Ebook Buying Addicts' Support Thread

[jbcohen]

I have a hard time avoiding free book deals, its much easier for me to avoid books that cost something.

[Quake1028]

I've been terrible lately.

Tough Sh*t: Life Advice from a Fat, Lazy Slob Who Did Good (Enhanced Edition) - Smith, Kevin
Samantha Moon: All Four Novels - Rain, J.R.
Moneyball - Lewis, Michael
The Giver - Lowry, Lois
Kitchen Confidential - Bourdain, Anthony
Fight Club - Palahniuk, Chuck
Sloppy Seconds: The Tucker Max Leftovers - Max, Tucker
The Borrowers - Norton, Mary
Pocket-47 - Hardin, Jude

I guess it's not too terrible looking back at it, at least money wise. The Kevin Smith book was $11.99, but everything else was between $0.25 and $1.99. The Tucker Max book was free, and I've already read that, so I guess that's good.

[pdurrant]

Originally Posted by jbcohen

I have a hard time avoiding free book deals

I don't count freebies for this thread, nor do I count them in my TBR lists.

[CRussel]

I don't count freebies in my buying, but do count them in my TBR. Thus my TBR is growing even as I've done noticeably better this year with buying. (Amazon Prime and my public library are also contributing here, since I've read several borrowed books and have a couple on my TBR right now.) What I really need to do is try to hold it to at most one for one, including freebies and borrowed books. But so far, I'm losing that battle.

[pdurrant]

I've fallen off the wagon again. The 85% off the Hunger Games trilogy was too good to pass up. It's like the twilight books: I want to see what all the fuss is about.

I'm still (just) on the right side of my 2:1 read:bought ratio...

[ATDrake]

I've been toying with the notion of getting the Hunger Games at that price.

On the one hand, it is very, very cheap and I get entered into one of Kobo's contests (which I'd probably never win, but you never know) and Help Support A Fellow Canadian (until the Japanese buyout goes through).

On the other hand, I've heard that the books are okay but not nearly as good as the hype would make them out to be and I'm not particularly interested in their subject matter/theme and the library has them anyway (though probably not in stock due to the upcoming film and all).

I suspect I'll probably splurge, since I'm vaguely curious and it is a very low price and I want to encourage the publisher/stores to offer more such very low prices on future things.

Mind you, on the basis of that reasoning, I should have picked up those 25 cent Google Play introductory specials, but I was insufficiently interested in those to go to the bother of setting up a Google account for their store (or more to the point, picking which of my existing Google accounts the books would be tied to) and I feel surprisingly little regret at having "missed" those.

I think half my buying "problems" stem from apathy rather than over-interest. I just don't want most of the stuff offered on sale which seems to be tempting everyone else.

[Nancy Fulda]

Originally Posted by pdurrant

I've fallen off the wagon again. The 85% off the Hunger Games trilogy was too good to pass up. It's like the twilight books: I want to see what all the fuss is about.

I'm still (just) on the right side of my 2:1 read:bought ratio...

Aw man. If I had a Kobo, I think I would go for that one.

[pdurrant]

Originally Posted by Nancy Fulda

Aw man. If I had a Kobo, I think I would go for that one.

I don't have a Kobo. I'm reading them on my Bookeen CyBook Opus, after a little help from Apprentice Alf and Kindlegen.

But I've fallen off the wagon again - I've just bought all the Harry Potter books at the http://shop.pottermore.com/ web site. The price was a little high, but the guilt of a copy of "Harry Potter and the Unauthorized Ebook" drove me to it...

At least they don't add to my TBR list.

[CRussel]

Originally Posted by pdurrant

I don't have a Kobo. I'm reading them on my Bookeen CyBook Opus, after a little help from Apprentice Alf and Kindlegen.

But I've fallen off the wagon again - I've just bought all the Harry Potter books at the http://shop.pottermore.com/ web site. The price was a little high, but the guilt of a copy of "Harry Potter and the Unauthorized Ebook" drove me to it...

At least they don't add to my TBR list.

Those will have to wait until the next cheque comes in, but yes, I agree, that same set of copies is driving me to it.

[Quake1028]

One (or in this case, several) click of the mouse seems so innocent. BAM, 7 more books to read and $57.xx lighter in the wallet.

[BeccaPrice]

I just bought 4 ebooks from Amazon today. that's an all-time high record for me, i think... but two were pre-orders (and I had my $10 Amazon gift card that I got at their last special offers sale), and of the other two, one was $5 and the other was $0.99.

I don't think I'm going to buy the Harry Potter books, though. I pretty much lost interest in them by book 5 (was that where he got all whiny and unpleasant?). I read books 6 and 7, but don't think I bothered getting those two in audio.

[Quake1028]

Originally Posted by ATDrake

Mind you, on the basis of that reasoning, I should have picked up those 25 cent Google Play introductory specials, but I was insufficiently interested in those to go to the bother of setting up a Google account for their store (or more to the point, picking which of my existing Google accounts the books would be tied to) and I feel surprisingly little regret at having "missed" those.

I think half my buying "problems" stem from apathy rather than over-interest. I just don't want most of the stuff offered on sale which seems to be tempting everyone else.

This is very late, but Amazon matched every single Google Play deal. Did they not do so in Canada?

[Quake1028]

And I finally picked up Mockingjay, but I won't beat myself up over $1.07 .

[Synamon]

Originally Posted by Quake1028

This is very late, but Amazon matched every single Google Play deal. Did they not do so in Canada?

Some of the Play of the Day deals for Canada were different than the US ones, some were the same. Amazon price matched the ones that overlapped with the US. I bought two or three of the deals that weren't price matched by Amazon directly from Google. Generally Amazon's price matching comes with geographic restrictions, for instance, since B&N does not sell ebooks in Canada usually Amazon's price matches for the Nook Deal of the day is only for US customers.

[ATDrake]

Originally Posted by Quake1028

This is very late, but Amazon matched every single Google Play deal. Did they not do so in Canada?

They did some of them, but I've developed this pathological aversion to paying for the mobi format's many annoying deficiencies and since I also don't care for certain of Amazon's business practices I've gotten into the habit of not buying e-books at Amazon if they're available elsewhere at the same price (and I overwhelmingly pass on the sale promos if they aren't, regardless).

Besides, even at 25 cents I didn't really want most of those books, although it might have been nice to have one or two (though reading the sample for the title by Johann Sfar or whatever his name is was an active turn-off). The library has those if I ever really want to read them.

Anyway, temptation removed since it seems that Kobo has tweaked things so that the coupons stop working after the first you buy and you can no longer get the entire Hunger Games trilogy for ~$4 CAD in total. The library has these as well and I can put that money towards something else I like more which I won't be getting to for a long time, either.