I don’t buy a lot of books–I am the romance reader version of Billy Mack: I became the Publisher of AAR and now they give them to me for free! But despite having thousands of unread books on my TBR, I continue to purchase new ones. Some are books I find on my daily Steals and Deals hunt–in the past month, I bought Amy Bloom’s memoir In Love and P. Djèlí Clark’s A Master of Djinn. But I also buy books because I just have to have them.
I wasn’t given an ARC of Leigh Bardugo’s extraordinary Ninth House, so I shelled out $17.50 to Amazon for the book and the accompanying audiobook. #worthit
In the past few months, I bought several full-price books by Bardugo as well as a couple of books by Cate C. Wells. Thus far this year, I’ve paid for 29 books, most of which were on sale.
How about you? What have you bought lately? What makes you willing to pay for a book? What makes you unwilling to do so?
Impenitent social media enthusiast. Relational trend spotter. Enjoys both carpe diem and the fish of the day.
The last physical books I bought came from my little independent bookstore, so I paid list price. They were The Night Watchman by Louise Erdrich (worth it) and Beach Read by Emily Henry (not worth it.) The last ebook was The Long Game by Rachel Reid, totally worth it.
I spend $23/month on an Audible Plus membership, giving me 2 books to enjoy each month. My latest listen was The Remains of the Day by Kazuo Ishiguro and the one before was A Room with a View by E.M. Forster, both wonderful. I did start to wonder whether there is a good romance novel where the hero is a hot butler at a grand estate?
I also spend $10/month on Kindle Unlimited. Libby helps me fill in the rest.
Crave by Tracy Wolff — the first book of a popular new YA vampire series. :)
You know the publishers must believe in it because they gave it a Twilight-esque cover.
There is some interesting data in this blog post from an author who self-publishes.
This New TikTok Trend Is Damaging Your Favorite Authors | by Jenny Bravo | Let’s Write | Medium
A different author posted on Twitter about a TikTok “hack” that has resulted in a gigantic upswing in e-book returns. Not only are authors dinged for their original royalties but Amazon charges authors a digital handling fee. As the author points out, Amazon doesn’t allow music or movies to be returned . . . why is it ok to read an entire book and return it?
(30) Lisa Kessler/L.A. Kessler – PERFECT – Out Now! on Twitter: “@sunnybeamy They shouldn’t allow it if the reader has crossed the 25% threshold. You know by that point if you’ve made an accidental purchase or already read the book, etc. Allowing them to read the entire book and return it and then take royalties and a delivery fee from the author is wrong” / Twitter
Yes. this has been flying around for a while. It’s sadly similar to the #Audiblegate thing from last year; Amazon is actually pushing the idea that if you don’t like a book or auiodbook you can return it AFTER YOU’VE FINISHED IT, no questions asked. They do, of course, say when asked that they monitor and will not allow the system to be abused, but i’ve head many, many stories of people who read/listen to an entire series for just one credit or the price of one ebook. Creators managed to get Audible to amend their policy last year – if an audiobook is returned MORE than seven days after purchase, Audible takes the hit; it it’s returned before, the author takes it and loses their payments.
Right now, a number of authors are seeing their ebook sakes hit really hard – I’ve seen many threads from authors with negative balances after they’ve had a load of books returned.
Whoever started this trend on TikTok should be …
taken out back and shot– dealt with severely. But what really gets me is the number of people who think it’s okay and don’t even think or care that what they’re doing is stealing. What is wrong with them?! And let’s face it. Amazon could do something about this fairly easily and change their policy. But so far they haven’t. It’s disgusting and makes my blood boil.Before Audible was “persuaded” to change it’s policies, there were YouTube videos telling people how to use Audible like a “lending library.” I follow Audiblegate on FB, and they got some concessions but are still fighting for transparency (royalties are disappearing, not being posted, etc). It’s bad for ebooks, too, but I feel doubly bad when it happens with audiobooks because the narrators suffer as well.
To me, a short time limit on returns is fair and I would – and do – support that. I thought it was 5 days or so on Amazon.de where I buy most ebooks.
A % read beyond which I cannot return would not work in my case.
If I am to risk a new to me author or a truly expensive ebook, I want to give the book every chance to succeed for me, which often means skimming and reading backwards from the end.
Many books are good at pulling you in, and weaken at the 30-40% mark, and might just have a slump and come back strong later.
I only return when I am not satisfied. I do not feel that I am unfair, or gaming the system. I remember, when visiting the US, that I could return every physical book to B&N, no questions asked. Seemed the same to me.
And there is a limit on returns: when I bought a series by mistake to discover an hour later that the books were all in an author.s collection under a different name, I could only return 3 of 5 books myself and had to go through Amazon customer service for the other two.
It’s hard to believe that avid readers would do this to their favorite authors, but here we are. Amazon, which is able to track to the page/percentage how much of a book I have read, should easily be able to shut down this nonsense: if someone purchases an ebook and reads more than the 10% generally available as a free sample, Amazon should not permit the return, end of discussion. It’s so disheartening that we live in a time where “gaming the system” is all that counts and people do so without a thought to the long-term implications (and, of course, I’m not just referring to this awful “book hack”).
And these ppl will be the first to complain when an author doesn’t finish a series or stops writing altogether, or authors decide they can’t afford to put their books into audio. I’ve come across several authors already who are saying just that.
I found a comment in the first post interesting as well: that author says she makes more money from KU (paid per pages read) than outright book sales. Maybe, we’re looking at a future where books will no longer be sold. It’ll be just like streaming: pay your monthly fee and read whatever Amazon and authors choose to make available that month. Likely not in my lifetime but – based on my own kid’s attitudes about “subscription” vs. purchases of music and movies, etc. – I wouldn’t be surprised if isn’t true by mid-century.
When I get a book from KU (which is very often because that is one of my most common ways of reading books), I always make sure I scroll to the end of the book—even if the story ends around the 85% point—because I want to author to get full credit for all pages read.
I do the same.
I do that, too. In fact I often scroll to the end even when I decide not to finish a book (it’s usually because the book just doesn’t “fit” me) so the author gets the full credit. When I listen to the whispersynced audio that I bought after borrowing the KU book, I also open the KU and make sure it’s scrolled to the end. I’m hoping the author gets credit for the KU borrow and then the royalties on the audiobook, too.
The last book I bought is Secret Service by Tal Bauer, which I bought tonight. I paid $5.99 for it on Kindle, which is a high price for me. I am fortunate that can afford to buy whatever books I want but I am cheap enough that I try not to pay more than $4.99 for an e-book and most of the e-books I purchase are $3.99. To pay more than that means it is a trusted author and even with those, I often put the book on my Amazon wishlist and wait for the price to come down. My e-book TBR is over 700 books so I have plenty to read while I wait for book prices to reduce, ha ha! However, there are plenty of authors I like whose e-books are priced in my preferred range. I still buy some paperback and hardback books but in the past few years, that has become a small percentage and often those authors whose collections I wish to keep all the same format.
Dabney – I have Ninth House in hardback, agree that it is excellent and look forward to the next book Hell Bent in January (which I will purchase in hardback as that is the format of my whole Leigh Bardugo collection!)
One of the great joys of 2022 has been discovering Bardugo.
The only two authors I have all in hardback are J.K. Rowling and Tana French!
The last print book I bought was The Doomsday Book by Connie Willis. After reading the review here at AAR, (it was a #DIKlassic from 2000) I got a digital copy from my library. I liked it so much I bought the print book (and the other books in her time travel SF series – Blackout, All Clear and To Say Nothing of the Dog).
The last digital book I bought was Bombshells by Sarina Bowen ( a steal and deal here).
My last audiobook purchase was A Case of Possession by K.J. Charles. I’m working on getting all of her books on audio, one sale at a time.
You reminded me that I hadn’t checked lately for any audible upgrades to my purchased ebooks so I went to the website to check ( https://www.amazon.com/hz/audible/matchmaker ) and I got the audio upgrade for Something Fabulous by Alexis Hall for $1.99! So thanks for making me look around :-)
The last book I bought was The Book of Cold Cases by Simone St. James. I still haven’t read it. I’ve got so many holds on my Libby account that when they come available, I’m all over it. Since I retired, Libby is pretty much my go to for books.
The last books I purchased were The Sceptic by Lily Morton and Dark Class by Michelle Diener on the same day. Both were priced at $5.38.
Since Jan. 1 I’ve read 67 romances. The library provided 24 of those, and I’ve reread about 10 books I already owned. Amazon tells me I’ve placed 40 e-book orders. Many of those books were titles that I probably could have read for free with KU but I don’t subscribe.
Five of those 40 “orders” were for sets of books. Eleven were freebies or almost free. The most popular price points for single books was either $4.30 or $5.38. I paid $7.54 for two items – one was Rachel Reid’s The Long Game which I will likely reread; but the other was a flyer for an author I was not familiar with and probably won’t read again. :-( That feels like a really high price point for an e-book that I cannot loan to anyone else.
I’m surprised at how much I’ve purchased this year vs. borrowed; I would have guessed it was closer to 50/50. But 1) it is harder and harder to find what I want to read at the library and 2) we were on vacation for several weeks recently and I splurged with half a dozen or so titles that I might otherwise have waited for a lower price point for.
*That feels like a really high price point for an e-book that I cannot loan to anyone else.*
That’s exactly why I have a hard limit on what I will pay for an ebook. It’s a one shot deal. I can only share with my immediate family and most of us don’t read the same genres. I like reselling my paperbacks and buying more used ones, but that’s pretty much impossible. But I’d even be happy if I could just share my ebooks or audiobooks, When Amazon bought Audible they promised long and loud that they would remove the DRM on the audiobooks, but that promise dies a quick death.
My most recent book purchase was a $3.59 ebook from Kobo yesterday: Lola and the Single Dad by Kelly Hunter.
Looking at totals for May, I got 78 ebooks, of which 14 were free, and the rest cost a total of $226.67: 1 with Kobo points, 1 with an Amazon credit, 5 under $1, 9 under $2, 16 under $3, 7 under $4, 20 under $5, 1 under $7, and 2 under $8. Since ebooks can be of any length, including short stories, some of the lower prices are shorter works. I completely refuse to pay $10 or more for any ebook, and for anything over $5 I consider how strongly I like the author’s books.
I have almost 300 titles on price watch at the https://www.ereaderiq.com site, many of which have been on the list for years.
I check the https://www.bookbub.com/ebook-deals site every day, and have a LOT of authors or their watch list for notifications.
I get email notices from both of the above sites.
I have a book budget, but I try to stretch it. $10 of it goes every month for my KU membership—I read so many books through KU, the membership pays for itself within the first week of the month. I always check my local library & KU first when I’m looking for a book. I don’t like to pay more than $7 for an ebook (which is the reason I haven’t read HOOK, LINE, AND SINKER or THE SUITE SPOT yet—they were both $9.99) and will almost always wait for a sale on a pricy book. This past Tuesday, I purchased Amelia Wilde’s POWER PLAY and Zoe York’s RECKLESS AT HEART, both for $4.99 each. Yesterday, I grabbed Shannon McKenna’s BEHIND CLOSED DOORS for 99-cents and the latest from Kelly Hunter, LOLA AND THE SINGLE DAD, for $3.99. So this week, I’ve spent about $20 (including tax) on books: that’s about average for me.
I buy more audiobooks than print books and almost never buy paper books. With retirement on the horizon, we are all about downsizing. We are still in the process of rehoming hundreds of books we’ve collected over the years of pleasure reading and homeschooling. We live in a moderately sized house and raised 5 children here. With three still at home, space is a premium. In the past 5 years we’ve probably cleared 500 books out, with them mainly going to the library or donated to Better World Books.
I buy between 0 and 4 books a month, mostly audiobooks and always on sale. I buy 12 credits to Audible each year on the yearly plan. My library carries the audiobooks of many of my favorite author’s which is a plus. Most of the ebooks I read are on KU, or I buy them on sale. I use the whispersync feature to check out a book from KU, then buy the audiobook at a discounted price when I can. I scour Chirpbooks weekly for their deals, and check out Libro.com monthly.
I’m not “unwilling” to buy books, I simply have a strict budget. Not everyone has the same disposable income. We also have a budget for eating out and other forms of entertainment. What I do is try to stretch my budget out as far as possible by buying books on sale, etc. We do well, but we have all or partial financial responsibility for 3 adult children with mental and physical health issues. Last year I recorded 286 book read on GR. A few were rereads but the vast majority were new. There is no way I could afford that without KU, sales, and the library. As I said previously, my budget wouldn’t change if KU disappeared, I would just have to change my reading habits or read fewer books.
Luckily for me and what would otherwise be a bank-breaking book habit, I get a lot of ARCs and don’t have to buy many new books. But I keep finding ones I’ve ‘missed out on’, whether it be from recs here or at GR, and my Amazon Wish List is always growing! Also, I read exclusively ebooks these days – my Kindle goes everywhere with me so I’m never without something to read.
The last book(s) I splashed out on was the entire first series of Cole McCade’s Criminal Intentions series – they’re SO good! The first three recently came out in audio and I was hooked within the first five minutes. They’re a mix of police procedural/mystery and slow burn romance, and once I’d finished book 3 I couldn’t wait for more audio (I don’t know if there are any more planned) and bought the series of 13 books – now I just have to find the time to read them! I know we have readers who are fans of the same kinds of books I am, so if you like Greg Ashe, Cordelia Kingsbridge, LJ Hayward – go get these! (If you haven’t already.) They’re in KU as well.