Do you buy rent or borrow? Or do you have a subscription of some kind? Do you read physical books or do you read ebooks?
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I pirate shamelessly. Z-lib is my to-go.
I just realized, boy is it refreshing to actually talk about sites like z-lib without being censored. Library Genesis and Anna’s Archive are also nifty.
I didn’t know about Anna’s Archive, thank you. :)
yeah if i’m even remotely ambiguous on whether i’d want a book, piracy. i can’t buy everything and i can’t go to a library every day. but i definitely try to buy books from the authors i know i like—i heard great things about NK Jemisin and Kim Stanley Robinson for example, read one of their books, and then that made me go out and buy large parts of both’s output. i think i have physical copies of like a third of KSR’s major novels, lol.
Exactly. I always read a pirated epub first, then, I always go out and buy that book in hardcover. But many of the authors I enjoy are long dead, and many of their prints are in public domain. So piracy doesn’t matter there. That’s where Project Gutenberg and Standard Ebooks are incredible!
Book Depository closed the other month, I don’t know if Amazon understood how important it is for people outside US and EU, but the closure really pushed everyone I know to casually switch back to piracy.
What? The website looks the same to me?
Where are you looking
It feels so good to finally say this outright. Arrr!
Mostly borrow ebooks from the public library. There is a small new-and-used bookstore near me, one of those classic “open 3 hours a day, more if we feel like it” ones. Very fun to go wander the shelves when I want a physical book.
Combination of my local second-hand bookstore (which has a wildly good selection given that I live in a small country town), my two favourite “regular” bookstores, Libby, and the Kobo ebook store.
If I can’t find something particularly niche or out of print, I’ll use Abe Books but I try to avoid that since it’s owned by Amazon.
Edit: I’ve started to favour print books most of the time, at least for poetry and non-fiction. I’ve started to write more again and I find physical books much easier to refer back to.
I prefer nonfiction to be printed books as well. For some reason I don’t seem to take it as seriously as an ebook, maybe it feels too insubstantial for my brain to take it seriously.
I buy books only when I really love the edition. Otherwise, I’ll buy some on kindle and rent others through my local library, or Libby. I only buy physical copies of books I am happy to re-read.
I just use my local library now. I don’t usually read a book twice, so I don’t see any point in purchasing books anymore.
I’m print disabled, which means I have problems reading printed text, but am not blind. Mainly, I have to be doing something with my hands or it’s really hard to focus long enough to read a book. So I get through a lot of audiobooks.
In addition to Audible and Libby, I am also eligible for the National Library Service, which has its own app. If you, or anyone you know might qualify, here’s a link to the US NLS. There are similar libraries in most other countries, and there are treaties to make books available to people living abroad in their own language.
I usually use Libby for most of my books, unless I’m in the middle of a series and have to have the book now.
I don’t read a ton of physical books. I kind of like getting physical books as “collectors items”, if I really like a book I’ll try to find a nice hard cover copy of it.
I usually buy ebooks from ebooks.com and DeDRM them with calibre and read them on my iPad. Pirated a handful of books but I can’t always find what I’m looking for. :(
I also use my partners Audible account to listen to books at work lol
Either Library Genesis for ebooks, or thriftbooks.com. Also some local used book stores, like Half Price Books (not sure if they are everywhere?)
Thrift Books is nice because you can choose the edition you want, if they have it available. Also you might get nice surprises occationally. I ordered Fall of Hyperion by Dan Simmons and ended up getting an autographed copy. You can also earn credits for free books, and it’s free shipping on orders over $25(?), so I usually order 4-5 at a time. (Not an ad, I just really like thriftbooks lol)
I have been 100% ebooks for years, but after a combination of factors such as books not being available from my library on Libby and them being kinda pricey on Kindle, plus getting in to a booktuber (Ariel Bissett!) I got introduced to ThriftBooks and in 2 months I’ve bought over 15 physical books. 😅 It’s a change to be sure and I’m not sure how I feel about all the space books will take up again in my life, but it’s nice to have them.
I use the Libby app and check out ebooks from my local library usually. I have a bunch of physical books as well, but I am out of room to put them now. I also find ebooks to be more convenient. I can read whenever I want because I have all the books I’m reading on my phone.
I have some great used bookstores near me that I can browse on a lunch break and have established a decent relationship with the store owners. I love to have a physical book and the interactions with a store owner that lives and breathes books can’t be overrated, they always have a suggestion for me based on current interests.
I do own an e-reader though and will occasionally buy books that I just can’t get in print, I’ve been really into the Warhammer 40k universe lately and while I could find them used on ebay they are generally pretty pricey. I did score two collections at my local thrift store last week though for $3 a piece and was pretty happy about that.
I mostly read on royalroad an scribblehub (if you consider web serials to be books)
I read a mix of ebooks and physical books. Usually the choice is determined by the type of book. For example, usually more genre fiction gets an ebook, whereas more so called “literary fiction” gets a physical copy.
For example I’ve picked up House of Leaves at a local independent bookstore, along with the Molloy books by Beckett and the Norton Annotated Moby Dick. I don’t think house of leaves would work at all as an ebook and heavily annotated items I prefer a physical copy.
Alas I am running out of bookshelf space so I have to be much more selective these days. As for finding books, it’s usually word of mouth or on storygraph. I also follow the book youtube Leaf by Leaf whom I can thoroughly recommend.
The ebooks I prefer on eink devices, for portability I have a Kobo and for notetaking or needing a bigger screen I have a supernote A5X
My local thrift store! I usually find at least one good book 50% of the time, and sometimes I’ll find 3 or 4 that are on my to read list. They’re never about $3-$4 each too, which is great.
Anyway that is convenient. Used book stores, new book stores, libraries, Costco, dollar shops, eBay and whatever other webstores, yard sales, online archives, open hard drives, random websites, humble bundle and friends, itch.io…
For ebooks I have a couple of Kindles I load using Calibre, PDFs I use whatever, but they are best on my iPad Pro using Yomu. On Android they all seem to suck, but I haven’t tried any outside of F-Droid.
I used to use Scribr, but I found the selection to be severely lacking. I guess it is good if you want a steady stream of best sellers, a meaningless accolade, or junky weird ass titles that no one should waste their time reading. I suppose their magazine access is super nifty, just the articles and no ads. It is relatively cheap, cheaper as a student I believe, and it comes with perks like Pandora premium and Mubi. It is worth it, but in the end their formatting is just the worst. Reading an ebook on a tablet is the worst of both worlds. Still, I think it is a service worth paying for just for the sheer amount of stuff, not to mention the user submitted stuff that is a gold mine.
The best book subsciption I ever had was Safari Books, which I think is now just O’Reilly. When I used to want to be a programmer, it was the best thing in the world. I even scored a pretty good deal at $200 a year. My dumbass didn’t renew one year, and now it is stupidly expensive.
