Ebook Buying Addicts' Support Thread

[Avalona]

Books on Board needs to end their 40% off backlist sale. I keep buying 5-6 books daily because of this! It's making my TBR pile grow dramatically. Trying to remind myself that I don't really need to stock up on books because unlike with paper books, I can just go online, buy the book and have it within five minutes. (Due to lack of book stores around me, I'd be buying stacks at a time online and then waiting for a few weeks.)

And I'm likely to buy another few tonight.

[benham]

Originally Posted by Apache

I just bought the new Walt Longmire Mystery by Craig Johnson. It was only on my TBR until I finished The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt. The sad thing is I read it in one day. on to the next TBR book, 1635 The Eastern Front.
Apache

You probably know about the Longmire tv series that started on A&E last week.

[pdurrant]

I am struggling to resist buying books from Kobo. I'm currently reading The Lord of the Rings (which wasn't on my TBR - already read several times) and I really don't want to buy any more at the moment.

Perhaps I should unsubscribe from the Kobo discount codes thread!

[Synamon]

The Kobo discount codes are tempting, but the Kindle Daily Deals are irresistible. Maybe I should start rounding down and consider all those $0.99 books as free, so there's no guilt or pressure to read them. Except why am I buying books, if not to read them?

I wonder if I could convince myself that it's patronage or charity? I donate to the library, so why shouldn't I donate in $0.99 chunks to publishers and authors. There we go, all these books I'm buying are really a good deed. I feel so much better.

"For only pennies a day, you can adopt a starving author."

[Apache]

Originally Posted by benham

You probably know about the Longmire tv series that started on A&E last week.

Yep.
I posted a thread about it in Reading Recommendations last Sunday Afternoon.
I thought they did a good job for the first episode. It can't follow the books perfectly since it is a one hour weekly show rather than Made for TV Movies.
I will continue to watch it and see how the show evolves.
Apache

[pdurrant]

Originally Posted by Synamon

The Kobo discount codes are tempting, but the Kindle Daily Deals are irresistible. Maybe I should start rounding down and consider all those $0.99 books as free, so there's no guilt or pressure to read them. Except why am I buying books, if not to read them?

Except why am I buying books, if not to read them?

You have hit the mail on the head with that sentence. That's why I created this thread. And no, you can't round down $0.99 to free.

Is the Kindle deal of the day on your wishlist? Is it by a favourite author? I'd even consider allowing "Is it a genre of fiction I usually really like?"

If not - don't get it! It may become free at some time before you get around to reading it anyway!

[Synamon]

Originally Posted by pdurrant

Except why am I buying books, if not to read them?

You have hit the mail on the head with that sentence. That's why I created this thread. And no, you can't round down $0.99 to free.

Is the Kindle deal of the day on your wishlist? Is it by a favourite author? I'd even consider allowing "Is it a genre of fiction I usually really like?"

If not - don't get it! It may become free at some time before you get around to reading it anyway!

Meanie!

I don't maintain a wishlist (I hate lists with a passion), but I do follow the other "rules" you've made so I'm still hanging on to my recovery by my fingernails. Checking the public e-library and adding any book I thought about buying to my wishlist there when I find it available via Overdrive has kept me from buying a lot of books. Hasn't helped the to-be-read list, but one step at a time.

[pdurrant]

Originally Posted by Synamon

Meanie!

Tough love!

(BTW, by "on your wishlist" I mean any list you keep, even in your own head.)

[Wald07]

I have amassed over 1200 e-books. And I keep buying more, plus getting 10 + free everyday from amazon. Even if I read one per day, I have enough reading material for about four years, and that's if I quit today.. .. I've only just realized this in this instant.. I am an addict! Holy scrap, I just skipped a biscuit.

I've spent about $300 @ Kobo since Christmas...

[Nancy Fulda]

Originally Posted by Synamon

I donate to the library, so why shouldn't I donate in $0.99 chunks to publishers and authors. There we go, all these books I'm buying are really a good deed. I feel so much better.

Except if you're talking about kindle purchases, only about 30 cents of those $.99 purchases go to the author/publisher. By that logic, you'd be better off buying the $2.99 books, which funnel a larger percentage of the sale to the author.

Not that anybody here needs reasons to spend more money!

[pdurrant]

Originally Posted by Wald07

I have amassed over 1200 e-books. And I keep buying more, plus getting 10 + free everyday from amazon. Even if I read one per day, I have enough reading material for about four years, and that's if I quit today.. .. I've only just realized this in this instant.. I am an addict! Holy scrap, I just skipped a biscuit.

I've spent about $300 @ Kobo since Christmas...

Welcome to the thread! You're among friends. And, more importantly, people who understand what you're going through.

Don't worry about the freebies. You're almost certainly never going to read them, so don't stress about it. Feel free (sorry!) to carry on getting any free ebooks you want to. Just don't add them to your "To Be Read" pile unless you really want to read them, and might have bought them if they weren't already free.

In this thread we've come up with three simple guidelines to help us resist the purchase of too many new ebooks.

1. Add to wish list rather than buying
2. Only buy if on special offer and on your wish list
3. Only exception is most recent in series by favourite authors.

The reason for these rules/guidelines is this: We all already have lots of books we want to read that we've already bought. It's rare for ebooks to increase in price. Therefore, we should not buy new ebooks that we want until they are on special offer.

In this way we make our large TBR lists work for us, by making sure that we only buy ebooks when they are on special offer. We spend less, and slowly work down our TBR lists.

[Wald07]

A very easy 3-step guide to follow to manage my addiction. And enough lee-way to feel comfortable, too!

I do try to buy on special. I also won't buy anything from Kobo that I can't use a promo code for.

I originaly thought Syn was joking about this thread. I am glad to be among friends with commonalities!

[ATDrake]

I just don't bother buying e-books if they're not already on sale/couponable or otherwise time-limited deep-discounted when I get them.

I'm perfectly okay with reading paper, live near several fairly well-stocked libraries, the used bookshops in my area are still in reasonably good shape despite the usual economic woes, and I have enough paid-for-but-unread purchases already stocked up that unless something is really, really compelling*, I don't feel the need to spend money on it Right Now.

* For "compelling", read "dirt cheap, or at least the cheapest I'm likely to see it for a long while, or likely to go out of print Real Soon Now in the case of certain specialty print-published non-fiction/foreign language/graphic novel works". Stuff that merely "looks good and I think I'd like to try it someday" is just "interesting" until the price hits the sweet spot.

[wyndslash]

recently, i've switched digital downloads; from ebooks to mp3s

i'm just wondering how long those $3.99 albums will go for

[pdurrant]

It's now been 25 days since I last bought an ebook!