Book Buying Habits: 2022 Edition

Let’s discuss my book buying habits in 2022! In 2021, I wrote a post where I went over all the statistics of the books I bought, was sent, and unhauled, as well as any other breakdown I could think of. Since I enjoyed putting that post together and reflecting on my purchasing habits so much, I’m back this year to do a similar post!

Let’s start off with some basic foundational numbers, why don’t we? How many books did I acquire throughout the year? Well, all in all, I added 73 books to my shelf in 2022. If you’re wondering how that compares to 2021, I acquired 89 books that year. Interestingly, in both 2021 and 2022, I purchased the same amount! That’s right, I once again purchased 59 books.

Although, technically the math for that 59 is a little complicated. Because when I was doing the math on how many I had purchased, I only checked my spreadsheet for the column that showed how much I paid for a book. However, two of my books I purchased through PangoBooks and used money from books I had sold to pay for them, so I did not count that as a monetary purchase, since the money wasn’t coming from my bank account. That would technically lead to me having purchased 61 books. Weirdly enough though, I bought a box set of a manga that included 6 books, two of which I already owned. When I did the math, it was still cheaper for me to get the box set and get duplicates, than to buy the remaining 4 books individually. So I don’t really count those two books as “purchased” either. So really then the Pango books and the unnecessary box set books even out, and you’re left with 59 books that I had not owned previously. So I’m sticking with 59!

Now that we’ve gotten that complicated math out of the way, let’s discuss money. I know this is a rarity, but I feel comfortable sharing how much I spent on books this year, and I thought it might be something interesting to include. In total, in 2022, I spent $819.21 on buying books. That averages out to about $13.88 per book, which makes sense, since I purchase a lot of books full price and/or in person, which usually lends itself to more expensive purchases. I’m honestly not sure what to make of this number, since I don’t have that much data to compare it to. It’s definitely less than I spent in 2021. I didn’t share that number in my post, but I did keep track of it. I think I’m okay with this number though. I think if it were above $850, I might be concerned, but as this is my biggest hobby that I spend my money on, I’m okay with spending about $70 a month on book purchases. Especially if I end up reading them. So did I read them?

I did! I purchased and then read 28 books in 2022! That’s means I read about 47% of the books I purchased in 2022, within the year I purchased them! It’s also important to consider my unhauls though. In 2022 I unhauled 24 books, 13 of which I had read, 11 of which I had not. At this point in January, I have done some further unhauling, which resulted in 11 of the purchases I made in 2022 being unhauled before I read them. So of the books remaining, I actually read closer to 60% of the books that I bought and that I still intend to read! I think that’s quite impressive! And just in case you’re curious, the books I unhauled without reading, I either DNFed within 50 pages or saw some reviews/content warnings that made me realize the book was not for me.

In general though, I read 39 books that I already owned. So that’s 28 that I purchased in 2022, plus 11 others that had already been languishing on my shelves.

Now, I want to quickly go through where I sourced these books from! Coming in as my number one source of book acquisition is Barnes & Noble! This makes sense, because I have less self control when the books are just right there in front of me on my in person trips to the book store. If I visit a B&N, surely I must buy something on that trip! And that’s how I purchased 34 books from B&N in 2022. Coming in at number two is the online bookish love of my life, Bookshop.org! I purchased 13 books from Bookshop.org this year. While I adore that site, my self control is just higher when it comes to online shopping. As shameless promotion, I suggest you check out either this post where I talk about why I adore Bookshop.org, or this post where I talk about my experience as an affiliate with Bookshop.org. Moving on, there were 3 independent bookstores that I went to in person in 2022 that resulted in me purchasing an additional 5 books. I also received 9 books in physical form from publishers, which is truly surreal. If you’re keeping track, that leaves a remaining 12 books that I acquired in random ways, such as giveaways or an airport book store.

So there you have it! Those are all the fun numbers on the books I acquired this year! I hope you had as much fun reading this post, as I did compiling all these numbers for this post! Let me know which stat you found the most interesting or surprising!

How many books did you buy and/or acquire this year? Where do you source most of your books from? How frequently do you unhaul books?

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