my spreadsheet of 2000+ paper books to Calibre. It saved me a lot of time.

My failing when it comes to buying ebooks are $1.99 sale books, particularly history and SF&F ones. My TBR pile has hit 399 books at latest count, 119 of which are history and 139 are SF&F.

[DrNefario]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

Why not just put all of your eBooks into Calibre and create a column for Read/Not-read/Don't want to read?

1. It wouldn't help with my paper books.

2. It would be a lot of work.

3. I hardly ever switch on my Calibre machine. Why on earth would I want to do all that work to make my database less accessible?

4. I could already add a "don't want to read column" to my spreadsheet - in fact I have done - the problem is that I often don't know what to put in it.

[DrNefario]

I bought just two ebooks in January, and have read both of them.

This is pretty good going for me, but including freebies I am only just ahead of the game, with 8 books read and 7 books acquired. Really it was the three non-fiction PDFs I picked up on January 1st that have been the problem, even though I have already read one of those too. I think I'm going to struggle to make ground in every calendar month, as I hoped, given that it's so easy to pick things up, and I don't have as much leeway as last year now I've dropped my daily short stories.

There are still two and a half days left in January, here, and I'm not likely to finish this 650-page book I just started, but I definitely wouldn't rule out further acquisitions.

[davidfor]

Originally Posted by DrNefario

1. It wouldn't help with my paper books.

You can add books without a format to calibre.

2. It would be a lot of work.

Import List plugin. About five minutes.

3. I hardly ever switch on my Calibre machine. Why on earth would I want to do all that work to make my database less accessible?

That makes me wonder why you have deliberately put calibre on a machine you don't use. I'm sure it isn't what you've actually done, but you can always move calibre to a more useful place.

4. I could already add a "don't want to read column" to my spreadsheet - in fact I have done - the problem is that I often don't know what to put in it.

That one I can't help with. I can never decide on the values to use in places like that.

[DrNefario]

I don't use any machine that can run Calibre very often. I just don't sit around using a PC all the time.

Except at work, I guess, which would be a bit of an odd place to keep my ebook collection.

At home, I mainly use an old iPad for web browsing, ereaders for ereading, a Fire TV stick for streaming TV, and consoles for gaming. My laptop gets switched on mainly just when I need to do something with Calibre and/or ADE.

[issybird]

Originally Posted by DrNefario

4. I could already add a "don't want to read column" to my spreadsheet - in fact I have done - the problem is that I often don't know what to put in it.

FWIW, (nothing at all; these things are highly personal), my "desirability" column has five values in it, essentially ranging from "on my reader" to "no way in hell." The middle values have various shades of murkiness from highly appealing to very unlikely. Of course there are still issues at the borders and the granularity is silly, but it does allow for "don't quite know."

[PurpleStar]

I'm tempted by another book on sale at Kobo, but then I just say to myself it's yet another series to read and I won't get to it this year anyways. And the other books in the series are expensive. No buy!!!!!

[CharredScribe]

I have been doing well with not buying ebooks but my paper book spending is up again

[Rev. Bob]

Originally Posted by DrNefario

At home, I mainly use an old iPad for web browsing, ereaders for ereading, a Fire TV stick for streaming TV, and consoles for gaming. My laptop gets switched on mainly just when I need to do something with Calibre and/or ADE.

That's me, too - except for the stick and consoles. Most of the time I'm looking at a screen, it's my iPad mini or my Kobo H2O. When I need to use a computer, it's usually a netbook - and by virtue of having limited processing power, that's not a good place for me to install Calibre for much beyond having access to its ebook editor.

I only pull out and fire up my full-sized, heavy laptop out when I need to do something that requires mass storage and/or decent horsepower. For me, of late, that generally means downloading purchases with Kindle, importing them into Calibre, cleaning up their metadata, and saving them as EPUBs... and that's just not a daily task. Sometimes it isn't even a weekly one.

[wandalynn]

Originally Posted by wandalynn

Compare the prospective purchase with the rest of your TBR. Do you want to read it more than 50% of your TBR? If not, don't buy.

which I'm going to practice this coming year. The other thing I'm going to do is go through my list of books and cull out any I don't think I'd ever read, even on a desert island. That's probably no more than 20-30, though.

After a hard look at my ebooks the list is now culled down to 153 books.

As of 1/31 I've bought some and read some, list is now at 152 books.

2/27, list is 155 books

3/31, 154 books

4/30, 156 books

5/31, 158 books

6/30, 160 books

7/30, 161 books

8/31, 161 books

9/30, 162 books

10/31, 162 books

11/30, 164 books

[Fbone]

January I purchased four books a total cost of $10.96. All were on sale and on my wishlist. I also read four books so no gain/loss on the TBR pile. Some of the recent sales have been very tempting but I refused to stray from my heavily curated wishlist.

[Tarana]

Originally Posted by wandalynn

As of 1/31 I've bought some and read some, list is now at 152 books.

Congratulations!!! yay!! It's been a long time since I only had 150 or so on my TBR. Keep up the good work!

[pdurrant]

I was far too lax last month. Must do better.