Since I keep such detailed records of how many books I get and from where in my Mailbox posts, I wanted to go through all of them and see how much money I spent on books in a year. I thought it would be a lot more than it actually was! At the very least I have data to show my husband that I don’t spend that much on books. Relatively speaking to like cable or something :)
Books I Bought in 2014
Hardcover
- Infinity Ring #3 – $5 at a Scholastic Book Fair
- Infinity Ring #4 – $5 at a Scholastic Book Fair
- Ender’s Game Collector’s Hardcover – $22.50 at Barnes and Noble
- We Were Liars – $11 at Walmart on a whim
- Rump – $14 for book club from Amazon
- Goodnight Darth Vader – $15 at Barnes and Noble for Star Wars Reads Day
- Darth Vader and Son – $15 at Barnes and Noble for Star Wars Reads Day
- Vader’s Little Princess – $15 at Barnes and Noble for Star Wars Reads Day
Total Hardcover: $102.50
Total Hardcovers Purchased: 8
Average per hardcover: $12.81
Paperback
- Daughter of Smoke and Bone – $10 at a signing from The King’s English
- Speaker for the Dead – $7.99 at a signing at Barnes and Noble
- Children of the Mind – $8.99 at a signing at Barnes and Noble
Total Paperback: $26.98
Total Paperbacks Purchased: 3
Average per paperback: $8.99
Ebooks
All ebooks were purchased from Amazon for my Kindle Paperwhite
- Count of Monte Cristo – $6.60
- A Tree Grows in Brooklyn – $1.99
- Coraline – $1.99
- The Shadow Throne – $9.17
- A Touch of Scarlet -$0
- Quiet – $0.20
- Assassins’ Curse – $0
- The Pirates Wish – $0
- A Little Princess – $0.07
- Of Poseidon – $0.30
- Dreams of Gods and Monsters – $0.67
- Year of Living Biblically – $1.05
- Scarlet – $2.12
- Unbroken – $2.99
- If I Stay – $2.99
- The Martian – $3.20
- Witch of Duva – $0.99
- The Too-Clever Fox – $0.99
- Little Knife – $0.99
Total Ebooks: $36.31
Total Ebooks Purchased: 19
Average per Ebook: $1.91
What’s interesting about these numbers is I bought more than double the amount of ebooks than I did hardcovers but the hardcovers cost me three times as much. Basically I get way more books for my money with ebooks than I do hardcovers. I feel more inclined to hoard books that I might want to read someday if it’s a cheap ebook than I am a cheap hardcover. I reserve hardcovers for books I’m getting signed or special occasions but I also buy less of them.
One stat that is skewing the ebook numbers is the fact that I got a credit from the antitrust lawsuit for $24.34. If I add that into my numbers that means I spent a total of $60.65 on ebooks with an average of $3.19 per book.
Total Spent on Books in 2014 Overall
$165.79*
*However, I did get a $24.34 credit from the antitrust lawsuit from Amazon so I would have spent more like $190.13 (making the average per book $6.34). Yeah I buy a lot of ebooks….
Number of books purchased: 30
Average per book overall: $5.53
I was sure I spent like $400 on books a year so this is great news! Keep in mind that I read about 50 books a year and I have a lot of books sitting on my shelf waiting to be read so I do make an effort to not buy new books unless I’m getting it signed or it’s on sale. I also have a great library system that I take advantage of and I did not include audiobooks in these calculations that I got from my Audible subscription.
I got the idea for this post from a poll that Book Riot did that asked it’s readers to estimate how much they spend on books every year. I guess I’m very below average! The average from that poll was $718 a year.
How much do you spend on books every year?
Cover Photo credit: 401kcalculator.org
My name is Jessica. I love to read Young Adult and classic literature. I’ve been a book blogger for six years and I haven’t gotten tired of it yet. I’m a very curious reader. Writing about all the questions and thoughts I had while reading a book is the best hobby ever.
Not too shabby! I’m a hardcover snob, and I don’t want to know what I spent this year on books. Well, I kinda do.
This is a interesting concept. I have NO IDEA how much I spent on books this year. I didn’t keep receipts or anything. I’m sure it’s either close to yours or possibly higher. And, like Kami, I’m a hard cover snob. I don’t buy paperbacks very often at all.
The last two years I haven’t bought a ton of books but before that…I don’t even want to know. It would scare me. You didn’t do bad and you got quite a few books this year.
Oh wow, $700/year?? That’s crazy! I would hope I would come in way below that as well… this is a great idea and I’m thinking I should keep track of my book buys for this year. It’s great that you did such a great job at non over-spending this year!