How well do buying bans work? Do they work at all? And if they don’t why do we do them? These are some of the questions I ask myself. So I guess I’ll actually try to answer them one at a time.
How well do book buying bans work? Um well for me? Not well. And that has a lot to do with the internet. Particularly Book Outlet. And also because of my used bookstore. In both cases I’m not buying books at retail price. In fact I almost never buy books at retail price. So if I put myself on a retail ban that’s pretty easy. The one or two books I buy retail every 3 months or so are pretty easy to give up. But going on a ban entirely? Never going to successfully happen
Do they work at all? I guess they do for some people. I guess this is more a question for you guys. Do book buying bans work for you? Why/why not? (answer in comments) I see people talk about their buying bans but they don’t really talk about whether or not they can stick to them.
If they don’t, why do we do it? Partially guilt that we buy a lot of books. Partially to save money. Maybe even partially because we don’t have room or we need to get through the TBR of books we already own. All very valid reasons.
In general I think buying bans DO help curb our buying habits. They make you have to choose which books are more important for you to have. But I don’t think going cold turkey is completely possible, at least not for me. Buying books is my therapy and without it I’d be one very miserable blogger. I love browsing the stores and online, its relaxing and keeps me from punching people. So for me, strict buying bans are more stressful than they are helpful.
What about you? Are book buying bans for you, or no?
From my shelf to yours,
The rules of my book buying ban:
1. Only buy new books at considerable discount (> €5 or secondhand (in very good condition) for less than €6 inclusing shipping.
2. Only buy books that I need to complete series.
3. Remove everything else from my wishlists on Amazon and The Book Depository. I get to keep 3 stand-alone novels I really want on there that I can buy if they follow rule 1.
4. Exceptions:
A. an author comes to visit my country and I don’t have (all) their books.
B. There’s some sort of pre-order offer (which is never for me in The Netherlands, but you can dream).
This works for me. I still buy a lot, but it’s considerably less than before. Removing everything else from my wishlist has had the greatest impact. ?