Monday, August 14, 2006

Mini-Plug for Buying New Books (Instead of Used)

I know that I talk a lot in my reviews about getting books from and returning books to a used book store. I do this--get and return books, that it--because like most of us, I don’t have a huge amount of money to spend each month on books. The library would be free, but they don’t carry what I want to read. Going to this store lets me to read each book for about ¼ of its cover price. Not bad.

A friend of mine suggested that I join Booksfree.com. I looked into it, and I’m tempted. As many books as I can read delivered right to my door for a nominal charge each month. Considering how many books I go through each month, this beats even the buy/read/exchange method.

However, there are some authors whose books I always try buy new – Lynn Viehl, Victoria Strauss, C.T Adams and Cathy Clamp (they write as a team), and a few others I'm sure will occur to me in about fifteen minutes. Here’s why:

Buying new makes sure that my opinion--Hey, I like this author’s writing!--gets counted.

I want publishers to know when I really like something, and the best way to let them know is by buying that product from them. Buying new also means that the author gets a cut of the money you spend on the book.

So support your favorite authors. Buy new whenever you can!

2 comments:

Karen said...

As a future published author, I thank you!

But seriously, I do the same thing with my favorite authors, for the same reason.

Karen

Julie Doe said...

I wish I had enough money to buy everything I wanted new, but there's matter of the mortgage, food, utilities, etc. -- all the little things. :)

I hope your quest for publication is fruitful. Speaking of novels, I did NaNoWriMo last year, but I realized at about 30,000 words that what I was writing was a hopeless mess. *grin* I didn't have the heart to keep writing. Maybe I'll (extensively!) revise what I wrote last year and use this year to write 50,000 words to finish it. It would save me having to outline a new book from scratch in the next two months.