I’ve been thinking of writing something about how I’m sick of free ebooks, but Russell Blake beat me to it. I’m lazy so I’ll just give you his link in a second.
Right now I have 13 “pages” of unread books on my Kindle. That’s 149 books, short stories, novellas, etc. Most of them were downloaded free during the Great Giveaway of 2012, which is still going on but ended for me when I realized I had somehow managed to duplicate on my device what was already going on in my basement.
Down there, I have hundreds of books I haven’t yet read. I used to be a guy who only bought books when I had finished what I was reading. But somehow I got away from that. I started buying books I was going to read. Someday. And I ended up with an expensive pile of books I shuttle from house to house when I move.
I’m determined to read and possibly review all the stuff on my Kindle. A lot of those books are by writers like me who are striking out on their own. They can use the reviews. But to do it, it means I’m probably going to say no to downloading more free books for the time being. And I’ll stop buying ones I think I might like until I’ve worked through the ones I have.
I’ll be exercising a little thing called restraint.
These days, I’m trying to pay attention to the ways I make buying decisions, because they might be clues to how readers think. If other people feel the same way, if they’re choking on books they haven’t read due to the efficiency of Amazon’s KDP Select program, then it’s likely going to impact a lot of authors.
Russell talks about this passionately here. You should check it out.