Anyone who knows me in real-life or has been following me for a while will know that I love books, really love books! Reading has been my thing ever since I was a little girl and I can’t imagine going a day without reading , even just a little bit. Now, this can get to become a very expensive hobby so I thought I’d share my tips on how to read without breaking the bank!

The beloved library!

Find out where your local library is and sign up. You can order in books that your library doesn’t have and you can also make reservations on up and coming titles. The only downside to this is if there is something hot off the press that you want to read, you may have to wait a while. The other bonus to having a library membership is that you can read e-books and e-magazines and listen to e-audiobooks  for free too. A big warning note to this is- ALWAYS RENEW OR RETURN YOUR BOOKS ON TIME! Otherwise your fines may outweigh the saving on the book.

charity shops

Charity shops are a great place to scout out books. I have found many books sold for 50p, 99p or £1. What I like about charity shops is there is always such an eclectic range of books, you never know what there might be!

car boot sales

As above, car boot sales are great places to pick up bargains. When I was actively looking for children’s books for my classroom I would always go to a car boot sale to pick them up. There were always loads of them!

host a book swap

I have done this many times with friends. What I love about this is that I have read so many different books that I wouldn’t normally have read. Some of my friends have different tastes and doing this means I get to try out new authors and genres but ones that have come recommended. I read one of my favourite books by doing a swap with a pupil’s dad! You could also borrow books from friend but don’t forget to give them back!

amazon/kindle

If there is a book I want to read I will add it to my Amazon wishlist, one of the advantages of doing this is that Amazon will email to let me know if there is a deal on that book. The deal might be in paper/hardback or Kindle. I just add and see what happens! Kindle also have daily deals and monthly deals as well as random deals which just come up as a notification! I can often get books for free, otherwise I can get lots of books for 99p. If I get an Amazon voucher for my birthday or Christmas then I tend to use it on 99p books.

ask for books/vouchers as gifts

If there are particular books that you really want then ask for them as gifts or ask for Amazon/book store vouchers to use towards books. This might seem a bit obvious but a recent conversation made me realise that not everyone thinks to ask for books as gifts!

abebooks

Abebooks is one of my favourite places to search for secondhand books online. You can find nearly everything here and I have found it so useful over the years, particularly when I was studying. I also love the articles and recommendations that are on the site.

bookbub and kindofbook

I have put BookBub and KindofBook together as they are pretty similar in what they do. They are both aimed at ebook readers and the idea is that you sign up and answer some questions about your reading preferences. You then get sent emails with recommendations to daily ebook deals. Some of the deals are free, most are 99p. I have used them in a more tailored way as I was looking to build my collection of books by a particular author and so set up an alert for her name. Each time one of her books came up as a deal I got an email and I bought that book. With KindofBook you can also set up a price-drop alert, so if you’re happy to pay say £3.99 for a particular book, you can set the alert and be notified once it drops by or to a certain amount. Both these services are free!

Do you enjoy reading? I’d love any of your recommendations! Let me know in the comments!