Free Book Overload

I remember the first RWA conference I ever went to. I was bowled over by a lot of things--mostly all the great information and how much I learned about writing--but another was all the free books.

This was true at the first regional conference I went to in New Jersey in 2003 (especially since I won a big basket of books in a raffle) but even more so at my first National conference in Dallas in the summer of 2004.

At my first National RWA conference, I went to as many of the publisher sponsored signings as I could, glommed onto every free book I was offered and seriously needed another suitcase, or two, to get home. (It's not so easy to ship books back if you live in Canada...) Possible, just a slightly more of a hassle.

It took a few years of going to these conferences before I started to get pickier. I'd only take books home I thought I was likely to read, or thought one of my CPs might read, or books written by friends.

But even so, and even after giving away TONS of them, my house is still overloaded with books I haven't read, and let's face it, will probably never read. I ran out of shelf space even before the Disastrous Bedroom Bookshelf Collapse of '11 (disaster movie coming).

I have piles of books everywhere in my house. I could be on Hoarders. No joke. I already had a bit of a book shopaholic problem before I started getting free ones at conferences.

When Stephanie visited last fall, she looked at a row of books in my TV room and said something like, "For a girl who says she doesn't read much romance, you sure have a lot of them." And I looked at the row of books she was looking at, and she was right... About 15-20 romances. But guess how many of that row I'd read? Zero. Sad, but true. Some I kind of still mean to. Or at least mean to start them to see why that particular author is so popular or whatever... And some are by friends and I bought them at a literacy signing and don't feel right giving them away... But not one of them have I read. And they take up space. And attract dust. And add to the clutter in my house and mind.

I figured one thing that having an e-reader would fix was this book overload problem. And it is helping. A bit.

But, you know what I noticed recently? I've got kindle clutter.

After I first got my kindle, I'd click "buy" pretty much any time I found out about a free book written by someone on one of my writer loops or on facebook or twitter, etc.. I figured, not only might I help the author move up in the Amazon rankings, hey, it might be a good book and even if it's not, it's free! And it's not like I'd have to find room for it on my shelves. What the heck. *clicks buy*

But I've hit my saturation point. It's not like I'm running out of storage space (and that cloud business solves that, even if I were) but I'm running out of brain space to even organize or process all the stuff I've downloaded that I really have very little intention of ever reading. And I end up forgetting that I've bought books that I really wanted to read that are now buried below a bunch of free or super cheap books I'll probably never read more than 5-10 pages of and I've already lost control of the quasi organizational system I'd set up.

Just because something's free, doesn't mean it has no cost...

Does anyone else have this problem?
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Published on May 02, 2012 05:30
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message 1: by Traann (new)

Traann Books are one of my favorite things and for a while I kept having my husband building me new book shelves. I have come to the conclusion that I now have enough book shelves and have almost finished entering all of them in LibraryThing and Delicious Library. I'm in the 2500 book range now and many of them I have read multiple times.

I lend my books out to my friends hence the Delicious Library program that has a feature that lets you track that. In addition I have donated hundreds of book to our local library that I know I will never read again (I only keep research books,books that have meaning to me and books I will re-read) and they either add them to their collection or sell them for money to run programs they would otherwise not be able to afford. I alos donate books to our local Senior Center and live in Rehabilitation Center for Seniors stepping down from hospital stays.

Organization takes effort but I think it is worth it and if you never going to read them I'd consider another way to use them, ie donation of some sort.

My husband did convert one of the rooms in our home to an Oak paneled Library so my books are beautifully displayed but I do not want to start stacking books again so I do have to purge some times. Those are the times your friends and local library get the most books.

Not sure if this helps but it is good to see that there are others out there with the same book hoarding problem I have. :-)


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