I stopped buying books for a year. Here’s what I learned.

I did it! In August of 2022 I set out to stop buying books for a full year. I'm happy to report that I officially completed this challenge and learned a lot about my book buying habits along the way!

TIME STAMPS
0:00 Intro
0:23 Why I went on a ban & parameters of the ban
5:06 How I made the ban easier on myself
7:28 What I learned during my book buying ban
20:18 What will my book buying look like moving forward?
23:59 Stats
26:16 Outro

FOLLOW ME

[NjIceTea]

I am strongly considering starting a book buying ban today and I think I need to watch this every day from now on lol - at least for the next couple weeks. You have 100 unread books, I am pretty sure I have almost 400. It is insane and overwhelming and I dont even know what to think about it. Wish me luck lol!

[radiantchristina]

Great video! A few years ago, I exclusively used the library for all my reading for that year. I saved so much money and the reading pressure was totally off. I really enjoyed it ! I would order books on the library website, then pick up a big totebag of books once they all came in to my local branch. It was great because I would have a bunch of different books to choose from.

I went right back to buying books after that year and i'm not really sure why. I had no intention of doing a book ban this year, but I just looked at my unread books today and have decided to do a book buying ban for the remainder of the year. I have lost a lot of my joy for reading due mostly to the fact that the bookcase that holds my unread book brings me stress instead of joy as of late.
Another reason for the decision on the book ban...My book buying recently has also been impulsive. Sometimes by the time I receive the book in the mail, I re read the synopsis and am no longer interested. I recently unhauled about 20 unread books and this really upset me also. What a waste of money.


My goal at this point is to read all my unread books and maybe re read a couple favorites. I don't have as many unread books as some (i've got about 30) but I want to get to a point where I feel like I can order one book at a time, like I did MANY eyars ago before booktube and bookstagram. Next year, I'd like to go back to library only.

[SamanthaPajor]

This is great! A lot of my books I got from library book sales for 50 cents or a dollar. This is inspiring me to put more effort into reading them and deciding which ones I actually want to keep. I'd love for my shelves to be a bit more curated.

[CathenaReads]

this video appeared on my recommended and I'm glad I clicked it! :)
congrats on completing your challenge!! I will attempt a similar thing in 2024, because I'm also trying to be more mindful with the books that I buy, specially since my main genre is fantasy so there's always new releases and special editions and the fomo is real. I'll try to be more intentional with my purchases, so this video really motivated me :) also for new releases, the library is definitely going to become my bff lol

[ravent]

Congrats on the successful endeavor. Leaving items in online shopping baskets is the method I use to make sure I don't impulse buy. It generally works. So I use it on etsy, amazon, and ebay.

[hannahbrennan]

I mostly get my TBR from the library. I only buy new releases that the library doesn't have yet.

[fisher]

Congrats on completing your challenge! I know how difficult it can be to forgo the hype behind a new release!

[sproutygamerreads]

Great job! I now volunteer putting up books for the charity book shop for my library. It would be so hard not to get any.

[lauras]

You can also buy books used to save money

[dionnasoares]

Borrow, borrow, borrow, support your local libraries!