I happily admit to having a love/hate
relationship with the rise of reading using screen-based devices. I am a book nerd who will happily share those memes about loving the smell of a
bookstore, the feeling of pages made from paper under my hands, and the joy of
reading not only books, but magazines and newspapers too.
A couple of years back when I was still in the midst of my communications degree, I went to the library of my local university to study. As lunchtime rolled around, I looked
forward to surfacing from the rather heavy texts I was reading, and chilling out
with the day’s newspaper. I headed to the stands which normally housed any
number of different newspapers from across the country, only to find the
shelves shockingly bare. I headed to the information desk to ask where the
newspapers had been moved to, only to be told that the decision had been taken to no
longer receive hard copies of said papers ... any publication I wanted to
read, I could do so online.
It wasn’t pretty.
As if I didn’t spend
enough hours staring at a screen already, as an online student! I just wanted to indulge
in turning the pages of the paper, enjoying the familiarity with its sections
and, like an old friend, eating my lunch in its company.
I grew up in a television generation, so I'm not unfamiliar with the constant cries of
parents and pundits alike, deploring the amount of time ‘our children’ spend
watching screens. More than a few of life’s evils, (obesity in particular) have been laid at the feet of the ubiquitous screen.
What has the response of our world been?
Well, the number of television sets in our homes have only increased. This was closely followed by the birth of the Internet, which mushroomed our screen exposure in both the workplace and in our homes. Today, we live our lives online, on-screen. As this saturation increases, the calls for less time staring at one for our children - and the rest of us - has decreased, to almost disappearing completely. Oh, the irony. I can hear the voice of Cuba Gooding Junior as I write this - Show Me the Money!
Pardon me, my cynicism is showing.
In truth, I can’t be a complete
naysayer. Screen time got me my degree, a dream I had held dear from the time before television came in colour. Today, research
is a breeze with the endless sources available electronically. Much of my
job involves using a screen, and blogging with you happens on a
laptop, and you could be reading it on a range of different screen based
devices. I don’t know about you, but the things my phone can do today astound
me. And if you haven’t yet experienced it for yourself, be assured that no parent
with a child who has ventured overseas could ever be ungrateful for Skype or
its equivalent.
So, whilst I still love my books
and magazines and newspapers, and would as a rule choose them over a digital
version, I don’t want to be a grumpy old curmudgeon stuck groaning about ‘back
in the day’. Whilst I was a student, my family bought me a Kindle, and the
library of electronic books it now houses is extensive. Reading has always been one of life's simple pleasures for me, and I love to add to my book collection. But how do I manage the simple pleasure of reading when I’m on a budget?
I use a nifty little service
called Bookbub.
I’m not even sure now how I fell
over Bookbub. I think from memory I received an email one day advertising the
service, and decided to give it a go. It’s been a couple of years now, and I
haven’t been disappointed.
So what is Bookbub? This is how they describe
themselves:
BookBub is a free service that helps you discover books
you'll love through unbeatable deals, handpicked recommendations, and updates
from your favorite authors. BookBub doesn't actually sell books. We simply
introduce you to books you'll love that are available on retailers like
Amazon's Kindle store, Barnes & Noble's Nook store, Apple Books, and
others.
You sign up to their email service, and are given the
option to select from a wide range of book genres of interest to you. The
genres include fiction with a wide range of subcategories such as bestsellers,
mysteries and thrillers, romance, science fiction, fantasy, chick lit, teen and
young readers; and non-fiction which encompasses anything from biography to
politics, true crime to cooking.
Warning – signing up will involve
receiving a daily email of books of interest, so if your inbox is already in
overdrive, this will only add to the problem. However, if you sign up because you want books, and they're offering them to you for free or
at minimal cost, it's worth trying it for a while to see how you go.
Each of my daily emails list a
range of titles spread across the areas of interest I’ve nominated. They range
in price; I think $4.99 is probably the most expensive I’ve seen. On occasion I
have paid $0.99c or $1.99 for a book of particular interest, but for the most
part, the books I have loaded onto my Kindle have been freebies. (My particular Kindle only shows images in black and white, which is probably a good thing because it stops me overdoing it with the cookbooks).
It’s rare in this world that you get something
for free, but this has worked for me. It’s not a site where you are likely to
find classics, and the books featured appear to be mostly American
in the categories of interest I chose, so if you’re looking for Australian
authors you may be disappointed. However, I have enjoyed the convenience of
adding to the collection of books to read when a visit to the local library
isn’t an option, and that’s anytime I’m at Bountiful.
I can also see the benefit for those
of us not entirely thrilled with a move to screen-based literature; the more I
get used to using the Kindle, the more likely I am when making a personal book
purchase to include the Kindle version in my decision making. If portability is
a key factor, such as when travelling (or when hubby is mentioning the need to do a book cull), chances are I’ll purchase the Kindle
version over the hardcopy.
I came across an interesting
article written by Penny Sansevieri that provided some interesting facts to
demonstrate who is using Bookbub. These were her thoughts going in:
"…my general
perception was that, sure, mostly women, predominantly in their 30s, so skewing
younger, on their devices all the time, big time readers of mass market genre
fiction…"
Here’s a snapshot of the actual facts she discovered about Bookbub subscribers:
Over 75% are women,
which is down from 85% women in 2014, so their male readership is on the rise.
Over 60% read a
book per week, and while 38% read mysteries and thrillers, only 9% read
non-fiction.
Over 75% are over 45. (Sansevieri expressed surprise at finding 36% are retired and over 70% are empty
nesters, pointing to a much larger number of tech savvy older people
engaging with the Bookbub platform).
It isn’t all about
screens as more than 30% read both eBook and print books regularly.
The discounts may
have initially attracted people, but over 75% purchase full price and discount
books, as well as more than 60% buying additional books by an author they
discovered using Bookbub.
This was her conclusion:
"I give Bookbub a
lot of credit for representing fiction readers in today’s market because
they’ve amassed such a fantastic following. Sure, they don’t represent all
readers, but it’s still great insight”.
So it isn’t just me
that thinks Bookbub is good value, and pretty good at promoting books and
reading. I hope if you give it a try, you'll find it of benefit to you. Books are such a blessing, no matter the format, and I’m happy to partake
whenever I can.
Yet, in the interests of full
disclosure, there will always be a little bit of the curmudgeon peeking out of
my worldview. Now, where’s my newspaper? 😝
As for a song to go with this post, I came across Unread Book , a parody of a familiar tune you may know. How many classic titles can you see? Looks like a fun place to work!
Until next time,
Tracey 📚
With thanks to:
Ventucators YouTube Channel for Bruno Mars Uptown Funk Parody: Unread Book created by Orange Public Library (California USA) and Chapman University, made to celebrate National Book Week in 2015.
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