Ebook Buying Addicts' Support Thread

[pdurrant]

Hi Kevin,

Welcome to the thread.

Your points seem to be more about the 'quality' of the books we read, rather than the quantity of unread books we have stockpiled.

I'm sure there are people keen to discuss this point with you, but in this thread we're mainly concerned with encouraging each other to resist tempting 'bargains', rather than considering deep questions about the quality and value of the books we spend our time reading.

Perhaps you'd like to start a new thread on that topic?

[issybird]

Originally Posted by CRussel

Focus, issybird, focus. You can control this.

But Charlie, Kobo just sent me another 90% coupon!

I haven't tried it. Yet. But I won't spend a lot of time on it.

I don't actually have a goal to do more than reduce spending.

You're right at that. Buying only for immediate consumption is an important discipline, but the bottom line is the money, or as I'd put it, not wasting money on books that don't get read. Reducing my TBR helps save money and make me more mindful, but it's only a tangential goal.

[pdurrant]

I probably have around £2000 or more invested in ebooks I have yet to read.

So far this year I've reduced that investment by £16.75. (cost of ebooks read - cost of purchases)

It's silly to have that big a TBR. Especially as some of it is probably no longer to my taste, with purchases still unread dating back nearly nine years!

But at least this year I am making some progress.

[astrangerhere]

Originally Posted by pdurrant

I probably have around £2000 or more invested in ebooks I have yet to read.

So far this year I've reduced that investment by £16.75. (cost of ebooks read - cost of purchases)

It's silly to have that big a TBR. Especially as some of it is probably no longer to my taste, with purchases still unread dating back nearly nine years!

But at least this year I am making some progress.

I have 376 unread books right now and 294 read in my calibre. I did not record cost, so I have no idea what that is. I did go through my library last year and dump a bunch of things that I decided I would never read. Most of them were freebies, but some where not. My wife and I did a great deal of downsizing last year, even digitally, and it felt really good.

[CRussel]

My backlog of books I have in Calibre that I'll likely never read is so large I refuse to look at it. Instead, I'm dealing with this whole thing one day at a time. TODAY I won't buy any books. (Safe bet, new books come out on Tuesdays, mostly.)

I know I have new books coming in series I love. I'll buy those, but I'm really trying to stop the random buys of books I'll likely not read if I don't read them NOW. They get shuffled down the list and lost, and I forget why they even interested me.

[pdurrant]

Originally Posted by CRussel

but I'm really trying to stop the random buys of books I'll likely not read if I don't read them NOW. They get shuffled down the list and lost, and I forget why they even interested me.

Yes, this!

[pdurrant]

I have just resisted getting the current Humble Bundle. Interesting looking books, but not more so than a great many of my TBR pile. Remembering that fact allowed me to resist.

[DrNefario]

Yes, I think I've talked myself down, too.

There are no books on my wishlists. The one I'm probably most interested in is Parable of the Talents, but that's the follow up to Parable of the Sower, which I already have from an earlier Humble Bundle (though it is in this one, too) and haven't read yet. There are several others that sound interesting, but I don't think they are especially more interesting than everything else I've already bought, and my past record with Humble Bundle books is not that great. Thanks to my daily short stories, I have crunched through quite a few of the collections and anthologies that usually pad out these deals, but apart from that I've only read one novel and one memoir from the four or five bundles I've purchased.

I do regret missing the Small Beer bundle last year, but that did have one book on my wishlist, and that book later disappeared from Amazon UK, so I do feel like I missed something. (It was Solitaire by Kelley Eskridge. I don't really know why it disappeared from Amazon. It might just be an error.) The reality is that I almost certainly wouldn't have read it yet, although I might have read some of the shorts.

Let's just hope they don't add anything more tempting next week.

[Fbone]

March results:

5 books read
1 book purchased

[issybird]

After the first quarter, I feel as if I've done reasonably well. I've bought seven books (in six volumes) and spent only $8.50.* My accounting method counts a book as purchased if it has a price, but I cost it at actual cash outlay after credit and coupons. Even my TBR is down, albeit only slightly, at four books.

I'd like to do still better. March was marked by some exceptions, notably Google Play coupons and using up my B&N settlement credit (a very good call, as it happens, as there are reports that Nook Study no longer works for DRM purposes). But it meant that March was worse than February was worse than January, so I have to remain purposeful. However, all purchases this year were wishlist books at a bargain and of which I have reasonable expectations of reading this year.

My bottom line is that my outlay at less than a dime a day was trivial in any sense, but I don't need any new books. I'd like not to buy anything in April at all, but I'd make an exception for a working 90% Kobo coupon.

*For comparison purposes, at this point last year I had bought 15 books and spent $40.

[pdurrant]

I think you can count the first quarter a success, issybird! The trick is to keep it up for a whole year.

My first quarter this year was much better than my first quarter last year, but I still need to do better.

[Rev. Bob]

This quarter marked, I believe, the first time I accidentally bought a book. I'm not talking about buying a duplicate copy because I'd lost track of the original, or spending money to get something I thought was free or on sale. Nope, I was trying to move a book from one wishlist to another and clicked the wrong button.

Thankfully, it was only four bucks and something I'd been planning to get anyway. I've already processed it and loaded it onto the reader, so hopefully I'll get to it this month.

[issybird]

Originally Posted by pdurrant

I think you can count the first quarter a success, issybird! The trick is to keep it up for a whole year.

You know it! I hit the skids mid-year last year. It's one thing when you've got a shiny new resolution at the beginning of the year, but then you get lax, lazy and lustful as the months go by.

Charlie is right. It is about the money.

[pdurrant]

Originally Posted by Rev. Bob

This quarter marked, I believe, the first time I accidentally bought a book. I'm not talking about buying a duplicate copy because I'd lost track of the original, or spending money to get something I thought was free or on sale. Nope, I was trying to move a book from one wishlist to another and clicked the wrong button.

Thankfully, it was only four bucks and something I'd been planning to get anyway. I've already processed it and loaded it onto the reader, so hopefully I'll get to it this month.

Umm... Amazon will refund accidental purchases.

[astrangerhere]

I didn't buy a single book in March

My wife, however, bought 4 or 5. This presents a small problem in our house as I am the reader and she is the pbook reader. But our reading room does look fabulous with all those packed shelves...