Saturday, August 15, 2009

How to Save in Reading

Do you like to read books? If yes, are you wasting quite some money to purchase books every month?

In Malaysia, purchase a book is consider very expensive. For example, I bought Rule #1 for RM50. If you are working in UK, most of the time you'll only get a book for less than 10 pounds, how good it is. Well, we definitely compare in this way, due to currency differences. Unfortunately, due to the money we earn is RM, we are not afford to buy more books as we want to, compare to the high currency country like Australia, Euro and US. Is that one of the reasons we fall behind them?


How frequent you visit bookstore?

But with my disappointment, I surprise some of the local published books also selling with a relatively expensive price. Many local authors and publishers quality are not as good as the foreigners', yet they are selling the same or even higher price as other good books. What a thrill! To be honest, I refused to support them. Is about the quality, and yet they want to sell at such an unreasonable price. They shouldn't focus too much on margin, they should be emphasize more on affordability and quality. Anyway, that's my opinion only.

Due to these reasons and I want to save up my hard-earned money, I forced to discover a few ways to counter the purchase of expensive books issue in our country recently. I started to exchange books with my friends and relatives, or even just borrow recommended books from them, for those who do reading regularly. If I really think that book is worth to keep, then I'll only purchase it. With such trade, I didn't buy any book for this month. Great. The only cons is that you cannot have exactly what you want to read. Hey it's free, I can't expect more.


Do you know Google has e-library for free books preview?

Some people also make use of library. They borrow books from library, which is a very good choice as well. Unfortunately, I don't get what I want from my state library at this moment.

There is a dirt-cheap method, visit the bookstore and just try to finish the book on the spot. Well, a few of my friends are doing that. In fact, nothing wrong with that since you want to save your money. Be the bookstore offers you seats or not, as long as the book is not wrap up or no sign of "Do Not Read", you may enjoy from day till the bookstore close, your choice. I did it a few times, unfortunately I don't like the distraction of people moving around, so the 1st method is more suitable for me.


How many books have you own so far? Do you have space problem?

Another method is not for free, but you can get the book with dirt-cheap price. I believe the membership discount is quite bullshit, as they only give 10% discount, which is beyond the book price. What we can do is, we can try to wait for the bookstore promotion. Sometimes, they offering 3 for 2 pricing, or 30-70% discount off the older book. I got 'Winning' for 3 for 2 promotion price previously, which is a good budget. Sometimes, you also can look for online bookstore promotion.

The last method, which is the method I frequently used, search and look around from the Internet. Sometimes, you will come across bloggers and e-book organization sharing about the particular e-book, or you can try peer-to-peer sharing. Well, whether it is ethical to do this, I leave it for you to judge.

I hope they will helps you save money in reading. Have a nice weekend ahead, folks!

3 comments:

Ken Wooi said...

yeah many are reading books thru the internet these days.. probably due to the costly books huh.. =)

kenwooi.com

Margaret said...

I have a huge collection for BOOKS! You will get shocked, still not enough space so I gave up (almost..) to buy anymore new books. Nowsadays, I try search for e-books, more tree friendly and save cost too..LOL

eKimkee said...

Yes, I also try to control myself to buy books at bookstore nowadays, as some books can be found from the Internet. Save some bucks but pity on the author and publisher.

 
Copyright 2009 Ekimkee. Powered by Blogger Blogger Templates create by Deluxe Templates. WP by Masterplan