Ebook Buying Addicts' Support Thread

[Cinisajoy]

Originally Posted by Tarana

If I could give up getting cookbooks, you can give up getting books that just rehash what you know you need to do anyway. and it may or may not help.

Should we start a club? Only $2.50 of cookbooks bought today. They were 49 cents each.

[Tarana]

Originally Posted by Cinisajoy

Should we start a club? Only $2.50 of cookbooks bought today. They were 49 cents each.

Maybe. It's really hard to resist but I find that most of the free cookbooks merely rehash recipes I already have. The only one I've obtained recently that had some useful stuff (for me) was an omelette cookbook. I've only bought one cookbook in the last year (Artisian breads) and have yet to make something out of it which tells me that my cookbook obtaining is rather useless at this point.

[Tarana]

Ok, it's the last day of September. I didn't do too bad this month. Got a lot of free books (still have that problem - getting better). Bought 2 Novellas (part of series) and 7 audiobooks (3 were Audible credits to use up).

Yes, 3 more free cookbooks. Oh, when will it end???!!?

For the year, I am -2 for the TBR. So, still a lot of work to stop buying so many books!

[pdurrant]

At the end of September, My TBR was two less than at the start of the year. Now it's only one less.

Only eight books finished in September. My lowest total this year. A combination of two very big books (Pandora's Star and Judas Unchained by Peter F. Hamilton) and a change in my commute leading to less reading time.

And 21 books bought in September. I don't know whether it's good or bad that I don't regret any of them.

13 of them were a special offer on a series by Ellis Peters, three were Philip Pullman's Dust trilogy, two were magazine subscriptions. The remaining three were offers on books by favourite authors.

Perhaps I should just not worry about my TBR any more.

[issybird]

I bought two Amazon deals in September for a total of $3, bringing my YTD totals to 17 books for $22.25 cash outlay.

It's obvious to me that Kobo coupons drove a lot of my buying, but my habits have changed a lot, also. I'm much more resistant to Amazon deals. And in general, when I run across a book I like, I'm content to put it on my wishlist and let it go, instead of immediately searching for my cheapest option. I keep winnowing my wishlist as wants become less pressing; eventually I'll pick up some if they go on sale or with funny money or, since at this point I think it would be reasonable, if I really want to read it. This doesn't have to be a hairshirt.

I'm lucky in that I'm not following any authors or series in particular, so I lack that (entirely understandable) urge to get the next book as it comes out. Obviously there's enough on my TBR (to which I can't put a number) that I can shop there for my next read.

I got over freebies long ago; it was harder for me to resist the daily deals. Similarly, I gladly purged my library of free books (which was a salutary lesson in itself), but I find it harder to get rid of books that I bought for $1.99, say, but that realistically I'll never get to. I know, they're doing no real harm, but virtual clutter irritates me and it's one reason I can't enumerate my TBR (aside from not wanting to ); there's no point in counting a book I'll never feel like reading and having paid for a book is not sufficient justification for wasting good reading time on it after having already wasted money.

My TBR melts at a glacial pace; I'm not buying much anymore but between audiobooks, OverDrive and public domain a lot of what I read doesn't count against it.

[Tarana]

Issybird, I agree with your stance. The only difference is that I keep the free books in a separate library. They aren't counted in the TBR unless I decide to start reading them and then transferred to the TBR Library. So, ultimately, my TBR only contains that which I have paid $$ for or I'm going to be reading this month or parts of a series that I've started. I mention this only for other ebook addicts. It at least keeps the freebees you may never get to in an organized fashion and out of your main library.

[DrNefario]

I've been thinking of breaking some of mine out to a "vault", or something, to acknowledge that, although I own them, I don't really know why, or didn't really want to (bundle items), or they are actually out of copyright and I could pick them up again at any time, or whatever. That would give me a slightly better idea of how many of my unread books I actually might want to read. The trouble is that whenever I try to do this, I always end up with too many edge cases I can't make a decision on, and abandon the idea.

[pdurrant]

I've already done that. I estimate that 95%+ of my TBR is made up of books that I've bought and want to read. The other 5% are freebies that I want to read, and some public domain.

Which I suppose is a good thing.

[astrangerhere]

Are we defining TBR as "all books owned but unread?" How does that work when you have a spouse? My wife has books that I've no interest in and same me for her. In fact, she is really the only one who still spends any significant amount of money on books. She wants to own a thing, and I am happy to read it from the library.

I think I take a different approach to TBR than most. I keep a terrifyingly thorough reading spreadsheet each year. Around October of the prior year, I walk through my physical library and make a list of around 25 things in there I want to get read, or at least start. If I have seen a book 3 years running and still don't care to add it to the list - off to donation it goes.

I do basically the same thing with my Calibre index. Print a physical copy of the list, highlight 25-50 that I want to read. Seen a thing 2 or 3 years running and don't want to read it? To the recycling bin it goes.

That gives me a base TBR for the year that allows for additions of new things or library books that still gets me to me 100ish books a year goal.

This method serves two purposes for me:

1 - it reminds me just how much I have (and why I really, really don't need more), and lets me get eyes on the entire collection at least once a year.

2 - it keeps me from being overwhelmed by the analysis paralysis of knowing I won't ever get to all of it.

[CRussel]

I keep a column in my Calibre that is book 'status' if you will. It has defined fields for each book -- TBR, Read, NotRead, NotInterested, Abandoned, and ReRead. The books in my TBR are ones I am actively planning on reading soon. The NotRead column is for books acquired either as a bundle, or on sale, that I intend to get around to at some point, but not right away. So this might include later books in a series that I bought on a sale, but haven't gotten around to yet, or Baen Monthly Bundle books that I might read. NotInterested are books I got in a bundle that I have no interest in at all, but can't convince myself to simply delete from Calibre (I almost never delete books), or later books in a series that has run out of steam and that I keep around to remind myself to not buy a whole series just because the first one was good. Abandoned and Read are pretty self explanatory. ReRead are books that I have read more than once.

If a book has been in my TBR for longer than a year, it gets moved to NotRead. Or even NotInterested, though that's less likely. When it's time to start a new book, I go to my TBR list, and if nothing jumps out at me, I start perusing the NotRead list. Or, in cases of extreme ennui, I head for the Read or ReRead lists. An old favourite is often a way out of the reading "blahs" for me. (And keeps the total cost of bought books down quite effectively, I might add.)

[pdurrant]

I have all my bought books in calibre. The only freebies in there are ones I've actually read, or intend to read. I cleared out all the ones I got just because they were free some time ago.

I have 137 public domain ebooks in my TBR pile, although I might remove the 52 Harvard classics from that list.

Of the bought/free books, they date from back to 2008
2008: 105
2009: 82
2010: 98
2011: 47
2012: 50
2013: 111
2014: 146
2015: 189
2016: 152
2017: 48

Hmm... It might be worth my going through them again and seeing how many I no longer want to read. Perhaps at the end of the year.

[ekbell]

I maintain a family library so there are books in there which I will *never* read.

I keep track of a) who's ereader has what books, b) unread books that I bought with the intention of reading myself and c)what I've actually read. Keeping track of b and c is done in the hope of reducing impulse purchases (I'm still having problems with $1.99 bargains).

When picking up free books and adding them to the library I make sure that they are properly tagged with correct metadata and a full summary but otherwise leave them be (until I come up with some tagging update I want to do :-( )

[DrNefario]

Originally Posted by astrangerhere

Are we defining TBR as "all books owned but unread?"

I am, yes. I also keep spreadsheets, and I guess the key one is the list of all the books I own but haven't read. It's not truly a TBR because I don't necessarily want to read all of them (a good thing, because there's about 100 years' worth at the current rate of progress), but I don't see a particularly good way of turning it into a real TBR.

I've tried grading the books on how much I want to read them. I've tried marking some as "don't care". As I said before I always get paralysed with indecision on borderline cases and it ends up not really working.

So I just accept that probably half of my list of 1200 books is junk. And then another half are "stacked" behind other unread books, so there are probably about 300 books I might actually read next.

[Tarana]

Astrangerhere, your TBR is what you make of it. I just happen to keep only purchased stuff in my TBR so that I can focus on reading those FIRST. I have hundreds (blame it on some sales in 2012).

Being the keeper of the library is why I separate the freebees from everything else in the General library. I don't want to spend my time fixing tags and series for something that may never be read. One day, I'll spend an afternoon deleting stuff that is no longer of interest to me and that pares it down well. I TRIED to do what Paul did (delete them all) and couldn't bring myself to do that. But I DO get them out of my Amazon library which is already unmanageable with the keepers.

[astrangerhere]

Originally Posted by Tarana

Astrangerhere, your TBR is what you make of it. <snip>

I think that the nature of any personal tracking is what you make it. My wife looks at my spreadsheet and usually audibly snorts at it.

I have to wonder, looking through this thread if I have less "stuff" in my library by not using Amazon. I don't get any emails about specials or freebies, so I don't have the temptation to begin with.