How To Feed A Reading Habit - On The Cheap

 Photo Credit: Frédéric della Faille via Compfight

The stuff I most enjoy reading now isn't available in the library. The books never make it that far.

The role of traditional publishing, traditional publishers, traditional marketing and traditional distribution are quickly being turned on their head.

Self publishing is becoming more-and-more of a force. And I'm riding both sides of it:

• I'll be publishing some e-books, and I have no aspirations at all to go the "traditional" route.
• The last ten books I've read have been self-published. And I bought every one of them off Amazon.com.
• And I paid less than $3.00 for each of them - most were either $0.99 or $1.99.

The length of these eBooks vary, but they tend to be in the 200 page range.

And I've found their subject matter to be fascinating.

Here's a short list of what I've enjoyed in the last couple of weeks:

Long Long Honeymoon - Living Large in a Small Tin Can
How to Travel Full Time
How to Be Remarkable
My Exile Lifestyle
Life Nomadic
The Tiniest Mansion - How To Live In Luxury on the Side of the Road in an RV

Radical Frugality: Living in America on $8,000 a Year

There's a bit of a theme here, I'll admit, but what should be really interesting to you are the number of really-low-cost, self-published titles that are out there.

Do a quick search on Amazon for whatever you like, see if there's any books available for a dollar or two, and then see what other "picks" Amazon gives you - they'll mostly be at the same price point.

The other thing I find myself doing a lot now is "Readability", a free app available for your PC and Smartphone. When I find an article I'm interested in, and it's too long to read right then, I'll "capture" it with Readabilty and send it to my Kindle (you have to set that up, but it's free, and Readability coaches you on the simple steps to do it). If you're familiar with InstaPaper, it's very similar - except for the Kindle link (I much prefer reading on a Kindle than on a PC or Smartphone).

I find these articles and eBooks are much more my speed now. Not too long, not too short. Just right....