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I use the library for most of my "recreational" reading. If I need a technical book I buy it at local bookstores. When I was in the trucking business and on the road I would buy books. I knew it was time to go to the house when the sleeper was so full of books I had to put them out on the doghouse to get in the bunk.
Now that I am home all the time I hit the garage sales in the spring and buy all the hardbacks that the rich folks read during the winter. Two or three bucks for a hardback is the most I ever pay.
I am wondering how many books we big time readers buy, and how often we buy our books.
This week as I've been visiting our community independents, I bought two on Wednesday, and another today. I also got gifted with 3-4 free review copy books.
These two purchases are unusual for me these days. Having been on the road, literally, for 1-1/2 years I rarely bought books, used the library or borrowed books from my friends. When I left NM I gave all the books away, some to the library, several bundles to a book dealer-friend and our local community charity. In VT, I was so privileged to have a wonderful library just down the road, and they intra-library loaned dozens of books whilst I lived in the community. No purhases for the entire sojourn.
Wonder what other people's buying habits might be!
I usually buy about 4 - 8 books every three months. I'm in a nonfiction book discussion group so 12 books a year are not necessarily (unless I recommended them) ones I choose to read but ones I have to read. Right now, I have a backlog of unread books. When I moved I didn't take any furniture but I took all of my books.
I like buying my used books online from Powells.com. I'll spend up to a week making my seclections for books, then put in a massive order of 50-100 books, and that'll usually last me a year or more.
I absolutely despise driving a car and fighting traffic, and I'm a graveyard shift worker, sleep from 9AM to 5-6PM every day, and most used bookstores are not open at night. I live in, what's purportedly a 24 hour city, but that's a joke to us graveyard shift workers. How I wish they'd keep a used or new bookstore open in this city at least one night a week for us night workers.
Online used bookstores, open 24 hours a day. Perfect for me!
I've had a Kindle for over a year now, and I buy most of my books from Amazon or Fictionwise. I also get public-domain (out of copyright) books free from manybooks.net and Project Gutenberg. In the time I've had the Kindle, I've gotten probably 700 books, more than half of them from Amazon.
I buy paper versions of absolute favorites, cookbooks, things that aren;t available on Kindle yet, regional interest books, some technical books. Unfortunately there are few local bookstores, so I'd be going out of area anyway.
Every few months or so I have an outburst and buy a bunch of books from Amazon. Maybe a couple times a year I'll go to a big bookstore and end up getting a pile of books, trying to ignore how much I'm spending on them all!
I use the library almost exclusively. I'll buy a book if I LOVE it, but normally I use the library. I'd say I buy maybe two books a year.
I also have a friend who is in collection development for the public library here. She gets all kinds of pre-publication copies so she passes those on to me. I've read all kinds of great books, for free, thanks to her. She's my hook up!
If I get a gift certificate, I'll buy a new book, usually from Amazon or my favorite on line book store:Subjects : BetterWorldBooks.com (http://www.betterworldbooks.com/category-C1000.aspx - broken link) no shipping!! Lots of good used books.. and when the libraries in my area have their book sales I'm first in line As to how many I buy a year...I can't keep track!!
I am wondering how many books we big time readers buy, and how often we buy our books.
I read mostly genre -- mystery (mostly cozies), romance, paranormals SF/fantasy (including urban fantasy) -- though I also read technothrillers, historical novels, non-fiction (mainly books on baseball, horse racing, US military history).
I keep track of the release dates of upcoming books in series I read (I use a ratty spiral notebook that's seen better days, but with my new iPhone coming next week, I'll have a shiny new PDA to take on that task), plus new books that I think will appeal to me (stopyourekillingme.com is a great resource for mysteries, and RT Book Review covers a cross-section of genre books in the print edition every month, with release dates three months out from the cover date).
I buy about 30 books a month, predominantly mass-market paperbacks -- the way I read, I can't afford hardcovers. I'll make exception for non-fiction, and for gifts for my husband, however (especially when B&N.com has it at a great price), and if I find a discounted trade paperback in Costco that appeals to me, I'll grab that, too. There are no reliable local independents, so I visit three Barnes & Noble stores, where a good many employees know me by name.
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