TSS (Apr. 17): Book Budget Totals (Jan-Mar) & IMM (23)

The Sunday Salon (April 17)

You may remember two posts I did last year, on how to keep buying books even when you don’t have a lot of money? Yeah, I’ve been putting my own advice into good use. I thought maybe it’d be a good idea to show how much I’ve saved on my book-buying habits since the beginning of the year, to sort of…inspire? Maybe?

Keep in mind that I’m ONLY buying ebooks this year, so all (except two) of my acquisitions are ebooks. I still get paper books for reviews and whatnot, but I’ve put myself on a paper book ban (except for that one time)– and anyway, review books aren’t counted in the totals. So!

“Total saved” amounts are calculated by how much the book cost when I bought/downloaded the book. So if a book cost $1 but I got it for free during a freebie promotion, I saved $1. See? And it’s the same if a book cost $1 and I bought it using a gift card (that I had most likely gotten for free).

JANUARY-MARCH TOTAL
60 books acquired
$30 spent
$299.55 saved (version 1)
$441.55 saved (version 2)

Individual monthly totals:
JANUARY TOTALS
18 books acquired
$10 spent (for Amazon GC)
$112.41 MINUS $10 Amazon GC bonus
$122.41 WITH GC bonus
total saved!
Note: In January there was a deal on LivingSocial for a $20 Amazon gift card for $10. I bought one, obviously. I wasn’t sure if I should count the $10 saved within the savings totals or not, so I made two versions.

FEBRUARY TOTALS
16 books acquired
$0 spent
$67.56 total saved!

MARCH TOTALS
26 books acquired
$20 spent
$119.58 MINUS ML books
$251.58 WITH ML books
total saved!
Note: the $20 I spent was on two paper books (with shipping) I HAD to get because they’re out of print and way expensive on Amazon now. The site where I got them still had them in stock and for a reasonable price! So I bought them.

Now, some of these numbers are a bit off because of various factors. Some books haven’t gone back to their pre-free pricing so I don’t know what their “true” cost is yet, which really messes everything up. Then in March Baen came out with another CD full of free books, all of which were by Mercedes Lackey (the “ML” of March’s totals).

I wasn’t sure whether to count the ML books in the “money saved” totals because technically they’re always going to be free now and won’t go back to non-free pricing like most other freebie books. However, before the CD came out they were probably priced around $6 as that’s an average Baen ebook price (if they were even available as ebooks before the CD, and I’m not sure they were). So anyway– I decided to do two versions of the total amount saved just in case of…something. (I don’t know what.)

Anyway, this is pretty exciting, I think! I got a ton of books for relatively little money. Plus, since they’re (nearly) all ebooks I don’t have to worry about storing them in the ever-shrinking available space in my room. Yay!

Now go and get some cheap books of your own.

Books read this week:
36. Love Among the Chickens – P.G. Wodehouse [rating: Borrow it] e
37. Dragon and Slave – Timothy Zahn [rating: TBD] e
38. Kat, Incorrigible – Stephanie Burgis [rating: Buy it] R

Books reviewed this week:
25. I Lost My Mobile At the Mall – Wendy Harmer [rating: Borrow it] R
29. Journey to the River Sea – Eva Ibbotson [rating: Buy it]

Currently reading:
I’ve started reading The Explosionist! It’s very exciting.

In My Mailbox (23)

In My Mailbox is a weekly meme hosted by The Story Siren (who was inspired by Alea of Pop Culture Junkie‘s This Week in Books). Basically you just post about new books that came into your house over the past week, whether in the mail or by getting them at the library or by buying them in a store. Capiche?

I’m trying something new– try hovering your cursor over the book’s cover and it should tell you how much the book costs. Since they’re all bargain books, you could get a good deal! Although some of the deals have expired by now…

Bought/Downloaded: