A few months back, I decided to quell my OCD ways by painstakingly categorising my Kindle library into its respective genres.
And let me tell you, it was SWIMMING with books.
All said and done, it took me the best part of an hour to complete.
… An hour I’d have much preferred to spend making my utterly delicious “Lazy Lasagne” or boring Lady Laura and Master Liam with my plans for world domination. However, something tells me Liam would have just played with his toes. 🤔
Anyway, I remember closing my Kindle, throwing it on my desk, and declaring to the universe…
“No more books for the next year!”
(Only to buy a sci-fi novella two hours later…) 🤦♂️
Listen, I’m far from being the only one to have a swelling TBR list of books that will never be read in this lifetime or the next, but it was only after this “herding” endeavour of mine that I realised a good 85% of my library was…
$/£ 0.99 purchases.
And I bet my left you-know-what that most of your e-readers are also weighed down by these wallet-sucking impulse grabs.
Sneaky, sneaky things.
They seem so harmless on the surface, but over a year?
These “one-off” buys will empty your treasury more than Starbucks ever will, and to add paprika to the latte…
You will most likely NEVER read them.
So that’s why I’ve been enforcing a self-imposed ban not just on $0.99 e-books… but any title under $3.99-$4.99.
I’m sure this will upset the authors among the Legion — of which there are a few — and to them, I will say this:
One-off sales should never be the metric on which you base success.
It should be consumption.
And I will almost always read a $9.99 book before a $0.99 one.
Why?
Because I have more skin in the game with the former and, thus, it ascends to my priority list.
It’s one of the main reasons I also price my books as they are.
Sure, the extra royalties go down well every morning with my cup of Americano Intenso, but having my books actually read by fans (and trolls alike)… reading their reviews… and receiving gushing emails?
Those are the fruits that make my impending arthritis worth it.
If you found yourself nodding to any of what I rambled on about, then I invite you to check out my admittedly small, but growing, catalogue of fictional wares.
I can’t promise they will solve your TBR woes, but they will sure make forgetting about them easier:
DJJW